Well, I can’t help it, I just love seeing all this snow. I know it’s terrible for the old folks, trying to keep warm, and it’s a nuisance for people trying to get to work but for me, it’s just beautiful. No, it’s true, it doesn’t take me long to get to work, I have a studio at the bottom of the garden…
It gets cold out there, alright. But I’m walking back and forth all day and that helps, and then I wear layers… seven layers last night, that seemed to do the job. Now, I’ve never been in a garret, so I don’t know if it’s colder there than in my studio, I’d say it is. I don’t know why anybody would think that it was romantic, starving in a garret. I’m very lucky. There are so many who are worse off than me. Actually for me, it’s not the cold that’s the worse thing. It’s the uncertainty, not knowing if what I’m at is worthwhile. That can be disheartening. But then I see the snow glistening on the branches…
Scéalta Ealaíne 
You are working! In the snow! I wish I could be so determined and motivated. I wouldn’t worry about anything else but keeping warm. And about painting and stuff. I’m sure, it’s going to be great.
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Thanks Liubov, well I have a show coming up in The Paul Kane Gallery in February. Nothing like a looming deadline to focus the mind ! Also, the studio is good, no draughts !
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Hi Eoin.
I really like your post, and thanks for sharing your experiences with us.
I have two questions for you:-
1. What is the white thing near the top in your picture, it looks like a white chilli pepper?
2. I like the title ‘look at the Trees they cried’ What is that from?
thanks, Dorothea
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Hi Dorothea, that ‘white thing’ is a clothes line! The snow built up on it until it was about 4 inches thick. Then a gentle wind blew and it started to fall off – the thin bit is where the snow has fallen off. As for the title, that’s from a poem I half – remembered from school. It was by Robert Bridges and was called “London Snow”. Here it is:
London Snow
When men were all asleep the snow came flying,
In large white flakes falling on the city brown,
Stealthily and perpetually settling and loosely lying,
Hushing the latest traffic of the drowsy town;
Deadening, muffling, stifling its murmurs failing;
Lazily and incessantly floating down and down:
Silently sifting and veiling road, roof and railing;
Hiding difference, making unevenness even,
Into angles and crevices softly drifting and sailing.
All night it fell, and when full inches seven
It lay in the depth of its uncompacted lightness,
The clouds blew off from a high and frosty heaven;
And all woke earlier for the unaccustomed brightness
Of the winter dawning, the strange unheavenly glare:
The eye marvelled—marvelled at the dazzling whiteness;
The ear hearkened to the stillness of the solemn air;
No sound of wheel rumbling nor of foot falling,
And the busy morning cries came thin and spare.
Then boys I heard, as they went to school, calling,
They gathered up the crystal manna to freeze
Their tongues with tasting, their hands with snowballing;
Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees;
Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder,
‘O look at the trees!’ they cried, ‘O look at the trees!’
With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder,
Following along the white deserted way,
A country company long dispersed asunder:
When now already the sun, in pale display
Standing by Paul’s high dome, spread forth below
His sparkling beams, and awoke the stir of the day.
For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow;
And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,
Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:
But even for them awhile no cares encumber
Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,
The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber
At the sight of the beauty that greets them,
for the charm they have broken.
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“hiding difference, making unevenness even” – I like that!!
t.
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Thanks Trish, it’s wonderfully written, isn’t it…
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