John had gone to Lausanne the day before. I had ‘flu and was relieved that I could stay in bed and also that he might miss getting it, having left the Krankenhaus. On Monday morning I couldn’t believe my eyes at how much snow had fallen in the night. It was pristine and untouched in the garden, except for fox and bird footprints, which were quite intriguing to track. The nocturnal life of the garden unveiled!
Even though I was ill, I felt I had to go out with my camera and capture all this – especially to show John, who would miss it all. It came to pass that Heathrow shut down and many flights in the next couple of days were cancelled, including his. He was finally rerouted home via Lyon and Paris. I had my trusty book, ‘The Man in Seat 61’ and could have got him home much earlier, as there are five direct trains from Lausanne to Paris every day, where he could have got the Eurostar home. Costwise, this would have been more expensive than to stay with BA’s disrupted timetable – but not that much more expensive. Anyway, I was quite annoyed that the travel agent Volans use seemed to think there were no direct trains from Lausanne to Paris. I rang SNCF, just to make sure they were wrong. They were. I think a ‘polite word in their ear’ might keep them more on their toes? Travel agents are in the same category as accountants. There are non-creative and creative ones. Why do we not have the latter?
But now I was free to go out and take some photos of Barnes in the snow. Not only was it beautiful but people were out with their children, dogs were leaping around madly and, in general, we were all just enjoying walking around wrapped up in our woolly hats and scarves. And the amazing thing was that everybody was smiling and greeting one another. For a day, the snow in Barnes lifted all our spirits. I tramped around happily and here are one or two photos I took. The last one, of Barnes Pond, was taken a couple of days later, so you can see the snow has melted but I’ve put it in because it’s very colourful…..’Can Spring be far behind?!’
01/02/09 Snow in Barnes
02/02/09 The winter garden
Barnes Common
Giant snowballs in Barnes
Barnes Pond