Snow and Seville
Snow, beautiful, terrible snow. The day we came back from Seville we lost twenty degrees: 18 and warm in the sun in Seville, a shivering minus 2 at Manchester airport with the wind slicing through clothes and flesh to the bones as we walked across the tarmac in the dark rain. All the forecasts were full of the snow to come. Someone had come up with the phrase "The beast from the East" to describe the cold and snow scything in from Eastern Europe and commentators and weather forecasters all over radio and television took a childish delight in the phrase and the rhyme. We got home late on Monday night before the snow. It was time to batten down the hatches. On Tuesday we woke to snow and it snowed all morning and into the afternoon. We sat by the woodburner and watched it swirl outside the window. This house with its thick walls and slate roof was built against the weather. It comes into its own when winter howls at the door...