Grab a Blanket

When I woke up this morning, a blanket of art had been draped over the garden. By art, of course, I mean snow. If the purpose of art is to make you look at things from a new perspective, to stimulate the creative instinct, then what fell out of the sky is today's artistic medium. Children want to create models of people, play anarchistic games of snowballs, invent a replacement for the wheel with makeshift sledges and adults cast off their hard-won routines of daily life. They take guilt-free days off from work, huddle unashamedly beneath their duvets hugging mugs of steaming tea or better still, engage in child-like, creative activities outside.

As a nation, we are not equipped to manage extreme weather conditions because most of the time, we don't have them. Some may be justified in mocking the British inability to cope. The thing is, though, that if you took away our weather changes, even the most minor, predicable ones, what would we talk about?

The best thing about living in Britain is the changing of the seasons so let's not pretend that we don't like the snow or any other random extremes of weather sent to surprise us. Where else could a group of people be stranded in a pub for days on end or go out to get the turkey and be stranded so long as to miss Christmas entirely? These events mark out our lives as noteworthy. They make us realise what normality is and not to take it for granted. They allow us to enjoy temporary exotic (or arctic) conditions we wouldn't normally experience without going on holiday. They allow us all to take a day off from our mundane lives. If nothing else, when it's over, we'll appreciate the usual rainy, grey misery we put up with the rest of the year. Now, I'm going to savour not having to rush to get the children ready for school, prepare for the builders' arrival and go and take some photos. Hell, I might even write something.

Happy snow day, everyone!