Snow nae mair!
(View out of the kitchen window: Glasgow, Scotland)
This morning I woke, pulled back the curtains and discovered snowflakes as big as two pence pieces outside my window, racing towards the ground. This has become a customary sight over the last couple of years, even in Glasgow where snowfall is supposedly uncommon, but not usually in March. Nay, mid March – the crocuses and daffodils are already out and probably feeling very foolish indeed for popping up in the Springtime. So, not only were the snowflakes mighty in volume, but they fell for most of the day, ceasing only an hour or so before dinner time to enable me to grab some groceries without turning into a snow person.
The snow lay for a couple of hours but dissipated quickly and quietly, possibly thanks to the tones of salt and grit everywhere. Rusty pink grit lines every road and pavement as if spattered with paint. Walking is accompanied by a solid crunching underfoot which would appear to be here to stay indefinitely. When he was here in December, Ying asked me “when will they clear it all up?” I was baffled. Clean it up? Well, they don’t, do they – whoever they might be? He continued, equally disturbed by my answer as I was by the question; “they have to, otherwise it’ll clog up all the drains. If they don’t, that would be wasteful”. I thought about it. I’m pretty convinced it never gets cleared, it is simply swept together with other street detritus, or at best, potentially collected into piles which may get tipped back into the grit bins on some street corners. He informed me that in other countries (that may have been Sweden), it is collected, stored and used again the following year. I suppose Scotland doesn’t have the resources available to undertake such a mammoth task considering there is enough grit on Glasgow’s streets to bury the art school. That isn’t a definite fact, by the way, but I reckon it’s a pretty accurate estimate. If only the grit could be used to fill in the immense potholes and sinkholes that have appeared on every horizontal street surface, we could manage two problems with one solution. Something tells me it isn’t so simple, but I could draft a letter to the council suggesting it anyway…
– Today Rosie is having a meeting and drawing away in Glasgow, Scotland –
