Snow

The trees are naked, stripped bare against the brooding grey sky. The ground as though dusted with icing sugar, white, pristine. Twinkling candlelight reflected in the oversized window panes. The air outside is thick with cold, cloud heavy laden with snow, waiting to unload its burden onto the earth below. Darkness is descending swiftly, the little glowing lights of a distant farmhouse bright now against the blackening dusk. All else disappears from view in the dark, the outside becoming invisible, night forcing me inside where the candles are still burning, inviting. 

Such are the delights of an English winter. I’m cosy in my armchair, safe from the icy cold for now at least. I will have to venture out eventually and make my way home through the somewhat treacherous country lanes. I am excited by the slight danger of it, the thrill of being at the mercy of nature in a way that we so rarely are these days. It always feels good to be reminded that we humans are not so in control after all. We can be stranded in the snow, transport ground to a halt by ice. 

I long for it to snow more, I want it to snow so much that we have to walk everywhere and have to turn to each other for help. Community through adversity. I adore the muffled silence that snowfall brings, the immaculate, pure white that transforms our ordinary world into something extraordinary. Suddenly it’s as if we are in a fairytale, my own Narnia, where magic is possible. Call me a ridiculous romantic, maybe I am, but I love anything that makes us stop and look at the world anew. Anything that can cause us to have a different perspective is indeed a gift. 

So I welcome this deluge of white, this marshmallow blanket, it makes me want to run out and make footprints and snow angels. Of course what makes the snow really fun and wonderful is the fact that you can retreat indoors to warm dry spaces. Sitting by the fire, warming your toes, the comfort of family and friends, drinking hot chocolate. Hot baths, lying tucked up in bed with tea looking out at the icicles, turning up the central heating. Without this the winter would be the perilous enemy that it actually is.

We have become so adept at surviving; we live in fortunate times, for the most part. Although there are those who will not make it through a long winter, some elderly and frail, the very poorest and most vulnerable of us, so I spare a thought for those living rough and pray they find ways to be warm on these freezing nights.