Snow here and now, snow there and then

A whole lot of activities have been cancelled here in Leicester due to a few inches of snow and colder whether than we have experienced for over 20 years. This gave me more time for writing. In my last post I spoke of my discoveries about November 1945. Those had given me 6000 words. It was now time to move on from Givat Hayim. The carastrophic event had caused a rift between my diverse characters and I needed to get them together again. The best way to do that in Palestine is via a wedding. The wedding I chose was of the Greek Orthodox variety. For plot purposes wedding invatations needed to appear to appear early in January. I thought I should leave at least eight weeks between invitation and wedding so hit on on the first Wednesday in March as the wedding date. That would provide me with an opportunity to describe a host of spring flowers. Luckily I had not wasted too much time in word-painting Palestine Spring before I realised my whopping error. I had not taken into account Great Lent.
Since Great Lent starts over 40 days before Greek Orthodox Easter Day my first task now was to determine the date of Eastern Orthodox Easter in 1945 - which proved nothing so simple as adding a fortnight on to Western Easter or co-inciding it with Jewish passover. I found two web sites claiming to calculate Orthodox Easters from way back. Unfortunately each arrived at a different date, so I used Nazareth tourist guide logic and plumped for the more convenient date. During the research into Greek Orthodox rituals I had come upon another perinent piece of information. Orthodox weddings generally take place on a Sunday. Employing a modicum of maths, I discovered the wedding would have to take place on February 17th.
Snow was piling up on my garden and the top of my car as I clicked my way through the Palestine Post, searching for news of political importance. I discovered a real coincidence. On Sunday 17th Fenruary 1945 snow had blanketed Jerusalem and made roads leading to it impassible. So that, I thought, was the weekend we had built our snowman abd Dad had wanted to take us sledging by Rachael's tomb but we hadn't been able to get out. That too,according to the Palestine Post was the week end every chemist in Jerusalem sold out of camera film, which explains why, when the elderly show you their favourite snaps of Palestine, you are tempted to think of el Quds as a city built inside the arctic circle.