School closed and scraping the driveway - it must be a snow day

Perhaps I have a greater awareness of the world around me now, or maybe the science of meteorology has simply improved. Whatever it is, there was not the slightest hint of uncertainty about last Friday’s snow day. Such was the degree of advance warning that I knew more or less exactly when the blizzard would arrive, how much snow there was likely to be and when it would thaw. When my son woke early on Friday, he didn’t immediately look out the window; he simply assumed the snow was there.

On the Monday morning before, I was listening to the wireless when I heard the forecaster – either Angie or Cecilia – say that she was worried about what was coming on Thursday evening. This caught my attention. Worried? How bad was this snow going to be?

It made me think about how your outlook is determined by your starting point. I have never quite lost that childish sense of wonder about snow, the thrill of having an unexpected day off school. Perhaps being the parent to a young child has heightened this appreciation. A proper snow day comes about less frequently than Christmas and shares some of the same sense of undefinable magic.

But, similarly, I am aware that snow can be a huge pain, leading to transport problems, power cuts and dangerous, freezing and miserable conditions. There will be many who, just like the forecaster, will be worried. The point is often made that our infrastructure is not designed to cope with extreme adverse weather.

The heavy snow arrived, as predicted, in the form of a blizzard on Thursday evening. At the beginning my son and I went to the large shopping centre to buy food, in case it became difficult to drive later on. My boy howled with laughter as we ran hand in hand through the car park, the bitter wind driving the flurry of flakes right into our faces.

Later on, I watched out the window of my front room as the conditions deteriorated. The estate where I live is on a hill and I knew from previous snowfalls that some cars would struggle to make it up the slippery slope. I live at the foot of the hill and it has been the case in the past that motorists have abandoned their vehicles at my house. By the time I went to bed, three cars had been parked while their owners made the last part of the journey home on foot.

The next morning, I was awoken by a constant ping of messages on my phone as the mums in the P6 WhatsApp group tried to ascertain whether school would be open. Before I had made it downstairs the message had arrived from the principal confirming the closure because, he said, several staff members were unable to make it to work.

The snowfall, as expected, was heavy. When I went into my back garden to find my shovel and yard brush, my foot went deep into the white blanket, well past the top of my walking boots.

My first job was to dig out the car, as my wife needed to get to work. Snot dripped from my nose as I worked, brushing the snow from the vehicle and then enjoying the scraping sound of the navvy shovel on the ground as I cleared the powdery snow from the driveway. I watched some cars drive gingerly along the main road, noting that several still had a thick layer of snow on their roofs and obscuring their headlights.

Next, I went for a walk because I wanted to see the landscape in its undisturbed state before the thaw set in. I stopped several times, taking pictures on my little phone of snow drifting onto benches or clinging to road signs and of the treads left by small animals.

I stopped at the corner shop on the way home, to buy the milk which I had forgotten to purchase the night before. The shop is on a lower level than the road with a little carpark which slopes down sharply towards the front. As I entered, I noticed a large car driving onto the tarmac which had not been cleared.

I spend some minutes scanning the morning papers and then chatting with a neighbour before buying the milk and leaving the shop. The large car was still there, trying desperately to exit the carpark. The vehicle’s front wheels wee spinning furiously, succeeding only in getting the car stuck deeper in the snow.

I went to the car and the driver, a young woman, lowered the window. I saw that she was panicking, on the edge of tears.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said pleadingly.

I told her not to worry. A couple of other shoppers stopped to help, and we began to push the heavy car. The driver spun the wheels again, sending up streams of slush, and I exalted her to use less gas. I could feel my feet losing traction on the slippery ground and the cold, wet surface of the car was stinging my bare hands.

Eventually, the car began to move slowly. With one final shove we got it back onto the road and I stood for a few seconds, watching the motorist drive off at high speed with no acknowledgement of the help she had been given.

I brushed slush off my trousers and thrust my hands into my pockets for warmth. I started to walk home, knowing that my son would be waiting there with a snowball.