It's been far too long since I visited this old blog of mine, but two things have caused me to take this dusty volume off the electronic shelf and breathe some life back into the old comatose old fecker:
1) My old mate 'Traveller Pete' is embarking on another grand foray into the wide open world - this time for a hundred days in South-East Asia), and cranking his own sleeping bloggarhythms back into life
2) Closer to home, this 'il grande spectacolo' of an 'Arctic Winter' cannot pass without summoning up the old creative juices from the depths of my busy mind. Notwithstanding the media hysteria around the Big Chill (more hype is hard to imagine were David Beckham to give birth to Tiger Woods' lovechild), this experience has been - to me - utterly fantastic... and perhaps even more so for being so completely unexpected.
Of course the dimwits are using it as fools' proof that climate change is a mere fiction (ahem: this is 'weather', not climate, stoopid!); but, even to those of us who realise this is not so, this has come as a huge surprise. We have been led to believe that our winters would become ever milder, ever wetter and ever greyer - certainly here in this middling northern band of our hemisphere. So this pure unassailable white... it's everywhere and it feels like a dream!
There's also an undeniable nostalgia to it all. It transports us straight back to an era when schools seemed to close down practically every other day during deep midwinter. A trick of the memory, maybe, but there really was sledging to be done and plentiful snowball fights to be had. I also imagine the old school boilers were so useless in those days that even a shortish cold snap was enough to send the teachers home with their tails between their legs while the kids skipped insanely through the gates.But there's also the sheer beauty of it. My in-car thermometer registered -12C this morning as I drove along the York-Malton road to work. Normally this road (the infamous deathtrap that is the A64) is a racetrack from hell; today it was bordered by magnificently wintry trees, glistening and sparkly white from every branch, twig and leaf. The countryside has been lovingly covered by a beautiful white blanket, ironing out all its messy imperfections, and leaving it gleaming and beyond reproach.
And there's also the staying power. Here in North Yorkshire, we've been in the Deep Freeze now since 17th December. That's nearly a whole month! Not for us the all-too-sudden slushy, dirty, slutty thaw as the white turns to a gruesome and sleazy brown. Give me crisp, glassy, icy pavements any day - rather than that greying shit-shaded mushy mess. I know it puts the poor oldies in peril as their brittle bones navigate their way to the local Spar; and I know it's hard on the brickies, the gardeners, the roofers and the builders - whose working lives have been brought to a grinding halt, and - with it - their earnings. But I can't help it - I'm sorry. I love it, love it, love it!!!
It's the child in me, I'm sure. I adore watching the snow fall. The 'little Steve' within me begs it to keep falling - faster, heavier, bigger; let those flakes cover the ground - please! The fearful child in me also dreads it coming to an end: 'no, don't stop; snow now; snow for ever; snow me in'. It's just a pure unadulterated (and what a great word, by the way, in this context) joy. That's what it is: joy at beautiful, mesmerising, uncontrollable nature in full flow; an unbridled eagerness to be 'taken over' and left at the mercy of something that no-one can even cope with, let alone control (certainly here in Britain!).
I would even argue that it changes us. Slowly, imperceptibly, maybe - but it does. To the point when it's not dreary old miserable, unhelpful, stagnant, workaday, selfish, taciturn Britain any more. Something else has taken its place: people go more slowly; they take more care; they worry a little more about each other. Some of them - god forbid - even begin to make eye contact in the street. Occasionally even to complete strangers! Who knows?... if they're not careful, they might even lose all sense of decency and strike up a conversation with someone they've never met before.
These 'crises' (for it surely is a crisis, if we're to believe what we're told) have a disarming effect on us. This 'white stuff'- it seems to bind us, in ways that our false and shallow society can never do. It prevents us from doing the rubbishy stuff as well: the shopping might have to wait; the mad dashing up the motorway too, perhaps. The unnecessary flights to here, there and everywhere might just have to be cancelled. It encourages us to get our boots on and walk; to think; to care about those closest to us, and about those who find things more difficult than we do. More than anything, in some small way, it teaches us to take nothing for granted: there are things we cannot control - the weather, our skidding cars, for sure... but also our lives and where we think they might be taking us. Our life could be snatched from us tomorrow, through one careless fall through the ice, or by a single swerving oncoming snowplough. It induces a kind of philosophical acceptance that nothing... nothing at all, is within our control.
There may only be one word for snow, but one word is enough. It's magic.
