The English winter - they think it's all over - it never is.

Here in Hove in early April 2008, I awoke one Sunday morning to be surprised at the sight of six inches of snowfall. In the space of just half an hour, the dry streets outside were transformed into the Arctic wilderness seen in these shots. And by the evening of that same day, almost all of it had melted. These images were in fact taken only fifteen minutes into the flurry, so the full icing on the R4 cake had not been laid.

A short while later, even the thin wire aerial on Reflexia's roof had a couple of inches of snow weighing it down, eventually causing it to ping back up and throw snow across the neighbourhood like a schoolchild with a lump of mashed potato on his ruler.

So, my white R4 found herself looking more white than she had since the day I brought her back down to the south coast in summer 2004 (I believe she previously resided in Bournemouth). This was one of few opportunities to take a picture that would not show up all the rust she has acquired since being down by the salty air of the seaside. And snow like this is most uncommon in the Brighton and Hove area anymore. Such heavy falls these days usually skirt around the back of the South Downs and avoid the town on the other side, unlike my childhood when scenes like this seemed to accompany January or February of every year.