Subject: snow Date: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 17:21:10 -0000

Dear Petra

Yesterday afternoon at about 3 o'clock it started to snow in Grey Town Suburb. The wind blew hard and the sky was a mass of flakes, battering against cars and trees and buildings. I haven't seen snow like it in London since I was 11 or 12 years old.

All the tube trains that run out here from the centre of Town were instantly cancelled. There was no way out of Grey Town Suburb.

I accepted a lift to Highgate with 5 of my colleagues... It took us an hour to get out of Grey Town Suburb, another hour and a half to reach Highgate. Buses were beached like whales on the side of the road, cars spun their wheels at the bottom of gentle hills, unable to get any sort of grip.

Although our evening was spent in the back of a car in the freezing snow, we laughed at our situation, and I realised that perhaps this is what I'm missing. It doesn't help that I spend all day in front of a screen, headphones clamped over my head, having very little interaction with the people around me. It hasn't always been like this.

By the time I got home I was tired and tearful, it was half past nine, it had taken 3 hours to get home.

This morning the sun was shining on the snow, and as I crossed over Brownstick Rd looking up towards Lowbury Hill.. it looked truly beautiful. The snow made the Victorian houses feel more Victorian.. perhaps it was the silence, or the lack of cars on the road.

It made me feel momentary better.

ms gunn