snow!

So. Snow. We woke up this morning and the world outside was blanketed in it. When I say 'we' I mean us on the the south coast of England. If you don't live in the UK you may not fully appreciate the enormity of us Brits waking to find that snow has fallen in the night. In essence it means the country grinds to a halt. It's like a public holiday, but without any warning, or the themed special offers stacked high in the supermarket. It only takes a smattering of the stuff and our trains stop running (although they're on strike anyway at the moment), and our postal workers can't get through to deliver the letters (although they're on strike at the moment too), the roads become impassable (the gritter lorries can't get out of the depot because of the icy conditions), and everyone generally thinks "Fuck it, let's just take the day off work and head to a local hill with a tea tray toboggan." Just don't end up in A&E folks because I actually think the nurses may also be striking today.

This may sound to you as though I'm full of dread and gloom at the thought of a snow-day but, honestly, I secretly love 'em (and, besides, I support the current strikes). Heavy snow falls happen so rarely in this neck of the woods that I could probably count all the times it's ever snowed in my lifetime on the fingers of both hands. Snow, unlike almost anything else I can think of, can instantly regress me to a childhood garden, where snowmen were built, snowballs were flung, and mysterious animal tracks could be followed across the lawn to a wild beast's den in the shrubbery (Clue: it was always the family cat). The only downside to all this was that mum insisted I wear a balaclava if I was going outside. Perhaps because it's so rare, snow still manages to retain magical properties for me. It transforms the world outside my window into Narnia, where some of the greatest adventures children could ever hope to have were experienced, and for that I can only be grateful.

 

Photo is the author's own.