It snowed overnight and the radio woke us with the news that London had come to a stand-still. Our street at 10am:

I threw on my sheepskin and headed straight to the park with Edward:

The park was deserted and looked so serene in its white blanket:

Before lunch Darren and I took Edward for a walk along the river Lea. It's never looked prettier:

After this picture was taken Edward fell in the canal while chasing a moor-hen. He was covered in mud and had to be showered when he got home.


I grew up in Northumberland so I'm used to seeing snow every year. Our schools were never closed 'due to snow' and you had to live five miles from the school before you would get a ride to the gates. I had a twenty minute walk to school every day but I knew others who walked for an hour and thought nothing of it.
There's a school five minutes walk from our house here in London and there are parents in our street who take their kids in the car every morning! Five fucking minutes!! And you know what their argument is? "Well, there are so many weirdo's out there nowadays". I'll take a guess that there aren't any more weirdo's out there now than when I was a kid. When I was growing up I was told horror stories about bad men and not accepting sweets or rides from strangers and this seemed to work. "Don't go near those toilets in the park" my Mum would say, and, "horrible things will happen to you if you go in there". Of course, when I was older I realised that she she didn't know jack-shit about those toilets and that the things that happened in there were not horrible at all. Quite the opposite actually, Mum.
Apologies if I seem a bit glib about 'bad men' and 'kids'. Horrible things do happen and I really wish they didn't.