WILL WE HAVE SNOW AT CHRISTMAS?

By Janice Johnson

Snow falls like feathers
To the ground beneath
Some large enough to settle
Others melt beneath my feet

A white Christmas is foretold
And I’m sure it will be pretty
With twinkling lights and snowmen
But will the roads be gritty?

The last time we had long lived snow
Was back in twenty ten
We couldn’t get out of Malvern though
And I don’t want that again

I want to see my family
On Christmas Day and between
The New Year celebrations
Or I will be a drama queen

I was two in 1963
With a broom, Dad had a spade
We made a path through the snow
But I’m not sure I made the grade

Go and play outside, Jan
My mum would say with a knowing look
Within minutes, I was back indoors
Citing wet mittens, so I could read my book

Then walking miles back to Dorking
When the bus got stuck up a hill
I was twenty on that occasion
And I didn’t even get a chill

You’ve guessed I’m not a massive snow fan
Though my sister loves the stuff
And when Malvern is having flurries
She has a little huff

If we do have snow at Christmas
I shall put on a brave face
But if it mucks up my family visits
You should duck, just in case!

The Truth

I was born in Guildford in 1961. Mum and Dad had moved there from the Greater London area, as it was called then. Originally from South London, they decided to buy a bungalow in the then market town of Guildford.

Helping Dad in the snow is not something I remember, unfortunately, but I loved doing things like that until I discovered reading. The wet mittens are a joke in my family and always will be – wimp Janice, or just an excuse to go back indoors and read Malory Towers? You decide.

We seemed to have snow every year back then, but that could be my memory playing tricks on me.

When I was seventeen, I got engaged to my first fiancé. We moved in together in about 1980 and lived in a tied farm cottage in Headley. I used to get the bus from Dorking to Guildford for my job at a medical newspaper. My fiancé dropped me off at the bus stop. Unfortunately, it’s a fairly hilly area, and the bus got stuck. We all had to get off the bus and troop back to Dorking. When I finally got home, it was freezing and I couldn’t get the Rayburn working. It was really beautiful once it stopped though and I still have some photos I took back then.

That relationship didn’t work out and nor did my next one. I lived back with Mum and Dad for a while, then in a flat shared with my sister, Sally, and some girls from the Guildford School of Acting – there are a few stories there to be told, or not. Finally, I bought a studio flat in the Knaphill area of Woking. We had some snow, but nothing I particularly remember.

Then, in 1998, my work (I was now in the construction industry) closed its head office in Woking, and they relocated me to the West Midlands. Eventually, I bought a house in Droitwich Spa. I remember driving to spend Christmas with my family one year and it snowed quite heavily down there. I drove back very cautiously, but once I was on the M4 and arrived at Birdlip, there wasn’t a flake to be seen.

Terry and I moved in together in the autumn of 2007. We bought a house in the Malvern Hills and have been here ever since. From very little snow we went to having snow every year and where we live wasn’t on the gritting route (they do a few more now but it’s still not great), so we got stuck. Trains rarely operate from here in the snow (single line track). The worst year was probably 2009/10. We were stuck for a long time. Some people took a sledge down to the Coop to get food. Amazingly, our milkman, Keith, always managed to deliver.

Meanwhile, my sister gets funny huffy when we have snow up here, but there isn’t any down in Surrey – I send her videos and photos and once I even made a mini snowman. She loves the stuff and I don’t, although I do find it beautiful until I am stopped from doing what I want to do.