A few weeks ago Richie M wrote a blog entry, quite an lovely and eloquent one for a self styled ‘man of few written words’, about the weather in the US of A.

This fine work inspired me to create a videographonic companion piece; as such I have produced a short film called ‘Snow, Shovel and Sniff, a Chicago Winter Memoir’. This was filmed last week after a night of snow. Enjoy.

Indeed the weather has been very odd recently. Last week the temperatures got down as low as -30C / -22F. This was astonishingly cold. And then over the last couple of days it was been 15C / 60F with heavy rain. This is puzzlingly warm for this time of year.

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This brings me neatly to a letter from Brett King, one of our readers in Christchurch. Brett is a 20-something ad man with King Cobra fixations and a penchant for salted herring. He writes,

Dear Sir

My name is Brett King.

Did you have a white Christmas?

Yours truly,

Brett King

Well yes we did Brett. It snowed several more times which resulted in festively-fabulous snowy Christmas. The bar humbug rain has since it all melted away.  Thanks for your letter.

Merry Christmas

Tatts

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PS. Speaking of humbugs and in the well established tradition of Entercation did you know that Charles Dickens ‘invented’ the modern Christmas?

When the Christmas Carol was written the Industrial Revolution was leaving little time for people to celebrate Christmas. Dickens loved Christmas; he had been raised on the fun and jolliness of a rural Christmas and its subsequent slaughtering of animals for stuffing and feasting, something the new urban life had no time for.

The Christmas Carol was so popular that it rekindled the spirit of Christmas in England and the USA. He is also said to invented the term ‘Merry Christmas’.

Tatts

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