Snow what?

Isn't it amazing how snow brings out the child in us?  Or at least in all of us that still have an inner brat.   Yes we shall grumble about getting the car out, or missing a train or a bus. But its still a magical thing, at least for us here in jolly old England.

There are things to be done! Deadlines to meet! And the gods alone know Facebook is distracting enough. Yet I am willing to lay odds that 90% of my fellow writers – and probably the rest of the UK populations  come to think of it – are doing much the same as me; sitting around doodling with this and that with their gaze straying to the window every few minutes and feeling that little thrill of anticipation. How deep will it get? How long will it last?

There is something mesmerising, and yes even magical, about falling snow.  It changes our entire world. Distorts what we know is there into an alien brightness of lumps and shapes in a semi-hidden terrain.  That inner moppet Buffy was so eager to chastise is screaming to get out there and revel in that change. 

One of my earliest memories was at the age of maybe two years old when the world had been transformed, just as it is today.  I suffered from Brucellosis as a small child, in recurring bouts, and in those pre-central heating days a cot bed would be moved to the kitchen for me, close to the Aga stove, as the only warm spot in the house.   So there I was throwing a complete full-throttle, purple-faced, screaming hissy because my two older brothers were outside in the yard making a snowman, whilst I was stuck inside!  The injustice!  The pain! The insult!

And here I am now – still sick but hanging in there – and holed up in my study whilst the snow falls. Okay I’m not desperate to make a snowman, and frankly I’m not unhappy to be inside and warm. But the attention keeps wandering all the same; drifting away from the half dozen projects with deadline that I should be working on – and that inner child is really aching to get out there before all of that potential fun descends into grey slush.