Snow, Sun And Literati

Well I'm back, at my desk and wondering it the week was a dream, a good one.

Snow and ice are everywhere and London has been ground to a virtual standstill by the rather extreme conditions. Coming in to land at Heathrow was different to normal. For a start we had to circly London for about forty five minutes while the runway was being cleared. Then, once we landed, there was a long wait for just about everything.

Baggage took a long time to hit the chute, supposedly because of the weather conditions. I think that was a nice and easy excuse and that "due to the weather conditions" probably meant that the baggage handlers were having snowball fights. I don't blame them either.

The wait for the bus to take me to my car was another long one, then my drive home was long, though pleasantly different. I passed kids and parents enjoying the snow everywhere and it made me even more sad to have left the motherland. It wasn't a Wednesday evening or an alternate Friday so I wasn't going to be with my kids. Next time I hope the snow falls on one of "my" days.

Snow makes ugly things beautiful and it makes beautiful things stunning. As I drove home, quite inundated with jetlag and aircraft breath, it was like driving through a painting, one with lots of white snow and cars of course. At one point, on Richmond Hill which gives one of the best views in London, I was close to stopping the car and taking some photographs. I only wore a light jumper and would have had to rummage around in the boot and suitcase to get my camera out. The people in my head voted against the idea, they were right.

Now, after waking at god knows what early time in the morning because my body clock is bollocksed, I sit and pine like a dog locked in a room. My sarong smelled of Lanka but the electric blanket didn't.

There are many stories to tell and I'm busily doing mindmaps of the week. My previous method of writing longhand journal entries detailing everything that I experienced has been shunted out of the way by mindmaps. They seem easier to help me recall random happenings, without having to think too much about the logical order in which they occurred. Oh yes, I love a good mindmap, though I definitely prefer string hoppers, white ones.

The feelings of being Sri Lankan are still there, the feelings of being British are there too. Last night I was busy learning new songs for tonight's band practice. There was Common People by Pulp and Kula Shaker's grooving version of Hush. On Sunday I was watching Aruna Siriwardene playing the drums at CR + FC. He was wearing a sarong and slippers and he played a solo that compelled me to walk over to the side of the drum kit and watch in awe.

Contrasts.

Heat and sun, cold and snow.