Snow country for snow men

I don’t really understand the appeal of snow. It’s just rain that takes longer. Hating rain but getting excited about snow is like hating tennis but being obsessed with badminton.

I also resent everyone staying indoors on a snow day like they invented it. I’ve been avoiding the outside world for years, snow or no snow. It’s easy to be a shut-in when all the buses are cancelled and your front door is frozen shut. Try doing it in the summer when the sound of laughter and the smell of barbecue is wafting through your bedroom window like aroma lines in a 1950s cartoon.

That’s what separates the men from the men who go outside sometimes. Hermitry is for life, not just for a day in March that looks like Christmas.

The last time I saw snow in Bristol was January 2013. I was 23 and newly arrived in the big city. A city where the boats had pubs in them and the pubs had cats in them. It seemed like a wondrous place.

I had a room in Bedminster where I could touch all four walls from my single bed, which made it easier to cover them in NOFX posters. I broke the light fitting within a week and was too afraid to tell the landlord, so I bought a lamp and resigned myself to eternal mood lighting.

One of my first memories of Bristol is tramping through the snow, CV in hand, looking for work like an orphan in a Dickens novel (if that orphan had parents who lived an hour away and would always give him money if things went south).

I turned up to an interview at Wilkinson’s wearing wellington boots and a suit from the Asda business range. I looked like an estate agent at a festival. The interview consisted of one question:

“What’s the heaviest thing you can lift?”

“Probably this CV,” I thought to myself, realising that I wasn’t cut out for warehouse work.

I walked home dejectedly, wondering if I could trade my suit in at Asda for £40 worth of cereal.

Things improved quickly. Within a couple of weeks the snow had melted and I had not one but two job offers; Poundland and the Post Office. I was the belle of the customer service ball.

Not wanting to choose, I tried to do both like a jock in a sitcom taking two girls to prom. Fortunately the decision was made for me a few weeks later when I became the first person in history to get sacked from Poundland, the retail equivalent of getting expelled from prison.

The rest is history. Not the sort of history that anyone would care to read or remember, but history nonetheless.

I’ve been in Bristol for half a decade now and I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon. Considering that the longest relationship I’ve ever managed with a human is 11 months, this is an impressive level of commitment.

Me and Bristol are very serious these days. We moved in together almost immediately, despite my parents’ objections, and I still think it was the right choice.

Sure, we have our disagreements, but what couple doesn’t? I find her music taste irritating and her bus routes illogical. She wishes I cared more about politics and secretly blames me for her rising house prices.

Despite all this, we’re stronger than ever. We’re not big fans of tradition so I doubt we’ll ever get married but, looking out my window today just as I did five years ago, I must admit that this city looks lovely in white.

Photo of Friday’s snowball fight on the Downs by James Koch