The spring thaw

24th March 2012
9.00am

I am sitting outside in my pyjamas having a coffee and a cigi. It's quite mild today. I check the thermometer; it's hovering around the zero mark. It's snowing.

Meanwhile, back home in Ramsgate people are sunbathing. On Facebook, Karen says she got sunburn. Kids have been running on the beach and playing in the sea.

I never did like laying in the sun and getting sand between my toes.

I hear a car come down the drive. It's got studded tyres which churn up the newly laid snow and gravel. It's a legal requirement in Finland for all cars to wear winter tyres from the end of October until April. Some have metal studs but most are of a soft compound with extra grip, like the ones I had in Japan. If I ever have a car in England again, I think I shall have an extra set of winter tyres.

Or an old Land Rover like the one Richard lent me for over a year. A pre '72 series 2 or 3 should do the trick. Tim had an '84 series 3 short wheel base, while I was driving a '72 long wheel base, flat bed. Brilliant fun.

It's been beautifully sunny here for the last week or so with temperatures between five and eight during the day. Despite a few nights of snowfall, it has started to thaw. The main roads and pavements are snow free and the verges are becoming exposed. The snowploughs haven't been out for a while now and where the snowmobiles had cut the cross-country ski tracks it's surprising to see that the grass is green despite having been covered for the last three months or so. It must be hardy stuff. I bend down and pick a clump. Its round in cross section, a bit like chives.

I feel a bit sad to see the snow melting. Snow adds a romantic dimension to any landscape and it really is very beautiful here. As it melts, it all turns sloshy. Cars and trucks are covered in muck and the once virgin scenery is getting dirty around the edges.

When they lay gravel on the snow here, it's not just salty sand. This is big profile gravel, chunkier than cats' litter.

In Copenhagen one autumn, I felt as though I was walking through a building site because of all the gravel left behind from the previous winter.

Apparently, here they hoover all the gravel up in the spring and recycle it.

Needless to say, unemployment in Finland is not on a par with the rest of the western world.