tombe la neige

'Get up! It's all white outside!'

I lifted my head from the pillow, eyes screwed up against the light, and made a sort of 'whuh?' noise.

'It's been snowing! It almost looks like Poland out there' Marek continued, his morning cheer cutting through the fog in my sleep filled mind.

I lay my head down again, and pulled the covers around me. This sounded suspiciously like one of Marek's little jokes and it was going to take more than that to make me leave my warm bed, especially so early. Marek's work starts an hour before mine, which means I generally wake up an hour before I need to. This hurts even more after two weeks of blissful holiday.

I pulled my dressing gown around me and yawned my way into the kitchen. Glancing out the window I saw that Marek had, in fact, not been joking. The gardens were covered in a thick satisfying layer of powdery white, and everything looked spectacularly clean and beautiful.

I poured tea into my mug and brought it into the bathroom where Marek was brushing his teeth.
'Looks nice huh?' His eyes glistened and I thought about Poland's guaranteed weeks of snow each year. I thought he'd miss it, but clearly Belgium is making an effort this time to do justice to the word winter.

On the walk to work my steps crunched and left indented prints. The sounds around me were muffled by the snow that continued to fall softly, and the hood I had pulled down low. I took a deep breath of icy air and decided that this felt like a new year, finally.

It was as if the snow had wiped the slate clean, and cleared the way for 2009 to really begin. A year that promises to be pretty significant in plenty of ways, but then isn't each year? I'm ready.