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Oliver Cross: The great flakes
'Snow? This isn't snow, son, when we had snow it was so deep it came a foot above our heads and they had to dig special trenches so we could go to school.
"And you never heard of teachers who couldn't drive themselves to work because of so-called treacherous road conditions. We all pulled together then."
"Er, dad, might that not have had something to do with the fact that you were only 2ft 6in at the time and most teachers couldn't afford cars in those days?"
"Well, possibly but I'm still sure that we had better snow back then; whiter, crisper and lasting for all the months that weren't bathed in nostalgic sunshine, as if we lived in Cranford."
"Er, dad, might you not be misremembering things to give you even more reasons to moan; I mean, maybe it's time to move on from being soppy about the past to confronting the present in a positive and creative way?"
"You're right, son. I should be talking about how this so-called council has completely failed to grit my front path, let alone all the local side roads so it's not just me that's inconvenienced – it's people I don't even know! I hope you're proud of yourself, council."
"Er, dad...I suppose I could talk about your objections to paying any council tax at all under any circumstances and remind you that you've got an unused snow shovel in the shed, which you've put on eBay, but really it wouldn't get me anywhere, so I'm off."
"Okay son, I appreciate a man who knows when he's beaten."
And now I step out of character to remember my finest snow moment of the season. This was at a carol concert in a wood whose exact location I can't disclose for reasons which will become clear.
It was a half-snowy night and the organisers had built a huge bonfire out of old wooden pallets, so that red sparks were drifting up into the sky as white flakes were drifting down from it, all accompanied by an accordion, song-sheets and a crowd of enthusiastic, if not hugely polished, singers.
It was half-magic and would have been full-magic if the snow could have timed itself to come down at the same rate and at the same time as the bonfire sparks were rising, producing a kind of fragmented lava-lamp effect, if you see what I mean ("Well, not really, but carry on").
Why I can't reveal where all this took place is to do with health and safety. These were fire-sparks entering an inflammable and dangerous environment, including lots of trees, mulled wine and unlicensed children and how we all got out not only alive but feeling very cheered, I'll never know.
("Unlicensed children? Surely children don't need licenses?" No, but that's only to say, given present trends, not yet).
The other dangerous carol concert I went to before Christmas was at the Chemic Tavern in Woodhouse, Leeds, ("Oo, you don't say," say regular readers, sounding rather sarky if you ask me).
The concert formed part of a set by the acoustic duo Jack, and Gill's Daughter and was great fun, even though Leeds City Council decided, also shortly before Christmas, that a carol concert for local people and church and youth groups in a Leeds park would have to be abandoned on public order grounds.
This was in a park where anybody wanting to over-drink or dance incompetently, not that there would have been many people like that, would have had acres and acres to flounder and collapse in; in the confined back room of the Chemic Tavern, full of swaying people doing experimental, and sometimes frankly rather risky, Christmas dancing, things could have ended in disaster, although they didn't because almost everybody is more sensible than risk assessors.
Incidentally, did you notice the very well-punctuated name of Jack, and Gill's Daughter, which contains a comma before the 'and', thus breaking the general rule that a comma is a substitute for an 'and' and should not be used next to it?
But if you followed that rule, Jack, and Gill's Daughter wouldn't be an acoustic duo, they would be an acoustic one. I counted them quite carefully and several time and can confirm there were definitely at least two of them and sometimes, as the night progressed, more.
Made of the white stuff
AS an official Friend of Woodhouse Moor constantly worried about the misuse of the park by marauding students, I was much relieved by the snow.
Under snow, all the broken paths and bare patches of grass become picture postcard material and this week the students have been making marvellous snowmen and igloos and snow sculptures, so that you almost forgive them for their destructive summer barbecues.
Bill McKinnon, one of the Moor's best friends, photographed this marvellous snowman, created by a couple of sweet students shortly before Christmas.
Obviously nobody wants to encourage traffic-cone theft, but in this case I think the cone was essential to the overall artistic effect and in any case, it's not as if cones are, for the moment, are an essential tool for channelling moving vehicles,
Bill, incidentally, took the picture at approaching dusk, which I think is the best time for snow pictures.
PR's weapons for mass delusion
Last week, in giving my judgement on the grim, reactionary decade they witlessly called the noughties, I characterised it as being ruled by PR values.
Which was probably going a bit far because I fell for the ludicrous idea that you should try and make a shape out of a random ten years and I only did it because my column happened to fall (which, as in 'plunge like a lead balloon', is just the right word) on New Year's Day and I thought it was expected.
What annoys me is that I missed the most outstanding example of PR values influencing real events by failing to mention the 'dodgy dossier' in the build-up to the Iraq war.
Why did it claim (or actually slyly imply) that horrible weapons could be deployed against Europe within 45 minutes? Not because it was true, as we now know for sure it wasn't, but because it sounded frightening.
No other figure would have done, because those odd five minutes made it look, unlike 40 minutes or 50 minutes or 'less than an hour', as if some exact calibration had gone into the dossier's phony calculations.
And PR values are spreading to the most unlikely quarters; for example, a bunch of murderous terrorists in Yemen have recently relaunched themselves as 'al-Queda in the Arabian Peninsular', which is the sort of circumlocution the PR classes favour, rather on the same lines, although obviously on a different scale, as 'The Grammar School at Leeds'.
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Weather for Leeds
Sunday 12 February 2012
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