Snowfall!

This is cheating, but it's such a rare event I couldn't not blip it.

When I was coming back from Carcassonne yesterday afternoon, I was surprised to see a gritter out on the autoroute. It was 8C and lightly cloudy. However, turns out Meteo France had got it right. I did notice the sky going weirdly hazy as I got home.

Some hours later, after I'd blipped, I closed the shutters on sleety rain. And another hour after that, opened them on hearing muffled shrieks to see the square covered in snow which was still falling. Eeee! I had to rush out and photograph it after showing it to S on Whatsapp. So this is actually a photo from yesterday -- if I'd waited till after midnight, there'd have been no streetlights. Or Christmas lights come to that-- the mairie still hasn't hired the cherry-picker to remove them.

Extra is today's photo -- I ventured out into the icy wind to take it. As you can see most of the  snow is gone, with just a bit left on the top of Alaric. Other than that it's been a hunkering down kind of day. I'm making good progress on Olivia Manning's Balkan trilogy.

I tried to find a Ukrainian choir to balance the Russian one I linked to the other day, but I couldn't. So since Estonia is a good ally to Ukraine, here's an Estonian choir instead: the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir singing a piece by national composer Cyrillus Kreek. I love his work... years ago my choir did a Baltic programme that included this piece plus a couple of his other psalms. It was one of the two best choral experiences I've ever had (the other was Bach's B-minor Mass with members of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment). More gorgeous harmonies and bass drones. There's more about Kreek, and another video featuring the wonderful choir Vox Clamantis, here.