The blood of his friends was gone beneath snow

[sovay]

In recent years, I feel we have been promised many blizzards, snowpocalypses, and Fimbulvetrs that never quite made the grade: blew out to sea, slumped off into freezing rain, deposited an entirely normal amount of snow for a New England winter storm and moved on with their lives. Especially as the forecasts and warnings threw around (admittedly delightful) meteorological buzzwords like "bombogenesis," I was prepared for snow, but not lots of it.

It was snowing last night as we watched Here We Go Again (1942). It was snowing last night as we watched Zazie dans le métro (1960). It was snowing last night as we went to bed and I read Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair (1948). Sometimes it was snowing vertically. It looked very impressive, sleeting sideways by in the sodium streetlight. It was snowing when we woke up.

This isn't the second coming of the Blizzard of '78, but there's a respectable two feet of snow in the drifts down there and I foresee lots of shoveling in my future. I can live with that.

Comments

[sovay]

I've read no Tey beyond "The Daughter of Time", though there was an eighties dramatisation of "Brat Farrar" I just about remember.

I recommend To Love and Be Wise, which has unexpected (and joyously unpunished) genderqueerness. I have relatively comfortable memories of A Shilling for Candles and The Singing Sands—I think it's The Man in the Queue with the racism that bit me, so I avoid that one. There's an extremely spoilery discussion of The Franchise Affair taking place between me and desperance upthread.

(It's very much of its time; I wouldn't recommend it. The blowdried hair trumps the suspense.)

Oh, dear.