Now is the winter of our discontent!

“Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that low’r'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”

Richard III by William Shakespeare.

One of the few Shakespearean phrases I remember from English literature at school; the others all coming from Romeo and Juliet (I’m a soppy romantic at heart!)

The snow is continuing — we’re up to about 10cm! The most snow we’ve had in 20 years! Those old biddies that are always saying ‘they don’t make winters like they used to!’ have finally been silenced. Probably because they’re dying of hypothermia, but I digress. As always, as soon as any kind of immoderate weather hits the United Kingdom, we collapse and stay at home. An inch of snow, and the buses stop. Two inches, and the trains stop. Three inches, and no one even bothers to go into work. Retailers are hanging signs apologising for the long lines of people trying to pay, because their staff haven’t bothered to come in — and people wonder why us Brits have a bad reputation as workers… union action, strikes… calling in sick/otherwise indisposed if the weather creeps up above 30, or below zero.

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Anyway, here in Sussex, we have about 3 acres of fields and gardens visible from my bedroom window, so when it’s snows the vast amount of reflected light always wakes me up early (I took to leaving my curtains open so that it’s more likely I wake up before noon than Hell freezing over… although it’s probably pretty nippy down there at the moment.) Anyway, not to be deterred by being woken up at Godless hour of 11am, I sat on my windowsill and tried to catch animals bouncing around in the snow, looking for food. I guess the fantastic hush that swamps the senses during a large snowfall also amplifies even the tiniest of noises; the animals weren’t coming close enough to photograph. So I headed out onto the estate, seeing what I could find…

I found a tiny rabbit, about 500 meters away, but it just wasn’t all that photogenic at that distance.

I ended up taking some pretty pictures of plants covered in snow; plants don’t sprint away at the slightest rustling, which is great for a photographer like me — I’m not the most agile person, being 6’5″ and all (although I can get both legs behind my head — ask to see my party trick one day, if you ever catch me partying…), so sneaking up on rabbits and ravens is pretty taxing. I’m happy with this photo though:

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It’s like one of those photos from a glossy magazine — the cooking section — but that isn’t actually icing sugar. It’s snow!! Perhaps I should do some more macro photography!

I have no idea if these photo-filled entries are actually well received, or if people just scroll past the pictures. Perhaps if I interleave photo posts with penis monologue posts, I should be able to cover most of my bases. So if we call this a ‘photo post’, I can sneak in this cute photo that my sister took of me in the snow.

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Yes, that’s my largest ‘penis extension’ as my father calls it. No, my hair isn’t dyed red and blue.