the very thing

Some people are evidently taking advantage of the cold weather to vend soupstuffs which smell more appetising and warming than they really are, tricking people into buying them, wandering a little bit away with the cup warming their hands slightly and seeming to thus function effectively only for it to then turn out to taste like salt-enriched disgustingness, unable to be drunk. There are a lot of soups which end up left on various bits of street-furniture in the office-districts, anyway. Some get spilt but other simply discarded. Maybe this one was just a prop for someone (held in their gloved hands and worn along with a scarf and visibly vapour-condensing exhalations).

Though occasionally necessary in the underfeet conditions today I don't think I'll wear my walking-boots again tomorrow. Whilst better at being waterproof they're also much better at remaining attached to large clumps of ice and slush when entering buildings and far inferior to trainers at being grippy on ice. They were only cheap so don't have a particularly well-thought-out sole unit, hard and slippy plastic being possibly quite hard-wearing (unless it just cracks) but rubbish at being nimble. It's just reminded me of the sole of a cheap welly, in grip-pattern as well as material. The wellies which don't that sort of slightly non-opaque hardenened-jelly-effect stuff on the bottom of DMs, anyway. Even though my trainers aren't waterproof they allow the toes to be flexed to confirm that they're still there if they ever get cold/wet enough to be worried about, whereas the cheap nature of the walking-boots makes them slightly uncomfortable and rigid at the toe end, further hampering their capacity as ground-gripping devices.