Last week it snowed -- suddenly, violently and protractedly -- at around 3 o'clock in the afternoon while I was at work. Trying to get home on the scooter, with the roads increasingly deep in snow, snow blowing in my face and building up on my dashboard and headlights, my moped continually stalling because of the cold which generally accompanies snow, and all the other traffic gridlocked because of the snow, was so entirely Not Fun that I gave up after three hundred yards and went back to work.
Storing the bike in a ground-floor classroom, I made my way home (6 or 7 urban miles) via a combination of a colleague's car (which had the benefit of being warm, and contained a radio which continually relayed details of accidents other people were having on mopeds in Bristol, but wasn't actually moving to speak of), walking on ice-covered snowbound pavements, and a train which mercifully was still running. I got in three hours after I left work (having collected from a pub my beloved, who had intelligently left her keys at work).
The next morning I had to get up at 6:15, to get into work via a combination of Very Early Train and bus (the buses were running again by then, and the gridlock had dissipated overnight). It had snowed even more in the night, and everything was smothered with the stuff. Pavements especially had a thick carpet of white, concealing an underlay of frozen teflon.
That afternoon the snow melted. Seriously, just like that. By the time I left work that day, about 90% of it was gone without a trace. Most of the meltwater had evaporated, even. I've never seen such vicious, dirty weather give up so easily. By the weekend, all that was left were occasional tiny piles which human beings had turned into more enduring structures (snowmen, mainly) and hidden in persistent shade. Today it rained, and now all those constructions are gone, too.
It's interesting (although not very) how large a percentage of any given snow sculpture appears to consist of unmeltable mud.
