A TOUCH OF FROST

Facing sub-zero temperatures, ice-rain and frozen eyelashes are all in a day’s work in Quebec, but Alan Cochrane is still holding out for a winter wave in Scotland

Alan Cochrane longs for a flurry of snow before spring is sprung

In spring a young man’s fancy may well lightly turn to thoughts of love but for this not-soyoung man my thoughts are entirely concerned with a much more mundane subject – the weather. We’re some way off spring as yet, even if the days are growing longer, but at the time of writing winter appears to have passed us by.

Of course, things could change but having to scrape the car windscreen free of frost and ice – that at least has been our lot in Scotland’s capital – does not a winter make and whilst last year’s icy ‘Beast from the East’ caused havoc nationwide in March, it would be extraordinary if we had a repeat.

Whilst no repetition would suit most people, I’d find it a huge disappointment if we hurtled into spring without so much as a decent snowfall. One of my continuing disappointments about living in Scotland, or maybe I should say Lowland Scotland, is not that it’s cooler than my former billet in London and the South East of England when Westminster was my place of work, but that we seldom seem to see a proper winter nowadays.

Indeed it’s not going too far to say that we live in a country without distinctive seasons. I have an acquaintance who hankers after a move to Canada, where he says that whatever else they may lack they do have decent and distinctive seasonal changes. Mind you, I also have a couple of pals who move back to Scotland every winter to escape the icy blasts around their Quebec home.

Personally, I have happy memories of a November trip to Toronto a couple of years ago where I used to delight in switching on the morning TV bulletins to see the weather forecasters spell out the seriously sub-zero temperatures predicted for the major cities across that massive country.

And I get almost envious when I see the temperatures prevailing in the Russian city of Kazan, 450 miles east of Moscow, where my student daughter spent a hot summer month a couple of years back but where the mercury regularly plunges to minus 20°C in mid-winter. I’d have loved that – she would have hated it. Mind you, she was sorely disappointed when her autumn in St Petersburg 15 months ago saw low temperatures but not a single snowflake.

Winter weather – real winter weather – requires real winter clobber and homes with proper heating and insulation. We’re beginning to get the former right, to the extent that we see Brits donning amazing coats and anoraks as soon as there’s an ‘R’ in the month but which no self-respecting North American or Russki would dream of wearing until the temperature dropped to zero. I plead guilty here in having just about every type of coat known to man, as well as a few that aren’t. And while most modern homes are now built with excellent insulation too many British houses were built when energy was cheap and are thus difficult to keep warm, except at huge cost.

We’re sadly a long way off the day where, as in energy-rich Russia, home heating is free for the whole of the winter. British and Scottish governments pay a sort of lip service to a massive programme of home insulation for older homes when what they’re really banking on is our series of mild winters continuing forever.

Oh yes, and everybody seems to drive a 4x4 car nowadays when hardly anyone seems to need one.

Who knows, last year’s ‘Beast from the East’ may well have been a one-off long shot and those windy, wet autumns and mild winters may well be here to stay. Just as long as that tip-top summer of 2018 becomes a regular event.

This is not the place – and I’m not expert enough – to rehearse the arguments for and against climate change. What I can do is bemoan the absence of those ‘proper’ snowy days I remember as a child – or is my memory deluding me? And, of course, there were all of those white winters we enjoyed – well, I enjoyed them – when we spent a great deal of time in a cottage a thousand feet up a hill in the Angus glens.

Yes, like most people, I look forward to spring but I don’t ever want to see it rushing in before we’ve had a decent winter. I just hope it’s not too late for a few inches before the crocuses and daffodils are out.

“I’d find it a huge disappointment if we hurtled into spring without a decent snowfall