First stage: The Timeless Beauty Of Winter. As soon as enough snow has fallen to make the recycling bins look pretty, British adults turn on the “out of office” in their brains and allow themselves to become Simple People Utterly Enchanted By Snow.
Within the first three flakes, the Social Media Reaction To Snow begins. The extroverts all breathlessly post “SNOW!” on Twitter at the same time, as if they’re a Dimbleby breaking the news of JFK’s assassination, then move to Instagram for Hot Snow Selfies in adorable red bobble hats. Introverts, meanwhile, go to Facebook and post 23+ photos of their snowy garden, really leaning in on the juxtaposition of shooting a normal, humdrum thing – but covered in snow. “Look! A chair – but covered in snow!” “Look! A patio heater – but covered in snow! Ironic, huh?”
The streets fill with children building snowmen. Ten minutes later, the streets fill with their mums bringing out waterproof trousers and gloves as the children stand, blue-fingered, screaming with hypothermia. The mothers enjoy the chiding. The children enjoy the circulation. It is parenting in a nutshell. Class in a nutshell is provided by the middle-class parents palpably enjoying reducing the cost-per-use on their £200 authentic wooden sledges – despite the fact that all the kids on cheap plastic sledges are observably going 60mph faster.
Teenagers – generationally impelled to be “sarcastic” about Snow Joy – make Sexy Olafs by putting a carrot where one shouldn’t be. Dads enjoy Top Gear-esque conversations about “maybe getting snow tyres” before finally admitting they don’t actually know what they are or even “if they exist in this country”. Concerned mums put extra food in the bird feeder – and pretend they can’t see a giant city rat climbing up the tree to get at it.
But everyone is, by and large, happy – united by the lovely, lovely snow.
Second stage: Backlash. The next morning’s social media is full of harrowing reports from people who were stuck overnight in four-hour snow-induced traffic jams and have only just got home and recharged their iPhone batteries to post words such as “jack-knifed”, “absence of gritters” and “Captain Oates”.
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For those leaving the house for their first snowy commute of the year, all the delightful winter outfits have proved not to be as “winterproof” as expected. The jolly bobble hats are now replaced with survival-level balaclavas, and the fabulous winter coats are now augmented with actual blankets, swathed around the head like a 900-year-old babushka going out to feed their sole, sad goat.
Children are similarly stymied. The much cautioned-against “mucking about” has resulted in every child-sized item of outerwear in Britain now damply steaming on a radiator. Estimated drying time: two days. “No, you can’t go out in your pyjamas. This isn’t The Snowman.”
The anthropomorphisation of the weather begins. People talk darkly of “the Beast from the East” and “the Troll of Trondheim”, as if the nation were battling some mythic baddie from a fantasy role-playing game rather than two inches of perfectly average snow.
People with bird feeders are in a state of semi-exhaustion as the starving birds, squirrels and rat families are now emptying it three times a day, making service constant. “I feel like Stephen Graham in Boiling Point. I might need to start taking coke.”
Third stage: The Embrowning. Previously pristine Bruegel-like snowscapes are now looking… brown. The roads are bordered with foot-high walls of refrozen muddy slush; yellow patches reveal just how much dogs wee. No one is photographing this.
Snowmen start to melt in a way that recalls the works of David Cronenberg – eyes falling out, arms dropping off, mad cavities suddenly appearing in snow skulls. It all starts to look like those medieval memento mori portraits, reminding everyone of their own mortality. Even Sexy Olaf is dying – his amusing trouser-carrot lies beside him, Bobbitted by the sun. Brisker parents go into the garden under cover of darkness and kick particularly traumatic snowmen back into powder, much as one might finish off a run-over badger with a spade.
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The national conversation now is about either minor spinal injuries from falling on icy pavements or amusing videos people have posted about other people falling over.
“What we really need,” someone on Twitter posts, “is for it to snow again. Snow on snow! We’d be ready for it next time.”
Everyone enthusiastically agrees. Later, they realise it is a retweet from 2009.
