It snowed, it snowed!

After experiencing Europe’s warmest winter in record, I’m now experiencing an extremely cold Australia. The Chair of the Romsey Church Council compared today to a winter in the 1950s. It snowed! It really snowed here.

This morning I finally made it to the Romsey Walking Group, which meets every Tuesday morning and is celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year. I’ve been trying to walk with it ever since I moved to Romsey, but there’s always been something else happening. I couldn’t have chosen a better day to begin. We walked along Black Range Road, off the road to Woodend. As we began the snow began to fall; by the time we finished there was snow on the ground, and on our cars, and all over my coat. I stupidly wasn’t wearing my Swiss coat and boots because they seemed excessive in Australia – I’ll know better next time.

I think I would be less excited about all this snow if I hadn’r recieved a wonderful gift from two members of the Romsey congregation last week: a load of wood. My pot-belly-stove-thing is running hot, heating my kitchen and study. The only trouble is that a real fire is so mesmerising – I keep standing in front of it and staring into the flames. 

On another note altogether: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is released this Saturday. I predict that Snape will redeem himself by a noble death. I also predict that Dumbledore will return in some form or another, either resurrected like Aslan, or “sent back” like Gandalf, or as a benign presence like Obi-Wan Kenobi. When I mentioned to my Professor of New Testament (whom I met in the queue to collect Book Six at Readings) that I couldn’t believe that Dumbledore was gone forever because there were resurrection precedents like these, she said “And Jesus.” Cannot believe I forgot the paradigmatic resurrection, the one that I believe in. And when talking to Rev. Prof. Dorothy Lee, too. 

These photos were taken by Jay Brooks of the Romsey congregation. Check out Australian snow!