Blog: Snow
This morning I opened my curtains and saw it had snowed, not heavily, maybe an inch or so had settled on the trees and grass and the little road up to my house. An early morning sun as much bronze and copper as gold rose to the edge of the rooftops in a sky that was robin egg blue.
And my heart sang, as it always has done on the discovery of snow.
I may now be a man in my mid-60s but my eyes were those of the young boy watching the fall of snow liberate a cobbled street from the melancholy of January. There has always been a mysterious magic in it, a kind of alchemy in which mundane objects: old wheelbarrows, a forgotten summer chair, a coil of hosepipe, the rickety bird table are, in that pale sun, temporarily transformed into fragile works of art.
But best of all, snow meant sledging. Not on sledges made of plastic, but on one made with my father at home. Wooden runners carefully curved at the front, with a thin strip of metal fixed on the bottom with brass screws and polished. A slatted seat platform from halfway to the back and the towing rope looped between holes at the front.
We would go to the local park which had two incredible slopes suitable to stir the heart of any adventurous child. One run was long and fairly steep levelling out somewhat perilously just before a river. Halfway down the slope straightened out into a short ledge from which, if you had the nerve to go from the very top, you would briefly take off as you shot over its edge.
The other started at a gate to the entrance to the park. It was quite narrow, bumpy in places as it followed the route of a path that ran downhill with the bend or two in it. These had to be navigated by sticking one Wellington boot in the snow as you hurtled along.
Very young, with a woolly hat pulled over my ears and padded in two jumpers and duffel coat, and in my mother's oddly sized woollen mittens, I would cling to my father, scared of the speed but joyful in the complicit knowledge that this normally quiet and reserved man was as happy as me!
Later, set free, I would sledge on my own, ears and hands burning with cold, nose running onto my scarf, muscles protesting as I plodded back up the hill. I guess at the time I went quicker on my bicycle but it didn’t feel like it!
The beginner’s style was sitting up but the real thrill was laying facedown, inches above the ground. I since have skied, abseiled, white water rafted, and flown in microlights with a big triangular kite above my head and a small engine behind, but nothing, nothing has ever equalled the thrill of the time I lay on my stomach on my own on the old sledge at the top of the hill, aimed myself at the river below me and pushed myself off.
