I'm unsure why but today I had the need to blog. So here I am. Blogging. I think it's because of the snow. I have a friend who lives in Thailand and has as such never experienced snow. For most brits this seems incredible, something inside me stirred and my fingers flew across my keyboard.
As a native of a very hot country, she is naturally averse to the cold, but would still love to see snow even just once. This was my starting point.
"To see snow you can be toasty warm inside, but there's nothing like the childish joy of picking up the icy, crunchy fluff in your fingers and feeling it, the weird sensation as it starts to dribble between your fingers. The shocking stingy start of a lump of it splattering across your skin as a frozen snowball explodes across your face. The full thud as one impacts against your coat, cushioned by the layers below. The creeping numbness in your fingers as your gloves get soggier the more snow you roll, sculpt, and mould into projectiles, or an army of behatted, scarf wearing humanoids - clearing the grass as you do so bringing green back to the blanked out landscape. The horrible tickle of cold water that runs down to your undies when the inevitable stupid boy dumps snow down your coat for a laugh. The way your bum gets wet as you make angels in the snow. A seraphic crime scene of body outlines sunk into to the snow. The adrenaline rush of flying down the hill in your sled, followed by the hysterical laughter when you fall out face first into the snow as you tumble down the hill. Perfecting the art of bum sledding, laughing at that friend who gets it wrong and ends up on their front snowploughing with their face.
Pure joy, relief and delight when the news trickles through that school is closed and you are free to play in the snow. The bliss of warming your numb fingers around a hot chocolate, putting on fresh fluffy socks and dry clothes and your slippers, before snuggling up beneath a blanket and feeling the warmth spread through you. I love winter there's something about snuggling up in lots of layers and cuddly jumpers wearing fluffy socks and really appreciating the warm. The contrast between the outside and the inside. Feeling like a dragon when you breathe and your condensed breath spirals up in front of you. Although when you're wrapped up right in your layers outside, there'll be a part of you that the cold nips at: the tips of your ears, your nose undergoes an identity crisis and believes it belongs to Rudolph, your toes when your shoes aren't as waterproof as you thought they were.
But it's all part of the fun. It's a different kind of cold, it's one that's not so awful because it's so much fun.
Unless you have to go adult. Then it's just a pain in the arse you really don't have time for as you struggle to work slipping and sliding around every bend. Keeping the blinds closed to prevent the kid tsunami in class as they flood to the window to yell about the snow as if they didn't see it only last year. Being drowned in brown muddy slush as a car travels to close to the kerb and sprays a fanned wave of half melted snow into the air. Scraping mounds off the stuff off your car, the delight as typical British service resumes and the rain washed the whole nasty mess away. All the while there's a part of you who misses the childish glee every time it snows. The part of you who despite being stuck in a traffic jam because some idiot flipped their car driving too fast round a bend in icy conditions that appreciates the frosted majesty of the landscape,the way it glitters in the light, the ethereal effect it lends to the trees decorated in a coat just as impressive as the green one they carry in the summer. If only you didn't have to go be a responsible adult. If only..."
The only reason it comes up is because it felt good to write something. To set the word junkie free. It doesn't get much chance these days. Teaching is not a profession that is exactly conducive to having hobbies. I miss being able, having time to work on my book, I miss even having the time and brain power to read a book. My work leaves me exhausted, which is why I'm sat in front of my TV watching Bond, typing up the words that burst out of my head earlier because you have to take what you get, it's why my notebook is full of a chapter from a book, a sequel to another I haven't written yet. I'd love to have more time to write but I need to pay my bills. I'd like eventually to afford a place to live, but writing doesn't pay my bills or buy houses, or even food. And this rate it never will because I have no chance to hone my craft, to finish what I started and it's really bothering me.
I've always wanted to write.
I've been doing it since I was little and only had enough concentration to write mere sentences and then draw terrible drawings, to go with them.(Terrible drawings are acceptable at that age but when that's the peak of your artistic talent, terrible is the best word.) It never stopped, never went away, it kept escaping whenever it had the chance, in my diary, in my many notebooks, in my blogs, in the stories I tell myself when I just need a headspace that isn't mine. And now, just as I'd let it flourish rather than doubting if I could really do it, I feel like it's being squashed again.
So I'm in a fuddle.
Bethx
