Having posted a pretty much classic picture of snowdrops against a grassy background with the odd tree suggesting a link to this gentle harbinger of spring’s woodland habitat last week (Warming up), I was intrigued to come across this outcrop amidst a pile of builder’s waste. These are gutsy snowdrops. These are snowdrops with attitude.
After Work 
During my time at British Rail I was introduced to the legendary tomato bush at the end of Paddington, platform one. In those days the onboard toilets of the coaches didn’t have containment tanks, the “effluent” dropped onto the tracks (hence the old notice in the loo “do not use whilst in the station”.) Somebody had eaten a tomato sandwich and “flushed”. The seeds were subsequently fed and the the little bush grew. Of course it never reached maturity as it was routinely chopped back by the trains, but it became a quite luxuriant and recognisable little bush.
I can also bear witness to the devastating effects of a flush at 60 mph. I was working trackside between Gloucester & Cheltenham when a passing train “flushed”. I was picking toilet tissue out of my hair for an hour. It took until the late 1980s before the rail companies started fitting containment tanks to their coaches. Perhaps Richard Branson can be thanked for that or more likely the fact that our rolling stock no longer comes from Darlington or Birmingham, but Nagasaki and Turin.
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