No feeling for snow

My friend Rolf just rang to say that the sun had appeared in Lannavaara , for the first time in three weeks. It wasn't more than a sliver on the horizon, but it was hope that winter would some time be over. For the Swedes to find snow romantic would be like the English getting excited about the rain. As far as I can work out, London gets as much snow most years as Death Valley gets rain, so it's no wonder that people feel the glorious transformation should be recorded by David Attenborough, with a reverent voiceover. But in Sweden it's just a bloody nuisance when you have to earn a living. Once the snow has fallen, everything still works, but much more slowly. Cars must be heated thoroughly before they can be driven, and they have to be driven slowly and carefully , especially on country roads. Shopping and walking are tedious, though I always enjoyed piling the groceries onto a sled rather than hauling them home in bags. Even dressing to go out becomes tedious for adults, because the indoors, properly heated and insulated, stays at shirtsleeve temperature all day, so that to get out and drop 30 or 40 degrees you must put on one or two extra layers, boots, gloves, a hat: it all needs space by the door and takes time to put on. Dressing toddlers becomes a nightmare. By the time they are trussed up to face the outside world, they are red-faced and boiling with anger, as well as the effects of three layers of insulation. Then they can't have any real fun in the snow because their clothes are so bulky and hampering. That is the good part of a snowy winter, after it has fallen. The bad part, really inconvenient and sometimes actually dangerous, comes during the snowstorms. That's when the trains stop and the snowploughs can't cope. That's when the darkness grows even thicker and the laws of gravity are somehow reframed so that all the snow that lands anywhere on your shoulders ends up trickling down the back of your neck. In fact there are only two things worse and less romantic than the snow in winter: one is the time before it comes, when there is nothing to light up the darkness. The trees, the rocks, the earth are all bare grey and brown; the sky lightens to grey for four or five hours, but you rise and go to sleep in darkness, the cold, insinuating rain chills without numbing. Snow comes like aspirin then to take some of the pain away. Late autumn is worst in the north, but in the south of the country there is a second miserable period, of the long slow thaw, through February and March, when the days get longer, but the light seems to diminish anyway as the whiteness recedes and spring is quite impossibly distant. Those are the only months when fresh snowfalls seem almost as exciting and apocalyptic as they do in Essex; but by that time of year everyone is half crazy anyway.