Sketch a Day 11/365

I love snow. I love the ways it softens and quietens the world. However many times I experience snow, the surprise of that first day never loses it's magic.

However old I get, it reminds me of school days. Snow days in the 1980’s were a law unto themselves, and were some of the only days I spent at school which I truly enjoyed. Tramping in jeans and wellies and big jumpers across fields. No uniform. The school a ghost town. The teachers and kids who made it in had an unspoken understanding that no work was going to happen today. The teachers largely stayed in their staff room smoking and drinking tea while the kids watched films in the youth area. The school had two 16mm films. One was a children film foundation one, staring a young Keigh Chegwin who spent most of his time running around a castle solving a murder mystery. The other was Kes. Which was pretty traumatic but beautiful and galvanised my love of birds of pray.

I don't remember much else, other than I wasn't worried about not understanding what the hell was going on in lessons. Snow was a great leveller. Snow took all the things in life back to basics. Are we here? Are we ok? Should we play, eat, sleep or repeat?

So, I always have that feeling of YAY when the first day of snow comes. I like be that deep bitter cold. I just love it.

But I must admit that I have become quite used to snow lasting a day and then melting away. I can't remember the last time the snow has stuck around for so long.

Fast fwd to this morning. I found myself looking out of our bedroom window, down the street, thinking ‘I wish the snow would just bloody do one, now ‘.

And as I caught myself thinking that, I felt sad. Why all of this rush to have the present behind me?

So today I sat down and sketched the snowy/icey street to remind myself that snow is great. And beautiful. And this time is precious.

But I did also whisper to it, if you could think of leaving soon, that would be marvellous.

And that's the news.