Snow and Monsters

It's still coming down like it's never gonna stop. There's an eerie quiet outside and everything looks beautiful, but there's a monster on the lawn.

We were going to build a snowman, which would have been much more festive, but the snow was all wrong. I once heard that Inuits have an unsually large number of words for 'snow'. I'm pretty sure it's an urban legend – like the one about Zulus having a large number of words for 'green' – but there's a case to be made. I'd never really thought about the different kinds of snow, but . . . well, waddayaknow? Up until now, ours has been light and fluffly and powdery. Thus the low profile monster rather than the proud snowman. Last night changed all that, though. Last night, amid the bizarre thunder and lightning, we had a fresh fall of the heavy wet stuff. Srange that it came with the long, bright flashes of lightning and thunder that seemed to roll on forever. I even started to think it was a plane passing overhead, but no, it was definitely thunder.

Well, the schools are closed – though they didn't think to let us know – and the children are at home, so we had a bit of a research fuelled trudge out onto the green. They, of course, loved it; it's exciting, isn't it? A day off school, playing in the snow. My wife though? She quickly decided it was time to go home. She's not a snow person.

One other thing. I took out the tape measure and, for the first time ever, I've been able to tell my wife we have 13 inches.

Sorry.