I can’t help but feel a little sad, though. There are many
reasons to be thankful for a mild and event-free winter. Less strain on the
NHS, ease of commuting, and avoiding the endless TV and radio news when travel
chaos hits London. But I’m of an age when I can remember the relatively regular
excitement of fat flakes of snow spiralling down, not just for a few minutes,
but enough so that we could excitedly shout ‘It’s sticking, it’s sticking!’ and
wake the next day to an entirely new landscape. Yes, I know: rose tinted
glasses with lenses blurred by the Vaseline of nostalgia. I didn’t have to get
to work then, or worry about shopping, heating bills or having to stay off work
because the nursery or school was shut.
But snow angels, snowmen, sliding on compacted snow were all
regular occurrences. At junior school, the exciting moment when, on a snowy day,
the headmaster would emerge, dustbin lid in hand. Not because of concern over
litter, or due to some weird form of corporal punishment but because, on a
snowy day, he let himself be fair game. He would run, with lid wielded as a
shield, around the playing field whilst we tried our hardest to pelt him with
snowballs. Climate change is much more serious than missing out on the chance
of getting your own back on your headmaster, but it makes me just a little sad
that this regular occurrence seems to be disappearing. Our little boy has
barely seen snow; just a few flakes, a sprinkling. Frantic scraping of a
dusting led to a snowman a few inches high last year. This year – nothing.
Instead, a late spring will bring fat flakes of
green as a storm of leaves appear on branches over the next few days. But you
can’t make a snowman out of that.
