First up: DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID WITH THE TITLE IT’S CLEVER AND FUNNY AND BUGGROFF

Ahem. Anyway. It has been snowing. It being winter, it thankfully hasn’t caused anywhere near as much panic as the last time it snowed, when it was headline news pretty much 24/7. Granted, it did snow quite a lot, though I got the impression that Canada and Scandinavia and, err, other places it snows a lot were laughing at us quite a bit for our complete incapability to deal with a bit of the white stuff.

Snow is a mixed bag. Some people love it, others hate it. As with most things, though, there are good and bad things to it.

Bad: cold.

Good: pretty.

Bad: wet.

Good: inspires creativity.

Bad: receiving a snowball.

Good: sending a snowball.

Bad: walking when dressed inappropriately.

Good: walking when dressed appropriately.

Bad: driving.

Good: not being able to drive and getting a day off work.

You get the picture.

It actually snows here in the UK—at least in places where I’ve been living—rather less than you might think, with whole years going by sometimes without a trace of the cold stuff. Even so, it always astonishes me quite how surprised people seem to be when there is even the slightest bit of snowfall. It inspires panic buying and the importing of grit. Grit! The stuff you find on the ground. Yeah. Ridiculous.

I just went out for a run in the snow. It’s cold, snowy and icy. It is also difficult to run in, though I found that after about ten minutes or so, I didn’t feel it any more. This was perhaps due in part to the number of layers I was wearing (which probably also contributed to my relatively slow speed tonight) but also due to actually being active. Or perhaps I was just so frostbitten all my extremities had fallen off.

I have one particularly enduring memory of the snow from my childhood: out in the garden with my brother and some of his friends, carving a lovingly-crafted likeness of Arnie from snow. This lovingly-crafted likeness of Arnie was wearing a jock strap which was lovingly carved with a little bit too much care and attention, as I recall, but the finished product looked awesome. There are probably some photos floating around somewhere, but this was the days long before the Internet, let alone Facebook, so you won’t find those pictures anywhere online.

Most recently, my experiences with snow have been negative. Driving in the snow is particularly unpleasant. I recall one night I was driving home from the school I worked at at the time—a trip which normally took about 50 minutes—and it took six hours. Six hours. At least one of those hours was spent in a genuinely terrifying position halfway up a steep hill with traffic in front and behind, praying to God that my brakes worked properly.

Right now, though, I can look out of the window at the thin white covering on the street and admire its pleasantness. All the more so having just been out in it.

Doesn’t stop it being bloody freezing even inside, though. Wrap up warm.