The unbearable poignancy of snow.

I love snow. I like the glitter and the crispness and the way it paints everything epic so hills become mountains and mountains boost you instantly into a parallel universe of comprehensive 'too loveliness' - 'too lovely' being a state of quite incomprehensible, well, loveliness really.

And underneath it all, like a quietly chugging base-line, is the poignancy of snow's transience, the knowledge that it's ephemeral, that in a day or a week or maybe, if you're very, very, lucky, a month, it will give way to that sad, dirty, wet greyness.

 Snow today - grey, miserable slush tomorrow.

And unlike the Alps, where that means spring and brightness and warmth, in our benighted British climate, it's just an express ticket to sludgy, damp miserableness.

And that's kind of sad.

But it's also life. Like doomed relationships. And the best novels. And parties. And holidays. And weekends away. And none of them would be quite as good as they are, if things were any other other way.

But it doesn't stop it being sad. But in a way, it makes it even more lovely.