Guilt-Free Snow Day!
2010-12-04, 10:13 p.m.
So, its raining quite a lot which means the world is finally getting back to normal after two days of �adverse weather conditions�. To normal people, this means �It snowed. A bit�, but you�d think we were witnessing plagues of kumquats falling from the sky and every tree adorned with the dripping entrails of pickled anchovies the way the entire nation went absolutely hys-fucking-sterical about a bit of frozen water. Its hardly news now that its pretty much all melted but we did wake up on Thursday to this:
which is a pretty pleasant way for a front garden to look, and the back garden was similarly picturesque:
The light�s like that because it was still a bit dark but it had brightened up by the time we�d had breakfast and all that domestic kind of stuff and a bit of sunny sunshine made the walk to school a bit like a surburban Narnia
some children were disproportionately excited
and some were slightly trepidatious as the snow threatened to breach their boots
The walk to school was eerily quiet. When we got there we found that this was because school was shut. A flipchart scrawled with �School Closed� leant forlornly against the railings. A couple of year 8 boys were taking gleeful photos of it on their phones. I thought it would probably be bad form of me to shove them out of the way to take a picture of it myself. Im pretty sure that�s an abuse of staff privileges. There were some year 11 girls hanging about too so I asked if they wanted me to set them some work to take home but they didn�t seem very enthusiastic, if fact they laughed quite a lot and said �awww, Miss� in an indulgent sort of way.
So Jooj and I went home and found that Treacle hadn�t gone to school either as L had had the sense to check the website, so there was nothing for it than to make a snowman!
Its very odd having a guilt-free snow day. Previous incidences of crystalline precipitation resulting in inability to drive my car(we live on a hill) to whatever crappy office I was habitually frequenting, left me feeling panicky and like I was somehow doing something subversive, in a �you skiving COW, you should be walking to work in your BARE FEET. Do you have NO loyalty to the company whatsoever?????� kind of way. Being told that I may not go to work as there is no work that I am able to do and my work is closed and there are no other people there, even ones who are somehow braver and better drivers and more resilient and just altogether more brilliant at the business of �being at work� than I am, is a very liberating experience.
I have enjoyed a couple of days of fart-arsing about and it has been jolly nice.
I did think I ought to do something a bit more productive than making hot chocolate for visiting children, being in my garden wearing a woolly hat which doesn�t suit me and watching the grown up sons of my neighbour sliding down the middle of the street on a variety of flattish household items (bin lids, tea trays etc) and some fairly impressive �ice surfing� on one of those funny little polystyrene body-boards much loved by people who are too pussyfied to do proper surfing. I smiled most mightily at (almost) grown men, squealing like girls and falling off stuff into piles of snowy leaves.
I smiled less, in fact I made a jolly cross face, when I tried to get me car out this morning so I could go to Lidl. The ersatz surfing had turned the whole road into a sheet of ice and I had to roll backwards to the bottom of the street to give myself a bit of a run-up and drive up on the wrong side of the road � not the racing line, but slightly less glassy of finish. Like most people who don�t get snowed on very often, I had only taken the precaution of clearing the windows of snow � the rest of the car was adorned with the customary blocks of snow on bonnet, roof and boot.
If you are a proper grown up, or your know stuff about elementary physics and chemistry, you may be able to guess at what comes next. The heat of the engine warmed the bonnet and slightly melted the bottom layer of snow. This meant it wasn�t quite so firmly affixed to the bonnet. This, in turn, meant that a huge bonnet-shaped slab of snow, around 8� thick chose the precise moment that I pulled out of my street and into the traffic of the main road to lift itself up like a lid and flap itself, with a squelchy THWUUUMMP, onto the windscreen. Eeek.
I just had a look out of the window � the snowman�s head has had a full day of rain on it. His moustache and one eye have disintegrated and fallen off. His carrot nose drooping and his head kind of whittled away. He is somewhat less of a man, if truth be told and looks more forlorn than any forlorn thing I can think of. I may have to take a shovel to him tomorrow and put him out of his misery.
It�s the kindest thing.