Snow!

The sad thing about getting up before 7 (apart from the very fact of being awake at such a time) is that on the very rare occasions that it snows, you don't get that weird light through the curtains when it snows like you do if you wake up when it's light. And although there was a fairly hefty dusting, there certainly wasn't enough for sledging. When I was a kid, it felt as though snow was relatively common, and when it came we would go to the nearest hill with our variety of sledges, have a snowball fight and make a snow-man leaving plenty of snow to spare. If the Boy Wonder and I had done that yesterday, there wouldn't have been any left for anyone else. But, undeterred I did try to enjoy the snow of yesterday - everything looked pretty and I felt all strident and tough, but after a lunch-time wander to the garden centre to get worms for the hedgehog and another trip to another garden centre to get salt for the fish, I felt all active and worthy and decided to use the unnecessary plastic bag I had received to collect some of the rubbish I had encountered along the way. However, having filled one carrier bag, collected another one from a tree and filled that as well before I was even half way back to the office, I felt decidedly less hearty and worthy, much less enthusiastic about improving the look of the white-frosted countryside and had mad hair and filthy hands which were an unfortunate combination as the latter meant that I was unable to do anything about the former, so I ended up back at work looking like a slightly confused scarecrow. I was surprised at the variety and nature of the stuff I picked up though - there were the usual cans, bottles and bits of miscellaneous paper, but I also found a thermos flask, slightly dented, but with something in it, which had conveniently frozen solid and hence much heavier than expected, a scarf which looked quite nice but was covered in ice and mud, a book without a cover and an array of random bits of plastic. Since discovering 'Found' courtesy of my brother I have been hoping to find something of even the vaguest interest whilst wandering about the place, and I suspect that this desire played no small part in my otherwise completely altruistic attempt to clear up the countryside. But alas, there was nothing of any note to be found, although I suppose snow is not particularly conducive to paper-based discoveries. I did once find some kind of school report for a girl who was clearly in trouble and had to get every teacher to sign in a box before each lesson. I wondered briefly what she had done to warrant such a punishment, but there was nothing to indicate what that might have been. So, whilst the snow didn't mean that we couldn't leave the house, build a snowman or even create a passable snowball, it did provide a worthwhile lesson in litter picking - it's not for the fainthearted and you probably won't find anything interesting.