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Sunday 27 January 2013

Winter Isn't Winter Without Snow


The heavy snowfall from Friday night has now almost gone as the temperature suddenly shoots up. The park is now just a mass of puddles and mud. Not pleasant but the dogs love it.

In the afternoon we go to visit an old work friend of L’s who has unfortunately been unwell. Over there at Calverton they seem to be holding onto the snow better than we are but even that will be gone soon.

I like the snow, winter isn't winter without snow. There is nothing worse than dark, wet, winter days. Snow makes everything much pretty and more exciting.

We find out why we couldn’t get tickets for ‘Chasing Ice’ yesterday. It’s being screen in the Lounge at Broadway which only holds 12. So it’s certainly going to be cosy. We didn’t actually know they had a ‘Lounge’ and have to be told where it is. It’s all comfy settees and the like, so at least if the film isn’t any good, nodding off will be a real pleasure.

‘Chasing Ice’ is a documentary about a chap called James Balog and his Extreme Ice Survey team who go out to photograph the melting glaciers by using automatic cameras, set to take shots over a long period of time. The resulting time lapse scenes are as equally impressive as they are shocking, showing the rapid retreat of the glaciers.

The film does preach a bit about climate change and Balog has an obsession to document it. That as well as a passion for photography and a dodgy knee. He has my sympathy there. It’s a knee on which he’s had several operations. He ignores his physio too and we see him out on the ice on his crutches at one point. This along with the problems they had setting up the cameras in the harsh environments of Greenland, Alaska and Canada, make the film more interesting for me.

I suppose on the climate change front the film never really gets to grips with the issue, other than providing irrefutable photographic evidence that it exists but doesn’t prove that it is man-made. While, if it is, they don’t suggest anything to us that we can do about it. Cracking photography though.
 (Sunday 27th January)

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