Almost Snow

This morning I was walking down to Jongno-gil in downtown Seoul to buy a ham, cheese and egg toasted sandwich thinking "Gees, it's cold!" when all of a sudden, it started to snow! Well, it was more like miniature specks of ice but how fitting, on the first day of winter, for the rain to turn to ice! Although it only lasted about ten minutes I wanted to go and visit the old man with white hair in the grocery store (who has been telling me every night this week - "Tonight, snow!") and give him a big hug. I then got a text message from a friend who was at that moment (I think) on a train heading to Seoul and she said: "It's snowing!" Yippee! I haven't really done the whole snow thing in Oz, apart from one trip to Mt Buller, a family holiday to Talbingo and Thredbo and a hazily-recalled winter in the NSW town of Orange (I was four, and almost completely deaf - I think this has affected my memory somewhat). Today, as the little balls of ice skittled down, I was reminded of a beautiful poem by one of Australia's unsung genius-poets, Brett Dionysius, entitled On Not Having Encountered Snow, Age 35. Ahh, snow ... did I mention that it almost snowed today?

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