Snowbound!

Like most of the rest of the country I am currently having some difficulty with the snow. Incoming Christmas presents have been frozen in their tracks and I, by dint of living in a remote area, am likewise stuck where I am. It's mildly stressful to say the least. People are expecting their Christmas tat. I'm expecting my Christmas tat- and dinner!

I remember snow being my friend- back when I was little snow was a sometimes treat, bits of the floor you could safely prise loose and throw at people with no worse consequences than having your face rammed into a snowbank for seventy seconds. Later on it became the last cast-iron, unassailable excuse to get out of school or college and pursue your own interests for a day or so. Mystery illnesses and family emergencies came and went but snow was solid, a skiving wing man no one could gainsay.

Now, in adult life, snow appears to have become the enemy; it's turned its back on Jim the adult and exists solely to thwart him. Like a bitter and deluded ex-girlfriend it sits and waits before unfolding a masterstroke of spite and malice, for which it can't even be blamed- force majore! Worse still you can sometimes feel the ghosts of the old pleasure at watching the flakes mount up even as you know it's going to cause you untold hassles- echoes from childhood when you and the snow were in it together.

I hate the bloody snow- but I suppose that's just the child in me wondering what the hell happened to my elemental buddy. Somewhere along the way one of us went off the rails.