Why nothing stirs a Briton’s soul like a blanket of snow
. . . even if it does bring the nation to a shuddering halt
Yesterday morning, I woke up at my friends’ house in Northamptonshire, blearily pulled open the curtains and — Oh my God! — was greeted by a sight of quite staggering beauty.
the ‘snowbomb’ had detonated! Overnight, a foot of snow had been dumped on the picture-postcard village of Preston Capes.
yards from my bedroom window, the tower battlements and roof of the medieval parish church were blanketed with snow. Where the walls of the church were sheltered from the weather, the ironstone they build with in these parts stood out a deep chocolatebrown against the enveloping whiteness.
at first glance, the world had turned black and white. the far-off hedgerows were black on their sheltered side, dusted white on their windward side. the gnarled boughs of an ancient oak were white above, black below.
Half a mile away, I could make out a solitary rook, black as coal against the snowy hills.
Look closer, though, and there were splashes of colour everywhere: the bright red of the berries in the snow- caked holly; the faint orange-brown of the bare silver birch trees.
and what silence and stillness there was. the animal world had hunkered down against the cold.
Only a few brave blue tits and robins were at large, flying a few feet above the hedgerows where their less hardy cousins were taking shelter. the snow was completely virgin, free of any animal tracks.
Oh, the joy of a real winter after the wet, grey, nondescript season of recent years.
snow brings us to life by sending our minds hurtling back to the heavenly days of childhood, when every winter, or so it seemed, was blessed by a substantial fall or two; and Jack Frost really did nip at your nose as temperatures plunged below zero.
I am not ashamed to admit that I embraced childhood pleasures yesterday, hurling snowballs, building a snowman and racing down a hill, half of the time on a toboggan, half the time on my back.
No health-and-safety nannying here; no helmets or hi- viz jackets. Children cheerfully rocketed off the edge of the steep hill, headfirst, precariously balanced on the equivalent of a big plastic plate.
a crowd of locals had gathered in the shadow of the church. We were all caught up in an infectious delight — our British reserve blasted away by the magically transformed landscape. For more than an hour, no one looked at their phones; no one disappeared inside to watch television or waste precious hours staring at a computer screen. AND what perfect timing! How blessed to have a fresh snowfall at the weekend, when we can take full advantage of Nature’s most playful creation, rather than during the week, when we must stare at the snow gloomily through school and office windows.
In december, too! suddenly, the lines of the Christmas carols come gloriously to life. the holly and the ivy were wrapped around each other in the churchyard. Last night was certainly a silent Night in this untouched corner of rural england.
Is it too much to hope that the snow will return on december 25 for the rare joy of a White Christmas?
In truth, global warming or no global warming, snow is usually a rarity in lowland Britain, particularly near the temperate coasts.
But we are, in fact, a far Northern people. Without the Gulf stream — the series of wind- driven sea currents distributing warm water from the Gulf of Mexico — we would be snowbound all through the winter. London is on around the same latitude as Calgary in Canada, Kiev in the Ukraine and Irkutsk in siberia.
Calgary was cold enough to host the Winter Olympics in 1988, while Irkutsk, on the shores of frozen Lake Baikal, has a sub-arctic climate, with temperatures hovering at around minus 19c in January. Meanwhile, we get the gloomy, short winter days — in the whole of January, London gets 45 hours of sunshine, rome 130 — but none of the white stuff that can make spirits soar.
so, deep down, our inner Northern souls are longing for the snow they are denied by the Gulf stream. and, because it is so rare, we rejoice in it (whereas in siberia and Canada the novelty wears off after the first blizzard).
Of course my heart goes out to the elderly and infirm, kept indoors yesterday and no doubt in the coming days by the hazardous pavements. I sympathise, too, with travellers stranded by the weather.
I was almost one of them. My taxi couldn’t make it up the snowy hills around daventry to pick me up. and the train from Long Buckby wasn’t running, either. Instead, there was the prospect of the worst four words in the english language: rail replacement bus service.
Kind friends took pity on me and gave me a lift back to London. Four times, we had to get out and push after the car fishtailed and aquaplaned across the icy Northamptonshire hills. We crawled down the M1 at an average of 34mph and were almost taken out by a snowplough careering down the middle of the road in Harpenden.
But nothing could blot out the sheer beauty of the pristine hills, fields and villages of Northamptonshire and Hertfordshire, rolling away from the hard shoulder.
as the afternoon wore on, a faint pink glow developed over the bright white fields to the west.
How sad it was finally to make it into the heatbowl of London, where the snow had melted but for a few forlorn patches on parked cars. It was like a snowy dream had come and gone.
But for a few brief hours, the sound, fury and ugliness of the modern world had been hidden by a pure, white coat of serene peace. Please let it come back again for Christmas!
Harry Mount is author of How England Made the English (Viking).