Life in a Time of Snow

Extreme weather changes things. It's pretty unpleasant really, like in summer when it's too hot to work, to move, even to sleep, with the sweat running down your neck, with tempers running short, and yet still we look back to those special times, the summer of '76, when life was just different, we could imagine we lived in Miami or Malaga, driving with the windows all down, playing summer music: I Feel Love, Summer in the City, Black Velvet, as if we could be someone different from who we are, living another life in another place - in fact making us believe that perhaps really we could change ourselves and our lives.

Similarly now, when the whole world feels in stasis: a compulsory break in the normal routine, the usual rush silenced by a power stronger than us, everything hushed. Even the cold is breathtaking, the hush unmistakable