The snow has, finally, almost gone & after more than a month villagers can get about freely without benefit of four wheel drive or tractor.
It was when she spoke about ‘going down’ to Leek or Buxton that it came home. For us Buxton, at 1000 feet above sea level, is really ‘up there’, up where they have ‘two overcoat weather’ as the old people used to say. To get to Flash you have to climb half as high again. Two overcoats plus the duvet I should think.
Mind you, if the interview was recorded earlier things might have gone backwards a bit. Yesterday was very cold but mostly sunny. I got to town just after what must have been a really sharp shower of rain – no sign of it on the road in – but the black clouds were moving well away to the east. In other words the wind had veered right round from the day before when it was coming from the Steppes to the east.
So it came as a shock when we got about half way home last night to see snow lying thick on the pavements.
Even odder when we got to the village. Some pavements seemed completely clear, others covered with snow. Hard to tell about the road which has anyway developed a whitish grayish bloom on the surface from all the salt.
Turned out, in part, to be a trick of the light. I walked down the hill over a very thin scattering of crunchy crackly stuff. Not exactly snowflakes – rather very coarse salt or micro hail stones. Some of it was still lying this lunchtime, maintaining its grainy shape, in sheltered patches & in gutters.
We have had a real lesson in all the different kinds of snow this winter. We’ll be developing a whole new set of words for them soon. That will spare the embarrassment of those trying to explain what is wrong about the kind that brought their trains to a halt.
Links
Flash, Staffordshire. The highest village in the Peak District
Flash Bar Stores and Coffee Shop Homepage
Flash Bar Stores and Coffee Shop Homepage
