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Saturday January 22, 2005

Waiting for snow

We can't go much longer without a snow encounter, I fear. The landscape is quiet, fast frozen except for shallow puddles and inclined surfaces where the sun is able to do its work quickly enough before the sky clouds over once more.

The forecasters seem gleeful, almost, in their predictions, casting snow fall across the Kingdom, from West to North and, shortly, from North to East. For the first time Lincolnshire was mentioned today, targetted for tomorrow.

Teetering along in unsuitable shoes over roads and paths covered with an almost invisible sheet of black ice, I look out over the fields, seeing picture after picture suitable for quiet English watercolour treatment. It's too cold to sit sketching, though, so I use the zoom lens on the Fuji camera to isolate the scenes that catch my eye. With work, the results could be brought up to good pictorial standards but that's not what I'm after. I want to fasten the lines and the distances in my album; the masses, tones and balances I provide from my mind, seeing them with a different eye than the camera can provide.

Increasingly, except when I can lodge myself safe and out of the wind, I need to use the camera in place of the sketchbook. Carrying a portable stool along with my stick and a bag is just too cumbersome. I'm grateful that I'm blessed with a good visual memory.

Waiting for snow