Tonight we had our last Salter Cane gig of the year. We’d been looking forward to this concert for ages because we were getting to play with Caramel Jack, a band I’ve mentioned here before in the context of the Gilded Palace of Sin. Caramel Jack are a great band and a really nice bunch of guys to boot, and it’s always lovely to be able to share an evening with them.

I can’t say I was particularly in a gig-playing frame of mind today, however. I woke up this morning in a foul mood which persisted throughout the day, and as freezing rain started to fall in the afternoon, I began to dread the whole equipment-hauling thing (it’s enough of a hassle when the weather is good—it’s positively miserable when the weather’s not).

Anyway, 5:30 rolled around and we headed off to the venue to set up and soundcheck. After soundchecking, we all went to grab a bite to eat, and on our way back to the pub, through a bitterly cold wind, I pointed out to Jeremy that there were little tiny flurries of snow in the sky. Nice.

Well, over the course of the evening, those little tiny flurries turned into the most snow I’ve seen in years, and definitely the most snow I’ve ever seen in Brighton. The curtains were drawn in the venue, but all through the evening we kept peeking out to check the snow status. At first the snow wasn’t sticking, then it stuck to the wooden benches in front of the pub, and then it stuck to everything.

The more it stuck, the more people dribbled out of the pub in the hopes of still being able to make it home by some means of motorized transport. As the headlining band, we were there for the long haul, and by the time the gig was over and we had packed up our equipment to go home, there were several inches of snow on the ground (with more still falling) and not a taxi in sight. I shuffled up to a nearby taxi stand, found no taxis but about 100 people waiting in line for a taxi, and then shuffled back to the pub to break the news to Jeremy: we were gonna have to hoof it.

And that’s what we did; we left our equipment at the pub and waded out into a minor blizzard with Chris (who didn’t even have a hat and had about twice as far to go as we did). I couldn’t get over how much snow had fallen in just a few hours—and how many gigantic flakes were still tumbling down. It was somewhat treacherous: there were lots of people slipping and sliding, and since the bars were just closing, there were also lots of idiots out throwing snowballs at passers-by (that is so not cool). But it was kind of nice as well. We so rarely get proper snow in Brighton that it’s always an exciting novelty when something other than rain, sleet or hail falls from the sky.

Jeremy and I arrived home soaking wet with hunks of ice melting off of us, but we made it intact and unharmed. The heating had come on while we were out, so it was nice and cozy inside. We dried off, got into our PJs, made some tea and hot chocolate, ate some Christmas cookies—and left the curtains open so we could enjoy the snowy scene while it lasted. Tomorrow it’s going to be slush city out there (and we’ll have to figure out some way of getting back the amps we abandoned at the pub). But for tonight, it’s a winter wonderland.