Snow Days

I spent my earliest years living within striking distance (500 or so miles) of the equator, so snow existed only in the realms of  the fantastical, on Christmas cards sent annually from England, in tales of the conquering of Everest (during the year I was born), or in picture-books with penguins and polar-bears (never seen together, obviously).

Relocated back to England, I experienced snow for the first time as a kid in the Fenlands, low-lying and exposed to any beast that sought to blizzard its way in from the East. The 'big freeze' of 1963 lives still in memory. But in truth, we are not a snowy country. Snowfalls are occasional events, snow paralysis usually ensues for 48 hours or so, snow days are rare and happy interludes for British school children (and their teachers).

My first experience of proper, regular, reliable snow was in the 1990s when I was working in America, the city of Rochester, upper New York State on the shore of Lake Ontario, home of the (then) mighty Eastman Kodak Co. Once the season arrived there would be snow for weeks, a way of life. The main thoroughfares were cleared by teams of plows (ploughs) before dawn every morning, tons of salt and grit were spread, it became a routine to dig one's car out of the daily snowfall on the car-park at the end of each winter afternoon.

The most dramatic fall I ever experienced was one Sunday in March. Having driven to a country club for lunch with colleagues, we found on leaving that nearly three feet of snow had fallen in just as many (or few) hours. It was known as a lake-effect fall, cold winds blowing down from Canada picking up moisture across Lake Ontario and dumping it on lucky Rochester.

I was there through several winters and so got used to the regime. Great coat, balaclava and gloves, thick socks and DMs were the dress-code for outdoors. The latter needed washing nightly to remove the salt. Cans of de-icer and a snow shovel were indispensable as was lip balm. On bright days sunglasses were protection against snow glare. Every night was cool.

Rochester, New York

The scariest drive I ever did was from Boston Massachusetts to Rochester, some 400 miles, one Sunday night through heavy snow. I'd been to a gig and needed to be in work the next morning for a big project meeting. It's a pretty straight route on Interstate 90 and should have taken six hours but the weather was atrocious, there were hardly any other vehicles out and driving into falling snow all the way it took me eight, with the side window part way open to keep me awake. I arrived just in time to shower, change and head for the office.

Those of you who are regular visitors to the Saturday blog will understand that although I'm perfectly happy with snow and enjoy it when it knows its place, I don't much like being cold. I don't do ski-ing holidays and I cannot see the attraction of climbing any mountain with a ton of the white stuff on it. Give me a sunny beach to stroll on any day. However, I do have a grudging admiration for those who decide to rise to the challenge of climbing some of the most dangerous and inhospitable peaks the planet has to offer. As I stated at the outset, the conquest of Everest was one of the defining events of the year I was born.

Mount Everest 1953

Today's internal narrative poem, with obvious snowy connotations, comes from the deep freeze compartment of the imaginarium and casts a cold and calculating eye on the life and death of a mountaineer. Apologies in advance if you find it a bit bleak; it's just where the muse dragged me in snow week.

Scalene

Not so easy reading a book by torchlight

with mittens on because the words won't

keep still and then there's a challenge in

turning over each page  hands trembling

eyes straining lungs burning battery low.

You might say it's a strange way to keep

the mind occupied but for one raised on

the rational five miles below and another

five thousand to the west as thought flies

it's the mathematics of it matters mostly.

I know I won't get out of here alive odds

stacked against survival  my companion

expired already by my side and now the

weight of loneliness within oppresses as

those unremitting snows outside entomb.

Falling non-stop for a week, such a freak

phenomenon occurs once in eighty years

but we took the risk gambled all and lost

so can shed no tears that's left for wives

and children after we haven't come home.

I packed for intellectual exercise the new

treatise by Professor Kline had devoured

all but the last few pages of Mathematics

in Western Culture before disaster struck

and now I'm struggling to its conclusion.

Fading at the apex of the thinnest scalene

remote from all felicity still I treasure this

slimmest shard of a mental triangle tying

me to home as I'm becoming just another

mote the bulb dying before the final page.   

You might consider my position strange

for someone who believes in no gods to

be nearer to heaven than most at my end

shuddering into a blizzard of dead souls

simply the mathematics of it my friends.

            

Just in case you need a pick-me-up after that, some sublime music to finish from one of my favourite American bands of the 1990s, the fabulous Trip Shakespeare. Just click on the song title: Snow Days

Thanks for reading. Stay cosy, S ;-)

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Winter Ghost

I was reminiscing with someone this afternoon about the 'terrible winter' of 1962/3. He'd been given a bike for Christmas but wasn't able to ride it for weeks because of the Big Freeze. I'd been bought a new football jersey and broke it in - over the top of several layers of vests and t-shirts - playing football out on our snow-filled road rendered impassable by traffic - except for the milk van which was still pulled by horse!

It was the coldest winter in Britain since 1739. The snows arrived in mid-December 1962, we had the whitest of White Christmases and then arctic blizzards swept the country on Boxing Day. Snow fell on several occasions over a couple of months and lay to a depth of many feet - but the low temperatures were the biggest factor. Hard frosts and freezing fog were a daily occurrence through January and February. The ground was frozen (hard as iron), rivers became solid and even the sea iced up around parts of the coast. Sporting events (horse-racing, football matches) were postponed for weeks on end - with Blackpool players ice-skating on the Bloomfield Road pitch - and the thaw only commenced at the beginning of March. It seems hard to credit nowadays.

That's almost by-the-by. What I planned to write about is the much-mythologised Christmas Day football match in no man's land from December 1914. Michael Foreman wrote an excellent and moving children's story about it in War Game. Then there was a big fuss when a leading supermarket chain made it the subject of their Christmas advertising campaign on the 100th anniversary, with some claiming it had never happened and others levelling accusations of such commercialisation showing a disrespect for the dead - so I went to the Imperial War Museum website looking for the truth and it is this:

Late on Christmas Eve 1914, men of the British Expeditionary Force heard German troops in the trenches opposite them singing carols and patriotic songs and saw lanterns and small fir trees along their trenches. Messages began to be shouted between the opposing lines.

The following day, British and German soldiers met in no man's land, exchanged gifts of cigarettes, chocolate and drink, took photographs and played some impromptu games of football. After Boxing Day, the meetings dwindled out, officers being worried that the 'truce' would undermine fighting spirits; and the High Commands on both sides tried to prevent any truces on a similar scale happening again.

I have a profound belief that more unites us than divides us and the essence of that no man's land event still resonates for me, so much so that I've re-mythologised it in today's poem.

There are times when, on balance, the human condition feels like it's a sad one. This low period of winter ghosts is one such time, but it will pass like a weather front. Kindness and a compassionate out-reaching to our fellow human-beings can restore a sunnier clime.

The Ghost Between The Posts
As a lad, he turned out
on the raddled playing-field
of no-man's-land
at Christmas
in that first cruel winter
of the war to end all wars,
big hands keeping goal,
the last line of defence
while his fellows
ran like kids in the local park
leathering a sodden football
out of sheer relief
for being untrenched
and still alive
in the mud of so much madness.

When it was too dark
to distinguish friend from foe,
then the game was over,
the result irrelevant
as there were no losers on that day,
just two weary teams
retaking their respective bunkers
with respectful handshakes
all round
but no swapping of shirts,
for on the morrow
they would be duty-bound
to fall to killing each other once again.

As a lad, he bled out
on the bedevilled slaying-field
of no-man's land
on New Year's Day
in that first cruel winter
of the war to end all wars,
big hands clutching
at his gaping side
as he tried to make sense
of why he had to die,
why his fellows
fell like nine-pins in the dark,
in the fog of stinking gas
and the mud of so much madness.

These days,
he's the ghost between the posts
on that haunted poppy-field
of everyman's land
big hands spread in seeming benediction
for the fallen of both sides,
lads who played that game
out of their love of life
and a simple belief
in our common humanity.

Thank you so much for reading the blog, S ;-)

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