Snow

Last year at this time, the end of January, we were covered in snow… and I actually like snow! I feel very sorry for those people who are inconvenienced by it, and dreadfully sorry for farmers and their livestock when they become engulfed… but I just like it. I know it is miserable for people who can’t get out, trapped by snow for one reason or another, for people whose businesses suffer because of it, or worse still, those people who are involved in accidents.

There is something about the colour of the sky when it is going to snow, and there is a different colour when it has snowed but the clouds are full of more of it. Then there are the brilliant skies when the sun comes out, and all is crisp and white and beautiful and all blue and bright above. I like the sound of walking through snow, that sort of squeaky sound, and the strange quality of other noises when the land is covered in it. I like to see trees in snow, roofs covered with it, hills mantled in it.

At the moment we have had rain, dreary rain for weeks, and south of us here in Somerset people’s lives are becoming more and more difficult as the flood levels rise. Even if houses aren’t flooded, drains can be affected so you cannot use your toilet, electricity supply can become intermittent, rats and other vermin seek shelter in people’s homes… Farmers also suffer, not just their crops can be drowned and the helpful bacteria and worms in the soil drowned too, but their livestock may need moving… and if they can’t move them then there is only one alternative, to sell them.

In my latest novel, Radwinter I have set it in the autumn of 2013, so really there should have been lots of rain and wet weather… but I lowered the temperature, and my fictitious towns of Strand and Easthope have been suffering sleet and snow, blizzards and snowdrifts. Perhaps the next novel will be about floods!