As children, we look out on a world cloaked in white with wonder and irrepressible glee. With snowmen to build, snowballs to hurl and toboggans to race down the hill, snow means nothing but fun, fun, fun. We just can’t wait to get outside.
But among the many side-effects of the human ageing process — the police and prime ministers seeming younger, the stairs steeper, the TV remote control more baffling — is there any more telling than the way our attitude to snow changes as Old Father Time creeps up on us?
With the approach of middle age, we may still appreciate the beauty of that white blanket, casting a hush over everything and lending an eerie majesty to roofscapes and trees in the evening sunlight.
We may also go on looking forward to a blizzard for the variety it brings to our humdrum lives, making a minor adventure of the daily commute or the walk to the newsagent.
But the older we get, the more our thoughts turn away from the joys of being outside in the snow (well, mine did, anyway, a couple of decades ago) and towards the pleasure of enjoying it from behind double-glazed windows, preferably curled up in an armchair in front of a blazing log fire.
This week, however, I realise I’ve reached the next stage of decrepitude. Long gone is the childhood thrill of anticipation. Dead, too, is the last flicker of excitement over the prospect of all that beauty and change.
Indeed, when the Met Office predicted a white-out across most of the country, starting today, I felt only gloom — and a pressing urge to hibernate.
Where once I looked forward to a morning walk to the station through the snow, I now dread falling over on the ice. No, I must rephrase that, since only the young fall over. What people of my age and above do (I’ll be 60 this year) is ‘have a fall’.
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After all, falling over can be laughed off as something that children and Friday-night revellers do all the time, with few ill effects beyond a couple of bruises and a sore head in the morning. A fall, on the other hand, is much more of an event — and sometimes a life-changing one, from which ageing bones never recover.
So while the freeze lasts, I’ll be inching my way down the hill to the station, like a sapper in a minefield, never daring to raise my eyes from the slush beneath my feet to the snowscape that would once have enchanted me.
White-out: Up to 12 inches of snow are forecast to blanket the country, starting from todayAnd when I finally get there, of course, I’ll be kept waiting an eternity for the train, while I listen to endless announcements warning me that in the present weather conditions, platforms may be slippery. Thank you, but we can all work that out for ourselves, as we stand there freezing to the bone.
Which brings me to another bitter truth that robs each succeeding snowfall of its magic as the years roll by. In my youth, I was impervious to the cold. I made it a point of pride to swim in the icy seas off Blackpool each October when I was sent to cover party conferences — and in my student days, I found nothing more exhilarating than rolling semi-naked in the snow.
But these days, I start shivering with the first chill of autumn — and the onset of every winter brings the renewal of a long-running battle with my wife, when she catches me sneaking off to the thermostat.
In most households, I’m told, it’s the woman who is forever turning the central heating up, while the man turns it down. In mine, it’s the other way round.
Perhaps her hardiness and sense of economy have something to do with her Scottish blood. But whatever the reason, I’ve come to dread the moment each year when she says: ‘You haven’t put the heating on already, have you? For goodness sake, why don’t you just put on another jumper?’
The Teachers Foundation of Malaysia issued guidance to parents, telling them that if their son wears a V-neck sweater, this is a sure sign he may be gay (picture posed by model)As it happens, she gave me a new jumper for Christmas, a smart grey V-necked job, which she told me I could wear under my suit to make my cigarette breaks on the pavement outside the office more bearable.
I was touched — until I read this week that the Teachers Foundation of Malaysia has issued guidance to parents, telling them that if their son wears a V-neck sweater, this is a sure sign he may be gay.
Perhaps my wife is trying to tell me something. If so, I’d better not tell her my reaction to this week’s news from Debenhams that flannel sheets have been flying off the shelves since the cold snap began, storming back into fashion for the first time since the Fifties.
There was a time when I would have dismissed this information with contempt for my fellow Britons, thinking that flannel sheets were strictly for babies’ cots, while proper grown-up men slept in linen.
But when I saw the item in yesterday’s paper, I found myself musing: ‘Mmm, flannel sheets! Now there’s a nice idea!’ And before I knew it, I was wondering what became of those cosy Winceyette pyjamas we all used to wear when I was a boy.
No, the cold weather is not for me — and snow and ice mean nothing to me now but cracked pipes, cancelled trains, arctic cigarette breaks and the ever-present danger of ending up on a trolley in Accident and Emergency.
By all means call me decrepit old wimp. But at least I’m not yet quite as pathetic as the Met Office, which issued hysterical warnings yesterday that we should all stay at home with the arrival of the snow and travel only if it is ‘absolutely necessary’.
God knows, there are enough people in Britain who will be only too happy to heed the weathermen’s advice.
If past experience is any guide, schools will close as the first snowflakes begin to fall, offices in Whitehall will be deserted, the post will stack up in the sorting office (if it gets that far) and transport by air, road and rail will skid to a halt.
Do you ever wonder what they make of us in Canada or Sweden, where the wheels of the economy seem to keep turning through weather conditions ten times harsher than our worst?
One thing you can almost guarantee is that when the growth figures for the current quarter are published, the Treasury will blame any bad news on the ‘exceptional January weather’.
But how many times must we hear those words, year after year, before officials start to wonder whether winter snow is all that exceptional after all?
As for me, drip though I am, I’ll be doing my level best for the economy, creeping gingerly down the hill to the station in the morning, wrapped up in my V-neck jumper, cursing the vile sludge and ice and day-dreaming of flannel sheets and Winceyette pyjamas.
Oh, to be young again — and to feel once more the rapture of the snow.
