‘Don’t touch the snow’

The saddest words uttered yesterday were: “Don’t touch the snow.” That was the rule for children at the Jo Richardson Community School in Dagenham. If there was no touching of the snow there’d be no snowballs, the headmaster reasoned, and if there were no snowballs there’d be no stones hidden in snowballs and therefore no life-changing injuries to innocent bystanders. The logic is unassailable: if no one had played with balls there’d be no cricket and if there’d been no cricket then George II’S son Fred would not have died of a blow from a cricket ball but have become king, and the American colonies need not have been lost. As for snow, it is so rare at the latitude of Dagenham that this week’s fall was particularly precious, and the first thing anyone wants to do, child or adult, is to touch it, cold and bright and beautiful as it is.