Sunrise at the Gate
Nobody was more surprised than myself when I jumped out of bed before sunrise on New Year's Day. I'd stayed up until the small hours watching Richard E Grant having a splendid time playing the utterly dissolute Withnail alongside Paul McGann's ever timid "I," and gone to bed very late indeed. Generally this is a recipe for an especially slothful start to the following day, with an over reliance on the coffee reserves and little other meaningful sign of life before noon. But for once things were different. Improbably it had snowed in the evening, and even more surprisingly it had settled. With the weather forecast promising a cold clear night it seemed likely that the freshly laid white carpet on the badger eaten patch of scrub that passes for the front lawn would still be there in the morning, although for how long beyond that was uncertain. This was most unusual in our mild wet corner of the country so it couldn't really be missed. I set the alarm despite having no confidence whatsoever in my ability to crawl out of bed less than six hours after getting into it.
Early in the morning I wandered around the garden with a quiet smile. There's something about snow that takes me back to childhood. In the forty-five years since my parents moved us down to Cornwall I could count the number of times we've had more than a brief coating of the stuff on the fingers of one hand and still have a digit or two to spare. There was 1979 when Dad made sledges out of old bits of wood and fitted plastic curtain rails under the runners, which made them faster than anyone else's on the near vertical Trelawney Road in Falmouth. How none of us got killed I can't really say. Then there was 1987 when my return to University after Christmas was delayed by the big freeze and I watched "Gregory's Girl" for twenty consecutive nights on the VHS player. Since then we've had the odd afternoon when panic has broken loose at work as every car in the universe attempts to leave Truro at exactly the same moment, but there is generally a period of around ten years between each of these momentous events. Only rarely has the snow still been on the ground the following day. The message from Cornwall is, if you want to see snow in winter, this isn't going to be the likeliest place to find it.
I quickly decided the garden wasn't bringing any inspiration at all and prepared to go to the same place as I did when the Beast from the East visited three years ago. The woods across the road beckoned. By now the clock was against me and as I struggled through thick mud towards a spot I'd taken a shot from before, the sky filled with soft pink light. I checked my watch yet again; the moment of sunrise was very close. My right eye complained at me, streaming in the cold morning air. It wasn't used to being open or outdoors at such a disagreeable hour after ten days away from the office, and stonily refused to fully open and engage with the rest of me. Weeping from one eye and slipping around on the sodden track I pushed on urgently in a race against the sunrise, eventually arriving at this spot where a gate onto an open field waited appealingly under a soft white dust that didn't seem likely to last long. Mentally I recorded the scene before me, but I didn't stop. The composition I wanted was a few yards further along the path. When I got there it took seconds to reject it.
Five minutes later I was back here, just in time to get the shot before the sun rose and blew the highlights and what was left of the pastel pinks clean out of the sky. A minute or two later and I'd have missed it completely. Later on I returned for a leisurely stroll. The snow had almost completely gone, leaving only traces of the beautiful morning landscape that I'm so glad I didn't miss.
Several people, my own dear mother included, have said the result of this New Year's Day outing should be on a Christmas card. The trouble is I still can't decide whether that's a compliment or a thickly veiled insult. But I'm thinking of getting some Christmas cards printed at the end of this year.
Sunrise at the Gate
Nobody was more surprised than myself when I jumped out of bed before sunrise on New Year's Day. I'd stayed up until the small hours watching Richard E Grant having a splendid time playing the utterly dissolute Withnail alongside Paul McGann's ever timid "I," and gone to bed very late indeed. Generally this is a recipe for an especially slothful start to the following day, with an over reliance on the coffee reserves and little other meaningful sign of life before noon. But for once things were different. Improbably it had snowed in the evening, and even more surprisingly it had settled. With the weather forecast promising a cold clear night it seemed likely that the freshly laid white carpet on the badger eaten patch of scrub that passes for the front lawn would still be there in the morning, although for how long beyond that was uncertain. This was most unusual in our mild wet corner of the country so it couldn't really be missed. I set the alarm despite having no confidence whatsoever in my ability to crawl out of bed less than six hours after getting into it.
Early in the morning I wandered around the garden with a quiet smile. There's something about snow that takes me back to childhood. In the forty-five years since my parents moved us down to Cornwall I could count the number of times we've had more than a brief coating of the stuff on the fingers of one hand and still have a digit or two to spare. There was 1979 when Dad made sledges out of old bits of wood and fitted plastic curtain rails under the runners, which made them faster than anyone else's on the near vertical Trelawney Road in Falmouth. How none of us got killed I can't really say. Then there was 1987 when my return to University after Christmas was delayed by the big freeze and I watched "Gregory's Girl" for twenty consecutive nights on the VHS player. Since then we've had the odd afternoon when panic has broken loose at work as every car in the universe attempts to leave Truro at exactly the same moment, but there is generally a period of around ten years between each of these momentous events. Only rarely has the snow still been on the ground the following day. The message from Cornwall is, if you want to see snow in winter, this isn't going to be the likeliest place to find it.
I quickly decided the garden wasn't bringing any inspiration at all and prepared to go to the same place as I did when the Beast from the East visited three years ago. The woods across the road beckoned. By now the clock was against me and as I struggled through thick mud towards a spot I'd taken a shot from before, the sky filled with soft pink light. I checked my watch yet again; the moment of sunrise was very close. My right eye complained at me, streaming in the cold morning air. It wasn't used to being open or outdoors at such a disagreeable hour after ten days away from the office, and stonily refused to fully open and engage with the rest of me. Weeping from one eye and slipping around on the sodden track I pushed on urgently in a race against the sunrise, eventually arriving at this spot where a gate onto an open field waited appealingly under a soft white dust that didn't seem likely to last long. Mentally I recorded the scene before me, but I didn't stop. The composition I wanted was a few yards further along the path. When I got there it took seconds to reject it.
Five minutes later I was back here, just in time to get the shot before the sun rose and blew the highlights and what was left of the pastel pinks clean out of the sky. A minute or two later and I'd have missed it completely. Later on I returned for a leisurely stroll. The snow had almost completely gone, leaving only traces of the beautiful morning landscape that I'm so glad I didn't miss.
Several people, my own dear mother included, have said the result of this New Year's Day outing should be on a Christmas card. The trouble is I still can't decide whether that's a compliment or a thickly veiled insult. But I'm thinking of getting some Christmas cards printed at the end of this year.