It’s the morning of the Night Before.
The cleansing department are sweeping away the detritus of celebration, as the celebrators coagulate at the taxi rank. Or fuel up at the ‘golden arch’ and the ‘regal beef-patty’.

The dayglo staff are pressure-washing the plaza, hosing before them the naked stalks and cellophane wrappers that contained the twelve grapes that are the essential accompaniment to the midnight-struck hour. However, they have a problem: freezing fog. That sheet of watering has created a glacial armour, one that requires the deployment of the council gritter.

They’re in a race against time.
The first tour buses are already disgorging their phalanxes of day-visitors down in the valley at the bottom of the hill. Who are being herded onto the flights of escalators, thence to be carried effortlessly up and into a freshly scrubbed-up town.
The frost-fog burns back, first to partial inversion, leaving the rootless spires and domes floating in a soft focus. Then suddenly to a warm, innocent morning of crystal-cut clarity, sun-rays of blinding enthusiasm that still can’t quite dislodge those remnants of hoar lurking in their secluded corners.

It’s a fleeting commentary from a city’s life, that transformation from the revels of the evening before to the sobriety of today.