We woke up to snow. There was lots of snow on the ground, and it was still falling.
I thought this was immeasurably thrilling, because it is ages since we have had any serious snow, and it always lends a holiday feeling to a day.
Obviously, it wasn’t a holiday, and we had got to get up. Mark was off to his non-profit employment installing rural broadband, and Lucy was going to Carlisle to add some more duelling scars to her knuckles in the Krav Maga gym.
These are illustrated above. She has done that to her fingers by punching people. In the end even her instructor was moved to offer a plaster, because she was bleeding all over the gym. Also she seems to have the beginnings of a black eye.
I fed them both huge slabs of hot almond bread and apple jam and dispatched them into the world carrying bags of provisions, just in case. Then I walked around the Library Gardens with the dogs.
It was nice to walk in the snow. There was only one other set of footprints, and they had almost filled up, so I had the still-pleasurable-even-at-fifty experience of making fresh tracks all over the place, and wondering if I should try walking backward to confuse people. I did not do this in the end, because it looks ridiculous and is difficult to explain if any of the neighbours catch you.
Roger Poopy is a novice at snow, and charged about barking at it, burying his nose and sneezing, and rushing after snowflakes. I did not feel inclined to do any of these things, even if I could have been sure that the neighbours were not watching. I walked sedately round behind the excited dogs, enjoying the tiny atavistic thrill of happy fear that comes with thick snow, just in case the world has to stop for ever and the Co-op runs out of brioche.
I can enjoy any feeling I like in the snow, because of the boots. It is wonderful to be outdoors in thick snow and still have warm feet. If you do not own any boots which are lined and soled in shearling sheepskin right to the very toes, you should. They will make your winter life perfect.
I wore them again later on, to have a walk around the park with Oliver. Oliver was a bit disgruntled by my company, having thought that he would prefer Harry’s, but Harry had been dispatched to visit his father, who lives in Kendal, and was unavailable.
We ambled round the park and threw snowballs for the dogs, who ignored them, despite the rather splendid example of a passing collie who jumped and caught them with admirable proficiency. Oliver built mounds of snow and jumped on them, and I bellowed at the dogs, who were bouncing about in the distance, chasing one another through a frozen surf.
When we got home we stripped off wet clothes. I had tea, and Oliver had apple juice, and we sat together for a little while contemplating whether or not he should spend some of his Christmas money on in-game tokens in order to further extend his game-playing capacity. We thought that probably he should, because it is the thing that he likes to do, and he dashed off upstairs to bash his bank card about.
He will not tell me anything about his bank account. He says that he has learned from the mistakes of his siblings, and also the lady in the bank told him not to.
I got our picnic ready, and when Mark came home we had a little sleep before work, which is where we are now.
The snow has almost disappeared now, which I suppose is a good thing really, certainly it makes driving easier.
I can’t help feeling a bit sorry anyway. It might have been exciting to have a blizzard and to be cut off from the world, like in the book The Long Winter.
Ah well.
