About Snowballs They Were Never Wrong, The Old Masters

  Last Sunday, I was wondering, while exploring South London at 2 in the morning, how I'd manage when we finally stopped having to be alone. It turns out, snow helps.

 

  I'd made the decision to head out and see what the heath looked like quite late this afternoon. There aren't many decisions one can make in a lockdown, so it's a nice feeling when you find you've made a good one.

 

 What a gift.

 

 There were kids on sleds travelling ten feet or so at the top of Parliament Hill, a woman spinning three hula hoops, and snowball fights and many dogs, but I appear to have been more comfortable photographing all this from a distance. 

 

 And it's odd how much it looks like paintings that are five-hundred years old. How well Breughel caught this. How little he left for any artist to add.

 

 The entertainment's pretty much the same, I suppose, and the ice on the path just as perilous. Once the snow falls, we're as unavoidably present in our surroundings as we were half a millenium ago. We're them. Analogous.

 

 That's probably why Syd Mead never drew a snowscape, as far as I know. It's hard to make snow look futuristic.

  There are no hula hoops in Brueghel though, are there? Or snowmen, now I think of it. I wonder when they became a thing – I'll look it up. 

 

 Oh. Much earlier than I expected! Okay, maybe there are snowmen in Brueghel.

 

 Heading back, I came across a whole valley of snowpeople. Some fallen. Some ten feet tall.

 I asked this guy permission to take a photograph of his, before I knew I'd see so many over the hill. He was approachable.

 And I think his friend might have instintictively said "Happy Birthday" as I walked off, by mistake, there being no name for what today was. 

 

 Just an understanding it should be celebrated.