Jack Frost

Frost dusted the ground this morning as if some mad pudding maker had been let free with some wholesale caster sugar. It glittered in the crisp sunlight, fogged slightly by suburban commuters warming their cars, the wisps of condensation from frozen tail-pipes pointing to busy people scraping windscreens and stamping feet. I would soon be joining them. I held my hot coffee while looking through the condensation of my window, and thought about work. I immediately needed to pee. Pissed off with work, see.

During lunch, parked up at a local pond and walked around the frozen oasis of natural life in this part of the over-built world. No natural life was to be seen, but nature had been busy draping the foliage and freezing moisture to make the walk worthwhile. The iTouch with its crappy little camera captured the above shots as small notes to my walk. I particularly like the ice-leaf, which isn't a real leaf at all, but a puddle of frozen water in amongst the leaves. No great camouflage but remarkable leaf-like I thought. The blue of the water made a delightful contrast to the tree lined shore bathed in the sharp winter sun, the reflections  spreading across the ice in an impressionistic wave of shattered colour. 


The camera hadn't a chance of capturing the spectacle. A painter might. I could have been in the frozen wastelands of Northern Canada, and I was, for a while, with just a little imagination.