I love this weather for making modern life pause

One of the things I loved most about studying on the US’S east coast was the snow. Five or six times a year, usually starting in late December, a mega-blizzard would tear into town. For several hours, everything stopped.

As a student, I lived close to where I needed to be and had few obligations. Out came the walking boots and huge coat, like a duvet with a zip, the ski gloves and woolly hat, and then the delightful venturing out into total whiteness. The best stage was early in the blizzard. A strange hush would fall. The streets emptied. The light diffused into a mellow, grey gloaming. The town took on an apocalyptic quality, especially at dusk, when the lampposts would bathe the growing drifts in an eerie orange aura. Everything seemed to be on pause, waiting in muffled silence for the snow to exhaust itself.

Not long later, the snowploughs would appear. Up and down the streets they’d slide, shearing the snow off the road and onto the sidewalk, slicing its messy edges in long, efficient rasps. At night, still snowing under the street lights, everything glittered, like a Christmas card made real.

Forgive me, then, if I can’t share in the endless, misery-guts complaining about the snow this week. I haven’t seen this much snow in London since I was about four. My abiding memory of that time is of being pulled happily through the streets on a red toboggan by my father and then shooting down Primrose Hill, excited and scared because I was going much too fast.

This time, sadly, I didn’t have a toboggan. Instead, I walked over the river and back through St James’ Park. As I walked, the blizzard cleared quite suddenly and was replaced by blinding sunshine, covering everything in a shimmering blue haze.

Everyone acts differently in the snow. Away go the phones; out come the frolics and scowls. In the park, a Polish mother (or nanny?) was walking an intrigued toddler: “You like the snow?” she asked. “Are you cold?” A group of teens in ski jackets were trying to run and slide on their feet down a slope. Another group squealed as they squelched through the slush in their perfectly clean, white trainers. A civil servant with a crumpled face and a defeated air trudged across the bridge in a black fluffy Russian hat. A placid man in a lightweight raincoat walked stoically through the cold wind, a colourful scarf wrapped carefully around his head. A large, elderly woman in a thick, navy poncho and long skirt made her way carefully down the Mall using a Zimmer frame, grimacing disapprovingly at the skies.

Modern life doesn’t stop for many reasons. Deliveries, appointments, timetables, deadlines – it’s all go, all the time. So, when the weather halts everything, just for a few hours or even days, when nature momentarily loosens the iron grip of convenience and efficiency, I say embrace it. Your commute isn’t actually the most important thing in the world and the heavens want you to know it.

Of course, this won’t cut much mustard with the poor sods stuck in their cars overnight. For the minority with essential travel commitments, like medical treatment or caring duties, or whose bosses refuse to take “extreme weather” as an excuse, the blizzards aren’t much fun. And for the exceptionally unlucky, extreme weather brings real tragedy. The message from Public Health England is clear: check on your elderly relatives, buy tinned goods and sit tight.

Most people seemed to be coping just fine. A stranded truck driver in charge of a lorry full of Greggs pasties and doughnuts handed them out to fellow drivers in Northumberland. A Cambridgeshire pensioner, determined to get to the pub, made it there on skis. And a restaurant in Seaton Sluice, Northumberland, that had closed due to the weather reopened when a bloody-minded 92-year-old came a-knocking for her fish and chips.

Indeed, the public seem to be coping better than our infrastructure is. National Grid issued a panicked warning about a possible 14 per cent shortfall in gas supplies on Thursday. Industrial users and suppliers responded quickly enough to avert a bad situation, but they can’t disguise the worsening trend. Britain is shutting down gas storage and becoming more and more reliant on imported gas and electricity, even as the government bangs on about resilience, industrial strategies and electric cars. We can’t be far from seeing several decades of negligent energy policy come home to roost. At that point, a bit of British grit and gritting won’t be of much use.

Every snowflake is precious and unique, just as every Corbynista has been taught. Apparently, Barbra Streisand didn’t get the memo. Unable to let go of her beloved pet, Samantha, she had scientists clone her 14-year-old coton de tulear, a rare, fluffy, white breed of dog, before it died last year. Happily, she now has two replacements. The internet filled up with criticism of this “unethical” behaviour.

I don’t see how it’s any less ethical than buying a new puppy, but I do worry for Ms Streisand’s mental state. You can clone a genome, but you can’t replicate a creature’s experiences and personality. In other words, you can’t defeat death. Every pet, just like every snowflake, really is unique, and we’re all subject to nature’s rules. If a dog dies after a long and happy life, that is not the time to break out the credit card and petri dish, like some kind of demented Dr Frankenstein. It’s the time to give thanks and let go.