Snow (secret time)

Something a little more light-hearted today...

     Living in Wales, today, it snowed.  Usually, this would mean a sprinkle that doesn't last, like icing sugar melting into a cake, but today it has stayed, a solid layer on the ground.  The forecast is for more and more, exams have been cancelled, and for just a little time (until we remember that we've had snow before) the world is in awe.

     Last night, staying up with my housemates, the anticipation had already set in.  Every few minutes we’d twitch the curtain in order to confirm that it hadn't quite yet started.  BBC Weather was checked regularly, it told us again and again that yes, it would snow, yes, it would be most intense here.

     And then this morning, there was that vast silence.  More than just our house not having woken up; it was as though the whole street had rolled over to see white quilts thrown everything outside, and was just sitting at the window, yawning, blinking, marvelling at the metamorphosis.  I spent longer in bed than usual, then ventured downstairs to see if anyone else was around, the intrepid explorer off to find the inhabitants of the strange new land I’d woken up in.  On a normal morning, my housemates and I would have been at the stage of getting up, firing our engines to get on with the day.  But today, perhaps due to a hangover from childhood when snow meant no school meant no obligations meant time for fun, there was something different in the air.

     Downstairs I found one of my housemates.   We talked about the snow, excited like small children even though we knew there wasn't that much reason to be.  And then, as they heard our voices, the others crept out of their rooms, emerging from their warm caves to revel with us in the newness of the world outside.  We chatted and laughed about nothing of huge consequence, all a little jumpy, ready to smile, looking forwards to what could happen later on, as though we were at a station or an airport about to leave on a holiday together.

     A good friend has an excellent simile for that feeling.  She says it’s like the secret time early in the morning, before the day is really happening, when everything is quiet and everything is new and nothing has quite happened yet that gives a clue of how the day is going to go.  It’s the same feeling as when you and someone else are the first to show up to a big event, a feeling that is best experienced with someone else.  It’s a fragile one though, and this morning, as soon as someone decided that they were going to go and do some work, to get on with the day, it went, ebbing away and stranding us in the real world.

     And so I've come back to my room, to clutch at the last tendrils of the secret time, before I accept real life again.