SNOWFALL

Funny stuff, snow…

I could, of course, claim that I have a “love/hate” relationship with the wretched stuff. At least I could if I hadn’t resolved to try not to “hate” anything any more, and that whenever it starts to fall it causes me to feel utterly miserable.

Oh, it’s pretty enough, I know, and there is something rather wonderfully therapeutic about watching the large flakes as they tumble towards the ground as a gentle snow flurry passes by, and of course, for those whose lives are blighted by having young people to entertain it is a blissful distraction and an opportunity to get creative in a very “hands-on” kind of a way.

And a good blanket of snow can make even the most unpromising of landscapes look rather beautiful for a while. At least until it all gets grey and slushy and filthy after a couple of days or so. As anywhere gets coated with a beautiful and transforming coating of this most natural of wonders, any old landscape can suddenly seem quite astonishingly pretty and mesmerising, which can make even the most unskilled of photographers able to create an image that might be considered half decent to the untrained eye.

Last year I managed to spend a day in Yosemite Park just as it got hit by its first snowstorm in months and the results were both spectacular and stunning if also more than a tad chilly and soggy.

So far, I’m really not making the “anti” argument fly really, am I?

So why does snowfall depress me so…?

Is it possibly because I live upon the very brink of the countryside in one of those areas that suddenly becomes a right royal pain to get about in if the roads are all suddenly snarled up…?

Possibly…

Is it because I tend to head out at such an ungodly hour that everything is still frozen and the streets are lethal to move about on…?

Very likely.

The problem really is that whenever it starts to snow and the “Oohs!”  and the “Aahs!” and the exclamations of “Isn’t is all so pretty?” are ringing in my ears, I’m just thinking that my days are about to become seriously annoying and life is about to get harder, and every surface I venture upon whenever I choose to venture outdoors is about to become dangerous and treacherous and everything I have to do in order to live my life, from just getting to work to buying a loaf of bread, is going to start to get really, really annoying…

Not only that but I run the risk of having lumps of the stuff chucked at me by complete strangers who claim that they are “Only having a laugh” whilst annoying people can either find nothing at all else to talk about, or suddenly develop a desire to hurtle downhill fast upon a piece of plastic for no very good reason, or complain about the fact that by the time they had managed to acquire a sled of some kind the snow had already vanished.

“It’s snowing!”

“Bloody marvellous!”

“Don’t be such a grouch!”

“Bah!”

No, you can keep it.

A fall of snow might very well be your particular “bag” and fill you and yours with a great deal of happiness, but don’t expect me to be very happy about it when it happens.