Trillian Is No Angel

Somewhat belatedly I noticed Heather's comment on my answer to the rites of passage list. Specifically she was amazed that I hadn't been able to check off the making a snow angel. The UK is a deprived bit of civilisation. Snow is an infequent annoyance for Brits, rather than an occasion for fun.

Most often when snow drifts out of the sky it fails to to settle but when it does it brings chaos and frustration rather than any great degree of opportunity for recreation. Mostly this because a fall of British snow is rarely more than an inch. Greater amounts are mostly a once a year event and accumulations greater than a foot are memorable. Needless to say, half an inch is sufficient to completely disable the nation's transport infrastructure. Two great leviathans of inertia are the principle cause of this shameful fact. The first is the built-in corporate incompetence of the public authorities that, in theory, should be able to predict the weather and to coordinate a response it. In practice what happens is the workers who are needed to grit and plough the roads are unable to leave home because they are snowed in. The second reason is British phlegm which is only properly propitiated if the maximum credible chaos is encouraged, by masterful inaction, to develop.

The last truly spectacular snow I remember affecting a great swathe of the country was over a quarter of century ago. I was part of a foursome who had decided on a novel way of bridging the gap between Christmas and New Year by taking a short break in Cornwall, where the weather is always nice and the beaches are spectacular. Money was tight — when is it any other way, I wonder? — so we had to be careful in selecting our accomodations. In the end we found a hotel in King Arthur country where we were promised comfort and a welcome even though it was closed season. The proprietor had newly bought the business and, he told us, was keen to show us some old-fashioned Cornish hospitality. It was old-fashioned alright!

The hotel was ancient and very run down but it was cheap. We were only offered bed and breakfast but that was OK because there were plenty of restaurants nearby. Our first day was fabulous. The weather was mild and we had a fabulous time picking our way from one craggy promontory to the next via short, steep, shingly beaches. On the second day we drove a little way inland looking for a different venue for our evening meal. It did not take us long. We spent the rest of the day touring the area's principle tourist traps and enjoying the bright sunshine and the extra ten minutes of daylight afforded by the latitude ... we did not register that the temperature was plummeting. We returned to the hotel at dusk to play a game of hearts; loser to be the nominated — alcohol free — driver for the night. It was 30th December and the next day we were planning to hit the nearby town and stock up on party food and drinks and have our own private new year's party in our rooms.

I lost the card game. Mostly because I am the eternal optimistic pessimist and so, when playing hearts, I always aim to clear my tab by consistently and far too predictably aiming to collect all the penalties. By the time we set out for our meal at seven it had started to snow. The snow was outrageous. The flakes were the size of postage stamps and they were sticking. Before long we had left the little coastal village and turned onto the narrow lane that winds its way inland between the high banks that are so characteristic of the area. I very quickly found that I couldn't actually see where I was going. Soon, there was a thick accumulation of snow on the windscreen that the wipers were struggling with and visibly losing ground. In a hastily convened counsel of war we took no time at all to agree that further progress might amount to suicide. More by luck than judgement I turned us around and we regained the hotel before the snow was more than four or five inches deep. We abandonned the car in the hotel car park and staggered through the blizzard toward the multi-colored Christmas tree lights that beckoned us from the window of the bistro where had dined the previous evening.

Unsurprisingly the restaurant was able to fit us in and we ate and drank and were generally merry. Getting back to the hotel was problematic. High heeled sandals are entirely the wrong footwear for blizzard conditions. The wind had risen and the snow was drifting. Where it was thinned the snow was only inches deep but in the lees it was as deep as the wall it hid behind. We all passed an uncomfortable night.

The heater in our room was woefully inadequate. This became a less apt description around 3am when my companion woke to the discovery that the feeble emissions from the heater had succeeding in melting the snow that had blown under the roof tiles and which was now dripping through the ceiling's plaster onto our bed. We dragged the bed further from the outer wall and placed the room's metal waste bin under the drip. (I employed a trick, learned as a student in slummy accomodations: that of placing a towel over the bucket to deaden the sound of the drips.

The following morning dawned bright and clear. But it was soon apparent that our village was as good as on the moon. England's entire south-western peninsular was snowed in. We got most of this news from the village postman who — as cut off as we were — had nothing to deliver and was making use of his time to check on the welfare of the elderly and housebound. Oh well. It was New Years Eve, so we hiked about in the snow. I don't know if we were aware of the hallowed art of snow angel making but it wouldn't have been easy if we had. The storm that had lashed across the land had scoured the snow from any open space and just dumped it behind walls, against buldings and into the narrow lanes where it lay up to ten feet deep. It would be days before every road was re-opened. We did discover snow diving.

For people raised in a land where extremes of weather are unusual we had a heavenly time exploring the drastically altered lanscape that we had so scantly gotten to know the preceeding day. I was the first idiot to conceive of the notion of throwing myself into a deep drift. I disappeared utterly and lost contact with the world and with gravity. I instantly discovered how disorienting getting buried in an avalanche might be. Shrieking with laughter I squealed and screamed with histrionic panic to be rescued. After a few minutes I was pulled clear and accepted the sober rebukes of my friends who'd had time to compile a whole catalogue of what ifs that began with a milestone and ended with an schadenfreuden-ly misplaced hay-tedder. It wasn't long before we were all doubled up with the intoxification of uninhibited laughter. Inevitably someone else felt the same compulsion and the rest of us rolled our eyes and shouted derisively into the snow that we would come looking for her after the thaw ....

I won't drag on. The rest of the tale isn't so pretty. Our New Years celebration was grim because we were unable to lay in the needed supplies and our Cornish hosts did not see fit to extend their Cornish hospitality to their guests when it was obvious we had nowhere else to go. We ended up crashing their private New Years party and bogarted as much booze as we could.

New Years day had recently become a public holiday for England and Wales but we all had jobs to be back for on January 2nd so we had to leave, as planned, the following morning ... whether we wanted to or not. It wasn't easy. The only road out of the village that was open was headed the wrong way. Still a way out is a way out. I also remembered a summer holiday in the same general area when I was a child and flash floods had caused my father to take a similalry circuitious route of escape from a county that is surround on 3 sides by water. It took us 12 hours to get back home; the trip down had taken 4.

It was a good experience. Thanks again to Heather for her comment that reminded me of it!