On Snowing All Day

It's been snowing all day, on and off. The Phantom's right. You can tell it's snowing even before you wake up. Just open your ears to the muffled sounds then your eyes to the whiter than usual glare coming through the curtains, and you know it's snowing. The snow bounces light right through the windows into every corner of the rooms. The birds huddle together in the hedges and trees, urging me to feed them last night's bread ends. Later in the morning they are followed into the gardens by children sliding about bare headed and gloveless. A car or two passes. Lunch is prepared. And still the snow comes, on and off, but not really sticking.

It hasn't really snowed properly, enough for drifts halfway up the house walls, since the children were at primary school. Then we'd be out making huge snowmen, leaping off the garden benches into enormous snowdrifts, and finally making snow angels. Sometimes even the village school would close, and parents would be summonsed from work at lunchtime to collect their over-excited children. Of course no-one minded, we all joined in with the mock-anxiety of it all. Should I try and get to the butcher's for stewing beef just in case we get snowed in? Have I enough milk and bread? Shall I get the barbeque out just in case we get a power cut, and where are those blasted candles? You only need to be snowed in and cut off once, with young children, to know that the panacea for all ills and fears is a well stocked pantry, a beef stew on the go and lots of candles. And snow angels, of course.