Let it snow, let it snow...
15.01.08
I love snow. It’s so white
and clean and crisp and when the first snow falls every
year I can stand fascinated for ages watching the
snowflakes drift lazily to the ground. I guess some
people are easily amused.
Of course when I say when the first snow falls I mean
when snow falls at all. I mean it’s not like it happens
a lot over the course of the year.
But it happened last week and when my kids called to say
it had started snowing I stood at the window watching
the snowflakes fall to the ground with a contented look
on my face.
Umm did I say contented, I actually meant smug (more on
that later). And did I say I love snow? I think maybe
that should have been I hate the stuff.
Well okay, maybe not hate the stuff, but let’s just say
I have been able to see through all that dazzling
whiteness and am no longer taken in by it all. |
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For a start, and I’m not
sure how many people out there have noticed this – when
it snows it is usually damn cold.
Now if I have to state a preference, I’d say I’m a
temperature somewhere in the middle kinda guy, but if
the choices were simply cold or warm, I think I’ll go
for the warm every time.
I like my shower water to be warm, my coffee to be warm,
the car to be warm, I really don’t do the whole cold
thing that well at all.
Indeed I have been known to trek away to foreign climes
in search of increased heat, but have never gone
deliberately seeking out the cold.
But don’t get me wrong, snow is lovely if you have a
great roaring fire on and you can sit in and look out at
it falling to the ground and know that you don’t have to
try and go anywhere until it has all melted away again.
Still, we can’t all be teachers can we, so while it’s
lovely to look at for a while most of us know we’re
going to have to venture out into the big bad world
through this crisp cold covering.
And there’s the thing you see, cos if it was just cold
you could probably wrap up and try to ignore it, but
it’s slippery too and maybe you didn’t know this, but
that can be dangerous.
Which is why when the weather forecast last week was
suggesting temperatures as low as minus six and possible
snow showers, I slapped the TV twice to make sure it
wasn’t broken (come on now how many times do we get
minus six?) and then promptly set about to put salt on
my driveway.
It was not something that met with universal approval in
my household, my kids looked at me as if I were some
kind of monster as I scattered salt all over the
driveway, but I pointed out to them that if snow fell
they could still have what fell in the garden. |
Salting done I stood at the
window as soon as I heard of the first fall with the
look of an evil genius on my face.
The first flakes came tumbling down around 9pm, the
advance forces you might say but as they landed on the
driveway they realised it was all a trap.
“I’m melting, I’m melting.” I could just imagine what
they’d be crying out if they could actually talk and I
didn’t have such a warped sense of imagination.
And then of course a cry to the following troops to go
back, it was a trap.
But it was too late. The rest came tumbling down as I
stood there watching and ringing out my evil genius
laugh ‘waaaah haaah haaah haaah...’ |
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A DROP OF
PORTER is
the weekly
column of
Inishowen
Independent
editor,
Liam Porter. |
|
