Jolly boating

When I was a visiting professor at Harvard for six months in 1998, I remember one particular moment when I thought it would be great to stay longer. In the middle of our stay, I had to go back to the UK to do some exam marking. It was a bit of an emergency. Yes, I know. I'm not sure why I didn't have the scripts couriered over to me. I think it wasn't permitted. And of course this was before the days of online marking.

As my arrival back in Boston was expected to be just in time to get me back to the Law School in order to participate in a colloquium which was part of my duties as a visiting prof, the Law School sent a car to pick me up from the airport. We drove along Storrow Drive on the south side of the Charles River on a bright spring day that couldn't have been more different to what we encountered yesterday when we arrived in Boston. The Charles looked amazingly beautiful on that spring day in 1998, and I had - just for a moment - a pang that said to me, wouldn't be amazing if we could stay here for ever in such a beautiful place.

These thoughts were on my mind as I poked the camera out of the taxi window to photograph one of the boathouses on the other side of the frozen and snowed in Charles River, capturing at the same time one of the ubiqitous piles of dirty snow which are all over the place here. Boston, as many people might have read, is within 2 inches of having its record snowfall. While I'm sure that everyone is thoroughly fed up of this winter, it has probably got to the stage now for many people when they say, "well, let it be a record breaker, if it has to be".

Back in the Harvard Square area for the first time since 1998. It seems somehow changed. I haven't yet fully got my bearings - but it might partly be the said piles of snow which are confusing me.

We are, of course, in a hotel. Blips start here.