They appeared last Monday without warning, one after another, until by lunchtime, the park was full of them. Then they began showing up on street corners. By the end of the day you couldn't walk 100 yards without bumping into one. Outside shops, on window sills, park benches, in the middle of the pavement.

London's snowmen seemed to have a penchant for hats; many also wore scarves and their arms were thin and twig-like. They seemed to resist the efforts of the snowman destroyers - gangs of young boys who roamed and revelled in demolishing any they came upon. By the morning of the second day they were partially melted and smoother, their snowman-skin surfaces glowing in the pale sunlight.

The radio news reported that six inches of snow had fallen overnight - the biggest snowstorm in 18 years. As I digested this information, I phoned my daughter, who was on the way to the park by foot as all bus service had been cancelled. Like almost every child in London she had been given the day off from school. Being a big kid myself, I took the day off and did the same. Between sliding down the slopes on a tea tray and surviving several snowball fights I became drawn to the snowmen and -women.

Later that night the radio seemed to chastise the nation at large for the  collective irresponsibility of spontaneous snowplay, which had wiped 1 billion or so from the GDP during a period of recession and national crisis. I fell asleep that night in a somewhat belligerent mood, thinking about the snowpeople.

The next morning I went out with the idea of making a composite of snowmen photographs for a newspaper. This was shelved when I bumped into the Guardian Newspaper's photographer in Stamford Hill, kitted out in wellington boots and gore-tex, his waist bound with lens pouches, as if ready for combat. He was staking out one of the snowpeople, trying to juxtapose it with passing Hassidic gentlemen as a "study in hats". As I stepped in close to photograph his prey, a young girl in the house opposite glared at me, her nose pressed to the glass. As I stepped obediently away from her creation, she smiled, I wondered if she had been standing guard all night.

By the third day the snowmen had gone as suddenly as they came, leaving blunt stumps of snow, flakes of carrot and wet scarves behind. Meanwhile all of London had rushed back to our recession-beating work. But I can't help feeling that the snowmen taught us an important lesson: to lighten up a bit when things get tough.

Nick Cobbing has an unusual affinity for snow and ice. You can read his report from the Arctic in the Octpber 6. 2007 issue of DART, and check out more of London's vanished snowmen here.

2059 cobbing