Winter Into Spring

Winter is gone and now spring jumps forth. The icy nights are forgotten as M. Ismail, one of NewsFlashMedia’s team members looks forward to the fresh blooms in spring. Arriving in the UK in late October this year and vacationing in France, she captures here the icy nights and the beauty of a French valley covered in snow.

SPRING is here, well one day ago that is and there has been a lot of sunshine of late, which makes me an extremely happy person. It still gets a bit chilly but that’s okay as I do a lot of walking. I have not seen a lot of flowers in bloom as yet but they are coming and when they do it will be such a pretty sight.

British Summer Time (BST) begins on March 25 and the clocks will go forward by an hour. If you are not familiar with the four seasons you’d be surprised to find that even when winter is over there’s every possibility of chilly winds and even snow. It happened in 2006 and it was predicted to happen this year as well. We’ll see but I doubt it, looking at the weather now.

There was snow in London but only a wee bit for some.

Before flying to UK I had kept tab of the weather and it did come to one point where some forecasts stated there would be heavy snow in October and that England will suffer a severe winter. There was none except for a bit of snow in February and even that did not last very long. Just a month or so before I left Malaysia, there was also news that it was going to be quite a warm winter. And after being here I would think so as I survived the three cold months, which I wouldn’t normally, which means it’s warmer than usual.

Isn't it beautiful to wake up to this?

After about three months in London I went to France to visit a friend who’s lived in Malaysia for a while and is now back in her home country with her family. They live in Bonrepos Riquet, in the south of France. According to the French, this is the warmer part of France and guess what? We had MASSIVE snow over several days that the road leading out from the valley to the town center was almost impenetrable.

It was such a breathtaking moment when I woke up one morning to find everything covered in white. The floors of the balcony and its banisters were all thick in snow, the trees, the garden and the entire surrounding valley. And the snow kept falling, so beautiful, exactly like a picture from a Christmas card.

That's me, all wasted halfway climbing the road up to the house and that's FreePui, the family dog (I think that's how they spell her name) making sure I'm ok.

On one of the days when the snow was down my friend and I had drove out to a zhumba class. It was a Saturday morning. The snow was heavy and we took a chance and drove the car down the valley and into the town center. By the time we drove home less than two hours later the car wouldn’t go up the hill where our house is. So we left the car at a neighbour’s garden and I think I will spare the words next because you can safely assumed what happened  looking at the photo I’ve posted here.

The snow was too beautiful to complain about. I just soaked everything in.