The Way of All Snow

I built a snowman on Tuesday as a metaphor for the transience of mortal existence, tracing man's inexorable fall from youth into dotage and ending with the final dissolution into nothingness, or, in the case of the snowman, a puddle.

Day 1

He's proving to be much tougher than I imagined. He started to lean to his left hand side quite early, which caused his left hand to drop off.

Day 2

He continued to lean as though hoping to retrieve the lost appendage, but then his left eyeball (a new potato) dropped out.

Day 3

Now, crippled and half blind, he continues to lean, whether out of determination or hopelessness I know not. I honestly don't know how his head hasn't fallen off yet.

Day 4

On Wednesday I went sledging with Abi, Gem and Jason, which turned out to be my biggest mistake of the week as it triggered a back injury from 2008. Now I'm hobbling about on a pair of walking sticks and swallowing the strongest painkillers money can buy. I don't mind the discomfort as I find that latent physical pain focuses the mind (probably a Catholic thing), but I hope I'm fixed by Tuesday because I have a flight to catch from Gatwick.

Last night, as if the back thing wasn't torture enough, moogdroog and I watched Ed Wood's masterpiece Glen or Glenda, less well known than Plan 9 from Outer Space, but just as incompetent and much more interesting. As a film it's a complete narrative mess. It's not just a car crash; it's like three or four car crashes crashing into each other continually for an hour.