It's Snowing

The snow was late by a day or two, but it got there in the end, giving us all a rare holiday treat. If we were to take the lyrics of the famous Bing Crosby song metaphorically - as that of the season rather than the day itself, then Britain can claim to have a 'White Christmas' after all. In fact, much to the surprise of everyone, it has been snowing so heavily in some parts of the UK that snow and ice warnings had to be issued. Far from causing alarm, all this has caused considerable delight. Even Oxford, which is reknown for its terrible weather, where it hardly snows for more than a quarter of an hour before it reverts back to rain and where whatever has fallen inevitably turns into a most uncomfortable slush, had some proper snow, even if it for a very short period of time.

I have always had a great love of snow, something undoubtably bred from a childhood in Canada where skiing and ice skating counted as my favourite sports. There is something magical about snow without which the entire winter season seems incomplete, thus the general joy in which it is greeted. Its too bad I seem to be in one place in the UK where snow just doesn't seem to want to happen. It marvels me that in late November when we had snow in the Southernmost parts of England - Devon and Cornwall - it all managed to pass Oxford by. Then again, most of the fun is to be had with other people about - throwing snow balls and the like - and it is rather deserted here at the moment. It would be all the more depressing if it had snowed properly and I had no one to share it with.

A final afterthought - they say that the Inuit (Eskimo is derogatory, or so a friend tells me, the equivalent of 'nigger') have over 20 different words for snow. I wonder if they have a word for snow that comes quickly but doesn't continue; a snow that is not quite snow? I wouldn't be surprised to find that this, much like many other perculiar weather, is confined to the UK. Bill Bryson, among others, once expressed surprise at the fact that the British talked about the weather so much, as he found British weather distinctly uninteresting. As he claims, there are no hurricanes, tornadoes, high winds, droughts or anything remotely scary about it. Besides the social benefits of talking about the weather which is intrinsically important to the normally reserved Brits, perhaps British weather is special in its own mundane way. Perhaps it is just inherently unpredictable not in a spectacular sense (cyclone, tornado, hurricane etc.) but in a common everyday sense. And that makes it all the worse.