Somehow hippos have made their way into a Central Park playground.
In spite of our December African blue skies, burning sun … and the blasted Southeasters! … my thoughts have been wandering to colder climes, considering that new adventure prowling stealthily in the wings, ready to pounce like a snow leopard, in 2020. When we lived in New York, we were privileged to experience — and very happily survive! — a full-on, nine-and-a-half-inches-deep, white Christmas. Temperatures? Minus 7 degrees Celcius. We even did an 8 km running race in Central Park! Meshuggeneh, I know. The wind was so icy, it hurt my face. I couldn’t speak my lips were so numb. When we grabbed paper cups of water off the tables alongside the road, the water had frozen solid.
Left This was the view onto Broadway Avenue from our 15th-floor glass-encased apartment; right Central Park, West Side. That’s the Great Lawn!
Cars are thoroughly buried in the snowstorms. Takes a bit of shovelling to get out of that snowpile!
There is nothing more beautiful than waking to a white-out world, snowflakes swirling past the windows like masses of tiny weightless butterflies. As you walk in the street, teeny ice clusters land on your nose and eyelashes (just like in The Sound of Music). Cars and buildings and Central Park’s statues are crowned with the prettiest frosting and you can smell the sugared whiff of roasted chestnuts as your boots crunch along icy snow-strewn paths.
No sitting on these benches!
I mean, that looks just like whipped cream!
Even more magical were the crazy-paving ice floes in the Hudson River. Slabs looking like giant pancakes heaved and fell as boats forged through the ice like a scene out of Antarctica.
Just for a pop of colour, this fountain with its Christmas baubles was not far from the Rockefeller Center. But it’s an apt image to say: