The Right Kind Of Snow....

..."The worst snow for eighteen years" they have been telling us, and they are correct.

Not that, ordinarily, I am much moved by the weather as such. It more or less just is, and whatever it is one must do what one must do. Not a terribly Wordsworthian approach to the whole 'grandeur of nature' thing I own, nor indeed the type of 'take it or leave it' approach that would find much favour with dear David Attenborough true enough.

But there it is, the wheels of the parish must turn in rain, wind or shine. A pity of course for any wedding occasion marred by monsoon downpours. My own expressed line on this - that in China such a day would be seen as the Gods raining down blessings on the happy couple - is not one that, all in all, cuts the celebratory mustard I do find. (H has indeed strongly suggested I refrain from such a 'damp' remark, though habit tends to overcome sage advice.)

I even recall a fellow seminarian who let it be known that he was rather keen on 'clouds'. Not in any old hippie way - 'Wow clouds man, they're amazing' - which at least would have been acceptable from a certain class of aspirant: the older convert from paganism so oft found abroad nowadays. No, this chap actually meant that the physics and the chemistry of clouds held a special place in his view of the world and, as such, was worthy of both deep study and endless mention. (Should you ever need someone to empty a room or to close a party on time, then hire Rev Dave X to come and start talking on the particular - nay unique - structure of the cumulus cloud in Spring. Works every time believe me.)

But on this 'worse for eighteen years' thing I am totally on top of my facts here. I do speak though not as a meteorologist but as a parent, or rather at the time as a parent-about-to-become. For it was this season and time some eighteen years ago the we [H and I] were waiting for dear E to decide it was time to be born.

There was a mutually acknowledged concern that a certain Wednesday was the projected 'D' for delivery day, Wednesdays belonging to 'Morse' of course in those days and neither of us terribly keen to miss an episode! But more than that, come the appointed time came also the snows in huge drifts and flurries. The blocking of roads, the inability of hospital staff to reach their places of gainful employment or of ambulances to get outside the gates of their yards - all these were truly and personally troublesome matters.

Staring outside at four feet and more of the white stuff had me gasping at the thought that a home birth, entirely unaided but by self and a manual, was a distinct possibility. ("Just get ready to catch - might shoot out like a lemon pip" was the not so supportive advice of the midwife on the end of the telephone.)

Given then the strong possibility that any travel to the appointed hospital would need to be a self-help affair, it did strike me to check the car was as prepared as it could be for such a difficult journey. Well need I say, it wasn't. The battery proved as dead as all dead things heaped together in a large pile in a dead end going nowhere. Like the car.

This then was the Tuesday evening gone eight o'clock. Morse was not due for another twenty-four hours, but H was strongly intimating that E was on her way!

This then is the nub of it - if you have kept pace - only the local garage could possibly supply a new car battery at this point, and that garage was long shut for the evening with proprietor John Boy (one of those lovely English nicknames completely mis-naming the great, ugly, but sweet gentle giant of a man he was) long gone to his home some many miles away. Many miles away in the snow, of course.

But cometh the hour had to cometh the phone call to John Boy. Nor else a choice. Circs explained, to his everlasting glory the man said at once he would borrow a tractor from his Bro. John Boy down the lane, and drive in through drift, flurry and the freezing night in order to find and fix me the battery I, the car - and H and E - needed.

The story's climax should have me driving through blizzard storm to get H to the hospital on time. Truth though is rather the more mundane. E - a lifetime habit - showed no interest in being timely, rather waiting a whole further two weeks to show herself to the waiting world and the expectant parents both. By which time all snows had gone, roads were clear and the weather utterly unremarkable.

John Boy's kindness and selflessness though have not be forgotten these eighteen years. When the time shortly will come to buy E her first car it will be from his lot we choose. (Might even suggest she gets herself a spare battery. You never know when you might need one!)