Birmingham, here is your snow

Ooh, I do like snow! Christmas I can take or leave. Birthdays are nice but no big deal. But a forecast of heavy snow has me giggling like a kid and, for once, waking up really early so I can catch as much of it as possible. Maybe this is because I lived in Singapore until the age of eight and, reportedly, didn’t get on with the heat. Snow was what I wanted and you don’t get snow on the equator. You just get the same temperature 365/6 days a year.

Now Birmingham doesn’t get a huge amount of snow. Yes, we get snow, but for some reason not in any large quantities. Maybe it all runs out before it reaches the middle of the country or something. Last year we got a light dusting and that was it. The year before there was an inch, maybe. On Wednesday six inches were reported to be due. Even allowing for journalistic integrity and lopping 2/3 off that it’s still an impressive amount of snow. Then, the night before, the forecast showed heavy snow starting at 4.00am and continuing all day. I put out the alert on Flickr. Big snow coming. Set your alarms.

Thursday morning came and, despite only getting four hours sleep, I was up like shot at 7.00am. By eight I was in the city centre. Everyone on the commuter train was miserable. I’d forgotten what commuting was like. Poor fuckers, I thought. As luck would have it I immediately bumped into Matt who’d started out at seven, the hardcore bastard. We then proceeded to walk the city, shooting it like it was all new. Which it was.

From Digbeth through the Cathedral past Victoria Square under the library, along the canals, into Brindley Place, across Broad Street, towards the Peace Gardens and down to Smallbrook Queensway. With our cameras hidden under our coats we trudged through the storm, seeking out the shots and taking them. Come midday we were starting to lose it. Our feet were cold, our faces red and our eyes sore. But we’d gotten the goods and went our separate ways.

Matt’s put his photos here, though he hasn’t processed them all yet. Here’s my set (slideshow probably best) which contains 75 photos. 75! It’s like shooting fish in a barrel – everywhere you look the city is beautiful and new and the contrast is built in. The Flickr Birmingham folk are adding their photos to this thread and, in theory, using this tag if you want to wade through all of them.

Today it snowed it Birmingham. And it was good.