It snowed for the first time of the season (Autumn technically, but the wisdom of the ancients did not account for the weather of the northern Barbarians).

The first snow is somewhat romantic; the possibilities of being snowed in with a bottle of wine and a cleverly used roll of duct tape, or looking at all the meat in your freezer and thinking of a rugby team on the top of the Andie's.

Other times it is like a first grey hair, or getting glasses: you can see the inevitability of growing old, precious youth falling away with each flake; only to be shoveled and cursed at, or turning yellow as someone writes their name in it.

But this was something quite different. Ben, the dog I have with (e:Jim), had his first snow with us (he is only eleven months, so probably his first time playing in it ever). He is a dog of a Canadian breed, so he likes the snow, and presumably Bacon. Watching him frolick around in it with the sort of vigor one normally sees in a less slothfull dog was a treat. Juxtaposed with the maudlin, melancholy earlier description of the coming of winter you would think I would have come to some life-changing conclusion about the cycles of life and the wonder of child-like discover. Instead, all I have learned is that it is easier to see dog poop in the snow.