And it has, ever so briefly. A few white hours early on Friday and then by midmorning it had gone, vanished, but a memory. I rushed up the hill this morning to see if there were any remnants left in which to run amok. It was disappointing because there was nothing but brown, soggy moorland as far as the eye could see. I started off towards the mast on the summit then I saw, cowering under a tussock of soft rush, a couple of tablespoons of snow. I knelt down and picked up a small handful letting it melt through my fingers wondering if this may be the only snowfall of the year.
I can only remember snow staying on the ground once last year. It stays in my mind as I had a minor bumpette in the car when I was driving between work placements.
I was going to walk up to the television mast this morning. It stands on a ridge of the Pennines and can be seen like a beacon for miles around. It’s strange how homely such a technical landmark can look after you’ve driven on the motorway for hours and then see it coming into site, low on the horizon at first then gradually rising up the nearer you get to that chain of hills that divides the country north to south.
Along the way I saw a bunch of apricot roses tied to a fence post, their delicate petals buffeted by the stripping, winter wind. They were somebody’s memory there, cable-tied to that post. They seemed a poignant reminder of frail mortality in a wide, unrelenting world.
The garden – in a word, muddy. Too wet to work on at the moment except for a little pruning. I expect to see the new green blades of daffodils soon along with a flourish of buds on the primroses. Last year the primroses took it upon themselves to flower whenever they saw fit, it was a sparse spring-showing with a follow up display in the autumn. I think the unseasonal temperatures are throwing them out of sync and they are exhausting their supplies out of season and then are unable to perform the following spring.
