Snow Notes

Well, the Met Office and the Beeb got their geography a bit off. Yes, snow fell, but there really hasn’t been much around here. Ebbw Vale’s resident blogger Robo reports a couple of feet of drifting snow, but here in Pontypridd the picture (Ynysangharad Park) shows the snow at its height. And I figure that the height got to not more than 4-6 inches.

My sister-in-law reports that they have three feet of snow piled up around their house at the moment, and through the winter, accumulations get measured in yards rather than centimetres! OK, that's Massachusetts, USA, but the world doesn't come to a halt even with that much snow.

I recall as a kid of 14 or so going to school on a Friday morning. It was snowing hard, but first lesson was rugby, so off we trooped to the leisure centre to change and then over to the rugby field by the old grammar school. I have to say that was as cold as it gets (except for standing on Brynmawr square, of course). After an hour of rugby in a blizzard on a completely white pitch, we got back to the leisure centre to find that school was closed.

Another snow remembrance I have is of being out delivering for dad’s shop one Saturday. The snow was so high that for most houses, rather than open the gate I simply walked up the snow drift and over them.

And of course the time when the snow was so high that Beaufort was cut off and dad, our brother and I had to dig our way out the house and walk to the pub! One of my ambitions is to be snowed up in a pub. We can hope.