With three days left in Edinburgh, I'm beginning to think again of digging the car out of its mini ice-age.  The street is silent and almost unpassable,   they called in the army, apparently, to break up the motorway ice that stranded so many the night before last, and it has been said that the Peruvian salt - shipped over last week amid smug grins from the Transport Secretary - is useless in such low temperatures.  It has produced a never-before-seen 'sandy' snow, pushed into dune-like mounds at the sides of the roads, failing to melt; under the sodium streetlights it all feels quite extraterrestrial.

The nights I have returned back late, I have seen foxes running noiselessly between the houses, occasionally stopping in their tracks to look back, right at you.


Image, Untitled, © David Murphy, 2010