I'll lay my cards down right away - I love snow. I don't care that at my age many people would be thinking that I ought to be more concerned about breaking my hip falling over on it than whether we've still got a serviceable toboggan somewhere in one of the outbuildings. I should be watching the weather forecasts and maps with apprehension, not anticipation. But I'm so excited - they're saying we might have as much as 25, even 40 centimetres (that's 6-10 inches in old money). And if we get just the usual feeble sprinkling tonight, I shall feel seriously cheated.
I love it for so many reasons. It's so beautiful. Everything looks better in snow: it muffles ugliness as it muffles sound, and even the filthiest rubbish tips and most derelict buildings are lent a spurious cloak of enchantment. Woods are particularly magical, and I am always reminded of that lovely, lovely poem by Robert Frost, that is actually about something else entirely, but still evokes the eerie silence and otherworldliness of trees under snow. A covering makes everything different, and you see new elements in a landscape that you had never noticed before, however familiar it might be: the pattern of distant fields and hedges, the shapes of branches, the hunched bare shoulder of a hill. For a while, things that have been so commonplace you pass them by without a second glance are transformed and made glorious. And suddenly, too, the secret lives of the animals which share our tracks and gardens and fields are laid open: you can follow the route of the fox or the rabbit, and see how close, how surprisingly close, they come to your house when you're asleep.
Another reason I love snow is a bit less respectable, indeed almost selfish: I love it for the way it disrupts our humdrum lives. I admit that if I was booked on a flight to the Caribbean tomorrow morning I'd be very unhappy, but I'm not, and I'm rather looking forward to Patrick having the day off school, and the library being closed (I'm only supposed to be working in the morning anyway), and people having the opportunity for a bit of the outdoor spontaneous fun that a lot of them seem to have forgotten how to enjoy. In any case, all this fuss is rather over the top. In 1962-63, when the whole country was blanketed in snow and ice from Boxing Day to March, we gritted our teeth (and the roads) and carried on. I was ten, and remember it well: we skated on the lake in the village every day for three months, tobogganed on what passed for a hill in Suffolk, and marvelled at the miniature icebergs lining the edge of the river. Yes, children: it was so cold the sea froze. Nor did our house have central heating: we kept our three-bedroomed bungalow warm with a radiant bar fire, a small open coal fire, and a primitive fan heater. There were frost ferns on the inside of my bedroom window when I woke up each morning. But we survived unharmed (we're a hardy breed on the East coast). Now, everyone whinges if the temperature drops below zero for a night, and half an inch of snow brings London to a grinding halt. Twenty years later, in the early 80s, I was living in Watford and teaching in Berkhamsted. Despite being the furthest from the school, I climbed into my Mini every morning, made the half hour journey to work, and was usually the first in. We were like the Windmill Theatre, never closed, despite the heavy snow that fell over several winters. Now, headteachers only need to sniff a single snowflake to be on the phone to the local radio stations, telling pupils and staff not to come in. I wish it had been like that in my day, I'd have loved the chance to enjoy it! Instead, I sat on the inside looking out with my class - we had a very authoritarian head at the time, who wouldn't let them go out to play in it - and by the time I got home, it was dark. Even the school play wasn't cancelled, and I stayed overnight with a colleague so that the show could go on.
It seems ironic that this winter, about the only two or three days that haven't seen snow and ice and low temperatures, at least round here, were those around Christmas. Even so, this was only the second time in my entire life that I've woken up on Christmas morning with snow on the ground. A poor sad remnant of snow, admittedly, frozen in odd corners, but still snow. The last time was in 1981, when we had a snowball fight in my then boyfriend's garden before going in for Christmas dinner. And even then it didn't count as a white Christmas because it had all fallen the day before. As a child in Suffolk, which doesn't get a lot of snow (and not a lot of rain either), I used to reckon that if it hadn't fallen by the beginning of January, it never would. But in February, 1985, that theory went right out of the window. I went to stay with my parents, and so much fell, and drifted in the stiff winds, that the ha-ha in the park was completely obliterated, although its wall was three feet high and the ditch some seven or eight feet across. It was funny watching the dogs - my parents' Jay, my own Sox - running and playing in snow that was four inches deep before plunging out of sight in the hidden ditches. Sox was a black and white dog - part Springer, part terrier, part collie, wholly neurotic - but against the snow her coat was just differing shades of dirty grey. When the time came to go home, I thought I might be snowed in, and rang my headmaster (a different one now) to warn him I might not make it. But we dug my Mini out of the snowdrift that had formed around it, I drove the hundred miles back to Hertfordshire along clear roads, and managed to be first into work the following morning.
Well, I've just checked. It's half past five on Tuesday evening, and it's STOPPED SNOWING! Am I going to be cheated? I do hope not. Six inches will do nicely. The freezer's stocked, we've got plenty of coal, and if the school and the library are shut we won't have to go anywhere - just stay home, and enjoy the magic and miracle of snow.
I love it for so many reasons. It's so beautiful. Everything looks better in snow: it muffles ugliness as it muffles sound, and even the filthiest rubbish tips and most derelict buildings are lent a spurious cloak of enchantment. Woods are particularly magical, and I am always reminded of that lovely, lovely poem by Robert Frost, that is actually about something else entirely, but still evokes the eerie silence and otherworldliness of trees under snow. A covering makes everything different, and you see new elements in a landscape that you had never noticed before, however familiar it might be: the pattern of distant fields and hedges, the shapes of branches, the hunched bare shoulder of a hill. For a while, things that have been so commonplace you pass them by without a second glance are transformed and made glorious. And suddenly, too, the secret lives of the animals which share our tracks and gardens and fields are laid open: you can follow the route of the fox or the rabbit, and see how close, how surprisingly close, they come to your house when you're asleep.
Another reason I love snow is a bit less respectable, indeed almost selfish: I love it for the way it disrupts our humdrum lives. I admit that if I was booked on a flight to the Caribbean tomorrow morning I'd be very unhappy, but I'm not, and I'm rather looking forward to Patrick having the day off school, and the library being closed (I'm only supposed to be working in the morning anyway), and people having the opportunity for a bit of the outdoor spontaneous fun that a lot of them seem to have forgotten how to enjoy. In any case, all this fuss is rather over the top. In 1962-63, when the whole country was blanketed in snow and ice from Boxing Day to March, we gritted our teeth (and the roads) and carried on. I was ten, and remember it well: we skated on the lake in the village every day for three months, tobogganed on what passed for a hill in Suffolk, and marvelled at the miniature icebergs lining the edge of the river. Yes, children: it was so cold the sea froze. Nor did our house have central heating: we kept our three-bedroomed bungalow warm with a radiant bar fire, a small open coal fire, and a primitive fan heater. There were frost ferns on the inside of my bedroom window when I woke up each morning. But we survived unharmed (we're a hardy breed on the East coast). Now, everyone whinges if the temperature drops below zero for a night, and half an inch of snow brings London to a grinding halt. Twenty years later, in the early 80s, I was living in Watford and teaching in Berkhamsted. Despite being the furthest from the school, I climbed into my Mini every morning, made the half hour journey to work, and was usually the first in. We were like the Windmill Theatre, never closed, despite the heavy snow that fell over several winters. Now, headteachers only need to sniff a single snowflake to be on the phone to the local radio stations, telling pupils and staff not to come in. I wish it had been like that in my day, I'd have loved the chance to enjoy it! Instead, I sat on the inside looking out with my class - we had a very authoritarian head at the time, who wouldn't let them go out to play in it - and by the time I got home, it was dark. Even the school play wasn't cancelled, and I stayed overnight with a colleague so that the show could go on.
It seems ironic that this winter, about the only two or three days that haven't seen snow and ice and low temperatures, at least round here, were those around Christmas. Even so, this was only the second time in my entire life that I've woken up on Christmas morning with snow on the ground. A poor sad remnant of snow, admittedly, frozen in odd corners, but still snow. The last time was in 1981, when we had a snowball fight in my then boyfriend's garden before going in for Christmas dinner. And even then it didn't count as a white Christmas because it had all fallen the day before. As a child in Suffolk, which doesn't get a lot of snow (and not a lot of rain either), I used to reckon that if it hadn't fallen by the beginning of January, it never would. But in February, 1985, that theory went right out of the window. I went to stay with my parents, and so much fell, and drifted in the stiff winds, that the ha-ha in the park was completely obliterated, although its wall was three feet high and the ditch some seven or eight feet across. It was funny watching the dogs - my parents' Jay, my own Sox - running and playing in snow that was four inches deep before plunging out of sight in the hidden ditches. Sox was a black and white dog - part Springer, part terrier, part collie, wholly neurotic - but against the snow her coat was just differing shades of dirty grey. When the time came to go home, I thought I might be snowed in, and rang my headmaster (a different one now) to warn him I might not make it. But we dug my Mini out of the snowdrift that had formed around it, I drove the hundred miles back to Hertfordshire along clear roads, and managed to be first into work the following morning.
Well, I've just checked. It's half past five on Tuesday evening, and it's STOPPED SNOWING! Am I going to be cheated? I do hope not. Six inches will do nicely. The freezer's stocked, we've got plenty of coal, and if the school and the library are shut we won't have to go anywhere - just stay home, and enjoy the magic and miracle of snow.
