by H. Graciela Dyer

Created on: February 07, 2009

"What's the point of snow, mom?" my son asked me one day, years ago, at the end of a particularly brutal Montreal winter. He was tired of being stuffed into a snowsuit each morning before being taken out to tackle snowbanks and slushy puddles.

At the time, I probably responded with a short lecture about the plants needing a nice, soft blanket to cover them. I'm writing this, however, in London, at the end of the first week of February, 2009 the week that will be remembered for the worst snowstorm to hit the UK in almost 20 years.

Today, several more plausible answers, applicable within the UK context, are beginning to occur to me.

i. Words seldom used in reference to British weather have come out for an airing: Blizzard, flurry, snowdrift, snow bank, snowman and winter wonderland were dusted off and used hourly, lest another 18 years should pass before we can use them again.

ii. During the first, glorious day, when the snow was still clean and novel and no-one had begun to tot up the approximate cost of most of London being out of action, Londoners displayed the kind of holiday spirit that hasn't been seen since the Queen's Jubilee celebrations in 1977.

iii. People of all ages got to perfect their snowperson-building skills. In North London's Clissold Park, a snow-mermaid, a snow Dalek and a snow-couple smooching icily on a bench next to a pond hobnobbed with a small crowd of carrot-nosed snowmen.

iv. The spillover from this unaccustomed opportunity for guilt-free play created a kind of Disney-Dickensian atmosphere along some of London's side streets, where, behind steamed-up caf windows, friends and couples beamed at strangers over the luxury of mid-afternoon tea and cake.

v. It supplied the news media with countless column inches. Newscasts were bursting with blow-by-blow information on: school closures and people's reactions to them (pro and con); numbers of people stranded in various regions as the snow made its way around the British Isles; the road conditions and explanations from mayors, truck drivers and various Members of Parliament as to why the roads weren't sufficiently gritted.

So apparently limitless were the angles of what was dubbed an "extreme snow event" that we almost missed the news of Vladimir Putin being outed as an ABBA fan. You'd think Britons had never seen weather before.

Inevitably, at end of the first week of what promises to be an extended period of bad weather, there's been a noticeable dampening of the holiday spirit. After brief spell of complaining, however, upper lips have begun to stiffen and the population is beginning to rally round and help those in need. For each flurry of complaints about slippery roads and the unreliable train service, an equal number of stories of stranded drivers being towed or otherwise helped by complete strangers.

While London is currently snow-free, the forecast for the remainder of the month is not good. Temperatures are due to dip to as low as minus 7 degrees Celsius overnight and there's more snow on the way.

What's the point of snow? Now that I no longer have to play the wise parent, I can confess that I really haven't a clue.

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