January is the time to hunker down and enjoy those long, dark nights deep in the duvet. It’s been a week of wet, wet, white weather;  winter at its worst.
In the harshness of Hangleton, in the brutality of Bevendean,  the frozen white water danced down and down   ................s n o w,      s n o w,          quick quick,              s n o w ............... the cool children cried.
With the crispy crunch of boots on hard snow, overtaking cars that were slithering and sliding brakelessly into each other, people went about their everyday lives in anything but an everyday way.
The earth was hard as iron, the soil was soulless, seemingly lifeless, asleep in a frozen torpor.   The homeless, like ravenous foxes, sought shelter where they could, in refuges for the homeless or, for the determinedly independent, down by the warmer arches on the shore.

Down in the valleys of Brighton and in the city centre Lottie, like the graveyards, was covered with snow. Elsewhere it was yet another grey, cold week, where people felt weak, and grey with colds.  Snow, what snow? The rain came and went and came again, as snow fell un-noticed on the hills.  The heart of the City felt closer to Paris than the wilds of Woodingdean, it was a tale of two cities.


February is coming, it’s the time to throw back the duvet and emerge from the post-Christmas chrysalis. It’s time to think about seed sowing for the warmer window boxes of Brunswick and breezy, hill top soils of Whitehawk in March and April. What better way to emerge than to come to Seedy Sunday in the Corn Exchange on the first Sunday in February (3rd) (See 2012 Blog- A  Snowy Seedy Sunday. This great community event, run entirely by volunteers, has moved to the heart of Brighton and the heart of 19th century seed exchanges.


I wonder how many of the 2000 or so people will migrate instinctively from their chrysalis to Hove? How long will it take before they wake up to the tale of two cities and a new location in Brighton?
 

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