Ice Queen.
Every year Somerset House erects an ice rink in the courtyard and invites people to skate their way through winter. I slink around London like an émigré, watching people, slipping into the boltholes I've learned about over the years, and one of these is the Courthauld Gallery, situated in one of the wings of Somerset House. The Courthauld has shown me Degas' ballerinas, Sickert's prostitutes and a pen portrait by Van Gogh that I like to regularly re-visit in the main collection. It is one of London's dinkiest old galleries with a collection that ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, and, most unique of all, a curator who makes use of this, his whole palette.
I stepped out of the Courthauld one Christmas and lurked beneath the mezzanine of the courtyard. The cold was vicious, armed with a wind of knives, and I found a good column to slouch in the lee of. As I often do, I rolled the day in my mind like a boiled sweet, probed my teeth for pockets of sugar and let the flavours evoke older flavours. In the mean time I watched the rink. I could hear people laughing, the busy sounds of socialising. A woman rose her voice in a bray, briefly breaching the fray, then sank back down again. The massive engines that restored the ice roared. Yet piercing this through was the sound of skating. Who would think that a whisker of steel could make such a noise?
The snow in London was so thick this morning that it reached the knee joint. I'm miles away in Plymouth where the snow looks more like an inconvenient case of dandruff, but I can imagine it. I can imagine the load of so much snow turning the city into a fresh bride. Perhaps one blushing with something more than matrimony, but absolutely beautiful. For a short time, an exceedingly short time, the city is pure light and her black spires are stark against the white. She is frozen in time for as long as it takes to make your first step. Germs and little matchstick girls die beneath the blanket of cold saving the rest of us a great deal of bother. Who would think that something as small and fragile as a snowflake could make such a difference?
I stepped out of the Courthauld one Christmas and lurked beneath the mezzanine of the courtyard. The cold was vicious, armed with a wind of knives, and I found a good column to slouch in the lee of. As I often do, I rolled the day in my mind like a boiled sweet, probed my teeth for pockets of sugar and let the flavours evoke older flavours. In the mean time I watched the rink. I could hear people laughing, the busy sounds of socialising. A woman rose her voice in a bray, briefly breaching the fray, then sank back down again. The massive engines that restored the ice roared. Yet piercing this through was the sound of skating. Who would think that a whisker of steel could make such a noise?
The snow in London was so thick this morning that it reached the knee joint. I'm miles away in Plymouth where the snow looks more like an inconvenient case of dandruff, but I can imagine it. I can imagine the load of so much snow turning the city into a fresh bride. Perhaps one blushing with something more than matrimony, but absolutely beautiful. For a short time, an exceedingly short time, the city is pure light and her black spires are stark against the white. She is frozen in time for as long as it takes to make your first step. Germs and little matchstick girls die beneath the blanket of cold saving the rest of us a great deal of bother. Who would think that something as small and fragile as a snowflake could make such a difference?