I reach the end of my road gasping for breath. It feels as if I'm walking with weights around my ankles. It's been tough making it as far as the Turkish shop today. The snow that fell so heavily last night is still about five inches deep. At the newsagents, the chap who runs it signals to me through the dirty glass door to indicate that
The Observer has not arrived yet. His gesture is also a way of saying that I needn't bother coming into his shop, thus, letting the cold air in, even if it's just for a fleeting instant. I turn around and cross the road. As I head for another newsagents, I take my earphones off to capture better the sounds of the recent snowfall. Roy Ayers and the Nuyorican Soul's
Sweet Tears are paused momentarily. An eerie silence descends upon me as I forge ahead, each foostep leaving a clue as to my shoe size on the white carpet.
The silence is interrupted intermittently by laughter and cries coming from children playing on the road and on the pavement. Hard to say which is which now. Snowmen are quickly propped up and eventually knocked down. The main thoroughfare, usually a combination of potholes and bumps, looks pristine and levelled under the slate grey light of the nowhere-to-be-found sun. A car drifts by, its engine a soft, muzzled roar, its dipped headlights dimly illuminating the road ahead like the eyes of an owl looking out from a tree.
I finally get to the second newsagents. The guy, who also knows me, opens his large arms widely and shrugs his shoulders. No paper there either. I turn around and make my way back home.
En route, I walk past the new pub - the third one on the same spot in less than ten years - with its promising menu and enticing discounts, more groups of children having snowball fights and black African women with patterned headwraps and dressed to the nines on their way to church. I put my earphones back on and welcome the melodic voice of Roy Ayers as he wraps up
Sweet Tears.
© 2012
Next Post: “Sunday Mornings: Coffee, Reflections and Music”, to be published on Sunday 26th February at 10am (GMT)
Image taken from flickr groups
Aah, the snow magically making all sorts of things disappear...if only for a while.
ReplyDeleteSo that's where our snow went! I'm envious as we only got 1/2 inch of snow last night. This has been our worst winter for skiing. Then again I recall how poorly equipped London is at handling snow. Best of luck digging out. I like that photo too.
ReplyDeleteThis is a lovely prose poem to snow and the pain and pleasures of walking in it. We don't get snow in SF but I remember traveling to visit my grandparents in Oregon and stopping along the way to romp in the snowbanks. It sure felt good to get back into the warm car!
ReplyDeleteGreetings from sunny, warm SF.
You have just reminded me of why I am happy not to live any longer in places that get true winter. You paint a pretty picture but all I can remember is frost-bitten fingers, breath congealing in my nose, and numb toes.
ReplyDeleteI love the silence of snow! You can always tell if it's snowed in the night by the quality of sound in the morning, before you've even opened the curtains.
ReplyDeleteSo strange that you got it and we didn't.
You are a dedicated Observer reader if you braved the snow for it!
ReplyDeleteIsn't it weird how the snow seemed to just linger and linger until all of a sudden we had 18degree weather and sunny skies. And the snow disappeared to no one knows where?
I loved the way you built the urban landscape, with the children and ladies going to church and the newsagents. Very London!
Jai
Thanks for your comments. May I just say that the snow was almost three weeks ago? As Jai rightly says, we've had very unseasonal temperatures in London in the last couple of days, reaching 18 degrees Celsius yesterday. Very different to the landscape in my post. But still, on that Sunday night, the day after the snow fell, I was so captivated by it that I sat down to translate my feelings and thoughts into words.
ReplyDeleteHave a nice weekend, you all.
Greetings from London.
I can just picture London during Dickens time with your discourse on the store owner signaling you need not come in. It sounds so wonderful-from afar. We've been hearing that while the US has not had a winter it is the complete opposite in Europe. 5" sounds like a lot for London.
ReplyDeleteVery evocative scene, it pulled me right in. One quandary, I consider all women who were born in Africa to be black, whether they look that way or not. What was your reason for making the distinction?
ReplyDeleteHi, Fly Girl. Thanks for your comment. There are white African women, the South African writer Nadine Gordimer being one of them. :-)
ReplyDeleteGreetings from London.