And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Spring is here! The grass is riz! I wonder where the… oh. It’s still freezing. I wonder if one way to put a stop to this appalling, never-ending winter – other than flinging oneself on the next flight to Antigua -  is to write about it. Whinging on in print about the rubbishness of the weather will surely instantly herald blazing sunshine and balmy breezes? Hmm, still raining, I see. Oh actually, that’s sleet. Let’s keep trying. “This is a very late spring indeed,” says the National Trust spokesman. No kidding, cupcake. Frogs are going back into hibernation, and who can blame them? I haven’t had a single conversation for months that didn’t revolve round fleece-lined tights. Little versions could perhaps work for frogs’ legs. And I have never before needed such a stiff drink after opening the gas bill, which was about the same amount as a flight to Antigua.

For years, it never snowed. As a child I prayed hopelessly every winter for a thick layering of the cold white stuff, but my prayers went unheard; now as an adult I pray for it not to snow, and the sky chucks it down non-stop. No wonder I’m an atheist. About fifteen years ago, during the era of usually-not-snowing, it snowed briefly, and though this was considerably too late for my childhood, I hadn’t yet become jaded. Man of the House and I squeaked with excitement and dashed from our Cooksbridge home into Lewes to buy two blue plastic sledges from Homebase, or Texas as I believe it was then. Of course, the snow had already melted by the time we got home, and the sledges spent the next decade forming a crucial bottleneck in the shed, preventing us from reaching the secateurs and other tedious gardening implements. 

Our children have had a completely different experience. Since they’ve been sentient it has snowed pretty much every winter (and this year, in March as well). Global warming, natural climate variation, snow fairies working extra shifts, call it what you will, the kids expect snow as their birth-right. They gaze at us with disbelieving eyes when we warn them each autumn that it doesn’t always snow, that they should prepare for disappointment. Their disappointment preparation is very poor, I’m afraid; they would never get a badge in it like we 70s kids did.
So we’ve passed on the pristine blue sledges to the younger generation, who have a graded system of local slopes (Baxters Field, steep but crowded; Paddock, more space to build snowmen; Priory ruins, less steep, but exciting bit where you can either whizz through a gap in the wall or get concussion). This isn’t working at all because now I see the wind has got up, making the rain dance sideways. For goodness sake! I guess it is we adults who need to work on our disappointment preparation a little harder: we must get ready for there being no spring.

Beth Miller, 18th March 2013. Published in VivaLewes.com

And since we've no place to go, let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

We were gathered in the school playground, rather surprised to finally be there after the world’s longest Christmas holiday. We compared notes about how we’d made it through the Great Snow.

‘Sledging’, said Pells Boy. ‘Took ‘em sledging every day. Morning till night.’

‘Didn’t they get cold?’ we asked.

‘Yep. Too cold to moan or bicker. By the time we got in each evening, all they wanted was be tucked up in a warm bed.’ Genius.

Hoxton Mum looked disapproving. ‘We did do snow play, of course. We made some beautiful sculptures. Django did a scale copy of Rodin’s ‘the Kiss’. Took him all morning, then when we went inside for warming babycinos, some yobboes came and kicked it down. He was inconsolable.’

Pells Boy turned away to cough, and to attend to the Beast, who had wrapped her scarf rather tightly round Django’s neck.

‘The rest of the time’, Hoxton Mum went on, ‘We just used our imagination , didn’t we, Django? We wrote stories about the snow, and made collages, and played creative games about being Inuit people living in igloos.’

Absent-Minded Mum and I looked at each other guiltily. ‘Telly was useful, wasn’t it?’ she said quietly.

‘Still’, said Hoxton Mum, and we were nearly all in agreement, ‘It’s nice to get back to normal.’

‘I couldn’t afford to take any more time off work’, Pells Boy said. ‘Already lost several days’ pay.’

‘You should have said’, cried Hoxie, ‘Django would have invited your guys over for a play date, wouldn’t you, darling?’ Django pulled his hood over his head and began performing what could have been a traditional Inuit wailing song.

Eco-Dad shook his head. ‘Well, I’m disappointed that the snow’s melting’, he said. ‘It was a great opportunity for us to see how we cope with climate change.’

‘Not very well, in my case’, said Cycle Girl. ‘Come the ice-caps shifting, I’ll be buried under a pile of non-biodegradable Star Wars figurines, unable to move to higher ground.’

‘We really learned to rely on each other’, said Eco-Dad, gently testing the youngest Eco-Baby’s bottom for dampness. They don’t use nappies in the Eco-household. ‘We got in plenty of supplies of good local organic produce, and then we hunkered down. With blankets at all the windows we were snug as bugs, hardly needed to have the heating on. Ate delicious jam I made from foraged bilberries.’

There was a silence, as we all wondered what it must be like to live such a well-rounded, low-carbon life. The quiet was broken suddenly by a sound like a tap being turned on, and Thing Two yelling as fluid poured onto his foot.

‘What a waste’, sighed Eco-Dad as he held his dripping baby at arms length. ‘We’re trying to save our urine for when the water runs out.’

The school bell rang at last, just as the first few flakes of a new snowstorm began to fall.

Beth Miller, 13th January 2010. Published in VivaLewes.com. Photo by John McGowan