April Falls

Exasperated, i had turned off the light on my annual attempt to put into words the beauty of that first glimpse of Spring. I growled the names of each of my primary school teachers who had forced me to write sickly sweet acrostic poems (can you really call them poems? Something that puzzles me at the age of twenty-four as much as it did when i was six.)

I'd feel stuck in the sticky classroom, hours till playtime -smelling the sweetness of freshly-mown grass on the playing fields, or thumbing the autumn goldmine of conkers in my pocket. (I had a contact in Leicester, a family friend) These so called poems have meant that any mention of daffodils makes me write as though I'm pre-pubescent, my milk teeth indenting my hb pencil in frustration.

So it was with extra delight that I woke to Charlotte transfixed at the window. Wearing that expression English people make when they see snow. Her eyes like saucers, tongue lolled in that hypnotic smile that tickles each ear. The "Are you seeing what I'm seeing!?!" look of pure ecstasy you sometimes see one dog pass to another as they clock a muddy swamp up ahead. Before I knew it I was transfixed with the same expression, pawing myself to the window in acknowledgment.

Staying down at my parent's house for the weekend, I could recollect the feeling of praying for the water pipes to have burst and my school's name to be read out on local radio as closed for the day. Elation would be followed by the of swift construction snow ramps , squealing in delight and agony as your sledge, swiftly followed by your rear, slammed against the compacted snow from the three hundred previous attempts.

As that day, and you always know it's only going to be "that day when it snowed" draws to a close - it's almost as if someone claps loudly and, in Home County tones shrills from the heavens "Right, that's quite enough of that nonsense...", before letting the rain return.

There were good times that day - powdery snowballs, every branch on every tree defined with a glinted ridge of snowflakes, a snowman made from three balls in descending size from the base. The funny conversations revolving around the limited knowledge and foreignness of snow to the people of southern England. "It's....erm really thick", followed by dramatic hand gestures as if holding up imaginary toasters, then checking the reflexes of an invisible toddler's kneecaps as they display the snow's distance from the ground.

And bad times - due to having hidden two sledges -whose design may well have attracted interest from a Maclaren spy if they were as fast as I remember them - I thought discreetly, for an impromptu, what must have been under-age pint, the last time it properly snowed. I remember being devestated when I returned and lifted the lid to find they had disappeared from their Sulu-sponsored temporary garage.

Although I now ponder whether I returned to the wrong bin, every time it snows the sorrow at their loss returns to haunt me. Much like the remaining clunky sledge, lured out of retirement in the shed a decade later.

Knowing its limited capabilities, I was determined to give Charlotte as terrifying a first descent of the modest hill as possible. I miscued the projectory in my zest however, and ended up face - planting. Revealing the mud underneath the snow, sliding on my eye socket and cheek, covering my back, boxers and jeans in freezing mud. I came to rest like an upturned tortoise, swimming in my over sized Parka at the bottom of the hill.

The next morning I woke, and that magical , almost fluorescent white light no longer filtered through the window. I knew she'd arrived before I slouched to the pane to survey the damage. I thought of her sitting up in the clouds, smiling as she looked out over her bi-focals at the grey below. I saw our massacred snowman. Maybe Mrs Sludge doesn't like writing about winter.