Proper snow

Snow is a bit like old age, isn’t it? You know it’s coming, but there’s stuff-all you can do about it as it slows everything down, or brings the bits that are already creaking – like the old bones of the UK transport system – grinding to a halt. Yet there’s dignity and magic to it; magic in the sense of deadly wonder, as it falls gently to wash the black earth white and deify the filth. We were in Copenhagen a few years back when they had the most snow they’d seen for five years. Now that WAS snow, both in volume and the way it transformed the city to a nineteenth century picture postcard except, unlike the UK, Copenhagen looks like it belongs in that century. It didn’t sit in a frenzied gridlock; just continued on its dignified way.