Britain in the Snow
A few years back, it snowed in London. Not limp, half-arsed proto-slush that’s just ugly and annoying, but proper, knee-deep fairy fluff that turns everybody into chums. We headed to Regent’s Park, which was just swathed in the stuff, immaculate and bewitching. Now, there are two ways to react to the prospect of a square-mile of manipulable raw material. One is to build podgy little figures with carrots stuck in their faces, and take jolly snaps and delight in the novelty of it all. The other is to immediately make projectiles and commence pitched battles. Soon enough, we had a base of operations and a hierarchy of command, led by a fearless and fearsome Bulgarian accountant. It was, by a country mile, the most fun you could have with a bunch of people you don’t know, in a field, with no booze. At one point, a lad in a leotard unwisely sprinted through no-man’s-land, and was battered so mercilessly his legs were the colour of beetroot. At another, an unwary jogger caught a snowball so squarely in the face it knocked him flat. This was, of course, a little unkind, but he took it in giggling, commendable spirit. That’s the snow effect. Imagine if, on any other day, somebody had floored you with an improvised missile. You’d go berserk. But on a ‘snow day’, everybody has a wonderfully robust sense of humour.
