Not surprisingly I didn’t have a white Christmas here in Okinawa. Most of my Okinawan friends have never even seen snow.

On the other side of the world is my hometown of Sale near Manchester. They are having the coldest, snowiest winter in recent history. My parents just told me that there was a photo of the canal near our house in The Telegraph newspaper. Here it is:

Bridgewater Canal in Sale, Cheshire. Photo by PAUL COUSANS

I wanted to put up the photo on the blog, not just because it’s a topical picture of my hometown, but because it’s a simple, elegant, timeless image. The small, almost abstract, people also remind me of the work of another Mancunian, the painter L.S. Lowry.

Streetscene by L.S. Lowry