Let it snow!

It’s cold, no it’s freezing. The temperature is lower than that in my refrigerator. I’m in York, in the North East of England.

We have been badly affected by the snow. After two days trapped at home because of the snow, today my four year old daughter and I ventured into the whiteness that has enveloped us to make the 30-minute journey to school.

The traffic news on the radio did warn to make extra allowances for the journey but little did I know that a 30-minute journey would take an hour and a half!

It’s ironic that the extreme cold has generated a reaction more common in the long, lazy Mediterranean sunshine in summer than in the fast pace, time for nothing and no-one we have come to expect here in the UK.

People are walking slower; they have to unless they want to end up with a fractured limb at the A & E department. Perfect strangers make eye contact and in a way seem to be saying, “I’m ok, are you?”

Children are bundled up in sledges and parents are treacherously pulling away at a snail’s pace. Gritters and ploughers have become the heroic kings of the roads as cars pull over to let them pass.

Drivers have become friendlier, they let you pull out from the right and give you a smile rather than honk at you. The usual sixty miles an hour speed expected on an A-road has plummeted down to a mere twenty and no one complains!

As I’m writing this I’m sitting in the car outside my daughter’s school armed with my charged laptop, a hot water bottle, two blankets, a vacuum flask filled with hot water, cappuccino sachets and chocolate (I like my little luxuries, even in the snow), my doctoral thesis notes and books and three MA assignments beckoning to be marked for the University I am affiliated with.

I’m well prepared for a long wait. It is pointless journeying back home and make it back on time to pick up my daughter.

In a way the snow has brought with it lots of patience... my wish is that this rare and beautiful gift does not melt away with the snow!