Snow Memory
No buses running, no trains and no Tube so we couldn’t go to work yesterday. Indescribably happy all day. I mean, fancy the cosmos handing you a day off – a Monday, too - just like that. I was up at 5.30 as usual, first just looking out of the window at the strange grey-orange light and, later, watching the cats creeping tentatively through the white. Captain Hook obviously didn’t like it – but then he’s never experienced weather like it before. My lovely boss phoned and said “Put the fire on and put your feet up” but I felt I should at least make an effort to put this unexpected chunk of gratis time to some use so I scrubbed the kitchen and bathroom floors listening to the weather chaos unravelling on Radio 4.

I’ve decided the news media are awful. Quite out of step with actual living people and, well, just awful. You should have heard them, ”Don’t go outside unless you really have to” and (over and over again) “It’s bad - and it’s going to get much worse.” They love to imply that the world is always at the point of ending. But when I ventured out at 9-ish for a pint of milk and some ciggies giddy high spirits were all around. Our street was full of children building snowmen and throwing snowballs, neighbours standing round chatting in little groups, holding frothy coffees and going in and out of one another’s’ houses. For a brief moment it was like being in some cold Northern state of America i.e. brilliant.

Some snow things:

I’m at London Zoo with my Dad and it’s snowing. In my hand I’m holding a brand new copy of ‘Mamma Mia’ by ABBA on the black and yellow Epic label. He’s nipped off to the loo and left me standing against a wall into which has been cut a huge glass window. I’m facing the other way looking at nothing much (I was a very spaced out child – I believed I could see air particles) but, getting bored, I eventually turn to look through the glass. As I do this the enormous head of a killer whale looms through the turquoise and appears to look right at me. I jump out of my skin and while I’m old enough to stop myself crying (just) with the fright, by the time he comes back I’ve moved a fair way along the wall to where there is no glass. When we pass the window again the whale has swum completely out of view.

It’s a Thursday night in December 1981 and I’ve missed Top Of The Pops. I don’t mind, though, because I’m seeing the Human League at Guildford Civic Hall. Two days before, on the Tuesday, they’d reached Number 1 with ‘Don’t You Want Me’. Before the band come on they play the 12” of ‘Bedsitter’ by Soft Cell over the P.A. and everybody goes mad. It’s a terrific, right-place-right-time, zeitgeisty show before I even know what a zeitgeist is. The girls are doing their funny walking up and down dance, Phil has his asymmetric haircut and Adrian’s doing the slides i.e. it is classic-period League. There are big screens behind them showing sheep and the Soviet Army and scenes from Star Trek. Some Punks are spitting (I know!) so the girls walk off but Phil warns the Punks and Jo and Suz come back on and finish the show. When we leave the Civic Hall it’s snowing really hard and we throw snowballs at each other in the High Street. The next day it’s still snowing and school is closed. (This might qualify as the best twenty fours of my life.)

It’s the same winter and the snow isn’t nearly so much fun once it’s frozen into mean ice and you have to negotiate a paper round. I’m walking up an icy, sloping driveway, holding a rolled-up newspaper and I’m vaguely aware of a woman standing at the kitchen sink watching me from her window. For the umpteenth time that morning I slip and fall flat on my face. Furious, I look up at the woman and she laughs and holds up for me to see not one but BOTH of her arms in plaster from wrist to elbow. I laugh and dust myself off. While the whole exchange was over in seconds and while I never saw that woman again I always had a nice, warm feeling when I delivered papers to that particular house.

1987. I’m 20 and I can’t get back to college in Manchester – trains cancelled due to snow. So instead, I’m round my friend Mark Wealthy’s house, in his bedroom, listening to Mantronix’s ‘Music Madness’ and New Order’s ‘Low Life’ over and over again. At about 2 in the afternoon after a rummage in his desk he says, “I can’t believe it. Look what I’ve just found.’ and it’s a small quantity of magic mushrooms. Naughtily, we decide to take them – all of them – which we wash down with milky coffee. Soon afterwards ‘Music Madness’ and ‘Low Life’ start to sound very very good indeed and we spend the whole of the rest of the day and night rolling around on his bed laughing and laughing. We try, hopelessly, to figure out how to play ‘Monopoly’ but in our state get absolutely nowhere. Nice colours, though.

It’s December 1990 and snowing heavily. The phone’s broken (again) in the freezing house I share in Tooting Broadway and I’ve got my school friend Taff staying with me. It’s so cold in the flat we decide to spend the night in the pub, putting records on the jukebox and eating McCoy’s. At some point I have an overwhelming urge to phone home because my sister is due to give birth any day. The phone in the pub is also broken (or only taking Mercury phone cards or something) so I trudge round to the public one and it’s slow progress because the snow is almost up to my knees. When I get through Mum tells me she’s given birth to a girl they've named Remi. When I get back to the pub and Taff I am officially an uncle.