Let it snow

I was born in the late 1970s and grew up in the early '80s. I don't think I'm exaggerating, but we had more snow then. More white-covered Decembers and blizzardy Januaries. And, do you know what, I loved them. It's hard to pin down exactly why; partly it's an aesthetic thing - I think snow looks nice, though I have a contrary hatred for grey-brown slush which is unfortunately snow's inevitable corollary. But I also like the dampening effect snow has. When you go out in any decent amount of snowfall, which we rarely get in the UK now, there is a muffle that seems to descend on the world, a sort of silencer which makes footfall less noisy and which just seems, oh, I don't know, the lower the volume of everything. I like that.

This past week we have been going though an unusual cold snap. I read a meme on Facebook which said, more or less, "In the UK, this is called 'The Beast from the East'. In Finland, it is called 'Wednesday'." I'll come back to that. It is certainly the case that back in the mid-1980s, snow was something to be enjoyed, something which, at best, might call for your school to close. I understand that it is a different proposition for commuters who have to get to work, and I admit to shedding a small tear of pride at the story in the Daily Mail of the NHS radiographer who walked three and a half miles to do a 13-hour shift, then walked back again. She's the sort of person who - entirely vicariously - makes me fucking proud to be British, and proud to have the universal healthcare we have, whatever faults it has (and it has faults - discussion for another day).

I'm conflicted about the "snowmageddon", as one former colleague dubbed it this week. Yes, it's easy to ridicule our pitiful attempts to cope with what was, in the south of England, at least, not more than a light crust of snow. What about Canada? What about Sweden? They cope. Yet a couple of centimetres of the white stuff, and trains and cars and trucks grind to a halt. And, prima facie, it is ridiculous. We are, after all, as Len Deighton noted, about as far north as Labrador, yet we wilt at the faintest hint of properly cold weather.

Yes, but. Cold weather of the sort we've seen this week is extraordinarily rare in the UK. Maybe it's global warming, maybe it isn't - I'm not getting dragged into a Piers Corbyn-style argument about it. I'm not a scientist, so, unlike many in the public sphere, I won't speak whereof I do not know. But I have observed, over these past 40 years, that we rarely suffer severely cold weather. So it would, surely, be a ludicrous over-reaction to prepare every year for something that probably won't happen? Canada and Finland and Sweden and Norway have these conditions every year, so of course - of course - people are prepared - snow chains on tyres, well-stocked shelves, the whole nine yards. If we did that, we'd just look daft.

I have seen real cold. A few years ago, the family decided to take in the New Year in rural Vermont. It snowed heavily, and was minus 20 degrees outside (imagine my friend Hugh's delight when he discovered the Jeep he'd hired proved to be 2WD). But, up there in the Green Mountains, they know it's coming. Stowe, after all, is a popular ski resort, and they rely on the winter weather, rather than panic at its coming. I loved it. I loved standing on the snow-clad veranda with Hugh and my beloved Dad, smoking cigars late at night. But there is not here.

What's my point? I'm not sure I have one. Except for this - we just all need to calm down. As Danny says in Withnail & I, "This too will pass". Work from home if the trains are disrupted. Wear chunkier shoes (though I am wearing suede brogues with leather soles, and, you know what, I'm not dead). Choose your heaviest coat, and maybe a scarf. But it's not the end of the world.