White-out!

After a lifetime spent in the tropics, snow is a magical thing! My kids were delirious with excitement even before we landed in the UK. All the Hollywood films painted this picture of a white wonderland where kids could gambol around with carefree abandon. Ever the Grinch, I was quick to tell them about the horrors of slush, below zero degree temperatures and soaking clothes. But the wonder of being a child means such grown-up worries never even figure in their imagination.....and I'm so grateful for that innocence!

View from my window

We moved into our apartment that overlooked a small woody area with a babbling brook running along the fence.....only in London will the words 'babbling brook' will fit the scene! This was the perfect suburban life with all the conveniences and still a touch of nature outside the window. I always thought of London as this busy city with soot darkening the buildings and sombre people dressed in black rushing about. (Yes what can I say.....I was an avid Dickenson reader as a child). So while black is the color of the fashionable.....London has some of the most quirkiest people, buildings and an amazing sense of history. So looking forward to the journeys to come :)




Coming back to the white stuff......the enthusiasm was catching! The kids kept checking the awesome Yahoo! weather app 5-8 times a day to find out when snow was predicted.  After a week of constant checking, we woke up one morning to a carpet of snow in the backyard. Soft snow that gently covered the portico in a fluffy white fleece. Beautiful to look and terribly cold to touch. The kids immediately put on their warm jackets and went out to welcome the first snow of the year!

I must say snow is magical (when you're warm and cosy indoors of course!!). The whole world outside appears to be diffused.....all the rough edges smoothened out, the ugliness of bare winter shrouded in this blanket of white. To me the magic lies in the silence.....it's as if someone hit the MUTE button! A forgotten line of poetry pops into my head 'Quietly falls the winter snow' and makes so much sense now.