On Wednesday, they brought out The Big Guns. Not to be outdone by some piddling snow and a piddling little slope, they came armed with a mini digger. Producing some rope, they tied the digging arm to their trailer, and then backed up the hill, towing the trailer. They repeated the exercise in exactly the same configuration to go back down the hill. Luckily the trailer was now empty, and the snow thick - otherwise the large trailer would have crushed the slow moving teeny digger.
Aside from the Van Men Saga, there have been a selection of people with Silly 1.3 litre cars thinking that they're actually driving landrovers, and getting stuck. Mostly these are Young Poseur Males, who then gesticulate a lot at each other. Or they ruin their engines by sitting and revving them (while driving us crazy), despite getting nowhere.
The silliest thing I've seen so far was a gentleman dressed in a long tweed overcoat (unbuttoned), and very expensive looking tailored suit. He was wearing soft brown leather shoes, long and pointy (fashionable no doubt, though impractical), which had leather soles. Leather soles! When the pavements are wet and slushy! Good grief, they don't even give decent grip in those situations. (Though suede soles on dance shoes are amazing!)
Anyway. Tuesday night we got about 30cm overnight in the city centre. Here are some pictures.
Looking back the way I came.
This photo and the one below are taken standing in the same place, looking in different directions. Snow in one direction, blue sky in the other (just at the right time for walking to work!)
Heading in this direction. The road hadn't been ploughed yet.
Needs to be dug out.
Side road. This is what it looks like when no snow has been shovelled at all. This is nothing though - twenty minutes from here on foot, they have nearly 2 feet of snow.
Morning sunlight, plus castle.
This turrety tenement is one I don't look at twice, normally, but but with a dusting of snow it becomes rather fairy-tale-esque.
Another side road - this one isn't a dead end though.
Approaching snow shower behind the Parliament and Holyrood Palace. Good thing I'll be in work by the time it reaches us!
Holyrood Road. This one's been treated for snow - this is the general condition of roads in the city centre.
Blizzard!
More blizzard!
Someone stole the outside.
Traffic Lights
Sunset: the clouds that were high enough to pick up the sun turned a lovely shade of pinkish.
Pretty.
I like the way the snow is sliding down this roof.
It's usually been cold overnight, then warmed up enough during the day to make things get a bit drippy, then it freezes again. This results in lots of nice looking icicles:
Drippy traffic lights.
Pretty drippy lights, at twilight.
Drippy lights with Calton Hill and a snowstorm in the background.
Looking up at the icicles on my kitchen window. The snow slipped down the roof, and they ended up pointing in the window.
From inside - they're pretty sizeable. The biggest one is about 40cm.
More icicles on my roof.
Arty shot, icicles on the bedroom window.
I caught a drip! I'm SO pleased with this one, it's just good luck, I didn't try and take a photo of the drip. It's so spherical!
Not dripping.
All the houses have icicles.
I'm pleased with this one - icicles lit by a streetlight.
This building has plenty of icicles.
Lots of the icicles seem to be curved, it makes the houses look like they've grown teeth.
My window again. This required a bit of contortion to get, since the sink is right in front of the window.
This is what happens when you use the flash and have the white balance set to cloudy. I rather like the effect though.
These are the icicles that are trying to come and join me. It's not a trick of perspective - they are actually touching the wood on the window.
From inside.
Now I am off to recline on my couch under a couple of blankets, and crochet. It's currently -8.5C in Edinburgh, and still dropping. We're supposed to have a low of -9 tonight, but I suspect we may reach double figures. Time to put the heating on...
