Wandering around my local park, where the snowmen are still standing after the weekend snowfall -- frozen statues, but also like children's drawings come alive -- and I was reminded how they can occasionally look as sinister and evocative as scarecrows, while others seem more innocent. The ice on the ground is stubbornly refusing to melt, up here in the wilds of north London; so the snowmen remain, for now. At night, in the quiet park, I wonder if they are watching each other; I can't imagine them flying, but whispering, perhaps...
14 comments:
Great images Justine - love Snowmen - got the Raymond Briggs images stuck in my head
I seem to remember my earliest memory as my parents building me a snowman - complete with carrot nose & scarf - while I was stuck inside with a bad cold, and later being carried outside in my pajamas (and coat) to view their masterpiece. I also feel I remember reading a children's book about a snowman come to life...perhaps it will find me again, someday.
I came back from Asia in mid-January and was greeted the next day with a snowstorm. Walking in a park, I came across a little girl busily stomping her poor little snowman - decorated with leaves, sticks, rocks, and her hat - into the muddy ground. Alas, poor snowman.
Inspirational collection, thank you.
You can keep all those beautifully honed perfect "ice sculptures" - these are worth a million of them. But then I have an innate primitive art bias I suppose...
Let's hope they don't suffer the same fate as these hapless ones in West London:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9069843/Snowmen-beheaded-for-damaging-the-grass.html
What sweet snowman- I also thought of Raymond Briggs and I have never ever made a snowman !!!!!! Something is lacking in my life which has been sans snow men !!!!!!
Glad to see the grumpy park keeper is alive and well! I thought with all the cuts they'd gone the way of the snowman in summer, melted away long ago.
They made me think of primitive art, as well, rather than Raymond Briggs; these look a little bit Wicker Man-ish at dusk (though more cheerful in daylight). I suppose snowmen are like sandcastles; children make them, and then time or tide knock them down. When my sons were little, we used to make elaborate sandcastles -- keeps and turrets and moats and bridges -- and every so often, one or the other of them would 'accidentally' fall over and crush them, much to my chagrin -- but perhaps that was part of the enjoyment for them? (The agony and the ecstasy...)
I love reading everyone's comments here; snowmen revealing your warm hearts...
More snow falling tonight. That's enough snow, ed...
By which I mean, enough snow already on the ground -- but more snow thoughts very welcome here!
Icy cold and still snowing at midnight here in EC2. Your post gave me the impulse to start reading Jo Nesbo's The Snowman. Nesbo's spooky snowmen have combined in my suggestible mind with your idea of your park snowmen whispering to each other in the dark and I find I'm getting eye-dartingly jumpy. Chills of both kinds tonight.
Good suggestion from Scrivener for eerie midnight reading! Thank you so much.
No snow here but I did read Nesbo's "The Snowman" a while back, and his others, and can understand Scrivener's "nerves".
I'm a great fan of Scandinavian crime writing and am just about to start a book by a new author for me, Mons Kallentoft, called "Midwinter Sacrifice". The blurb says, "The snow covered all tracks as the killer knew it would..."
This is the first in a series and the second one is due out in May. The detective is a 31 yr old single mother on the Linkoping police force. No shortage of snow there as I know from flying into Sweden in winter several times with the massive snow machines blowing snow off the wings as it landed.
I was home to Scotland for a flying visit last week. No snow in my part of Scotland but plenty at Gatwick Airport on my return home to Tunisia.... My little girl, who is only 8, was over the moon - so it was snowball fights and mini-snowmen building outside the departures terminal as we had time to kill! But we have unseasonably cold weather here in Tunisia too - snow in the desert - the first time I have seen such a thing in my 16 years living here! I picked up my Dan Lepard book when I was in Scotland Justine - thank you for the recommendation it is perfect bedtime reading in such weather :) Love to you all wherever you are. XXX
Snow in the desert; sounds very Romantic -- I wonder if Lord Byron was ever inspired by such a scene?
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