Winter Wonderland - 09/02/07
Wednesday, I woke up at 4.30 AM and, for London, there was a good covering of snow, crisp and even, if not deep. When the sun came up, it was still snowing but melting as it fell. It brought to mind the big chill of 1963, the coldest winter since 1740 and yet to be surpassed.

That year, snow lay constantly from Boxing Day until early March. Since I was a kid of seven, (see picture) it was paradise. Endless snowball fights in the playground; when we got bored of chucking snowballs, we started hurling chunks of ice at each other. That could really hurt and even draw blood.

The River Tweed, which runs through Kelso, was frozen enough for skating, curling and exploratory trips to otherwise inaccessible islands. It's the only time that’s happened in my life. Somebody had pushed an enormous garden roller on to the ice to prove it was safe. On January 13th a temperature of 3 Fahrenheit (-16 centigrade) was recorded at Eskdalemuir, Kelso’s closest weather station.

I loved the winters as a child. I had a fairly rudimentary sledge, some planks nailed to solid runners. It was a heavy beast and the snow was so deep that it filled my wellies as I trudged up the hill, dragging the sledge behind.

One boy I was at school with, Forsyth, came from a rich family that owned a department store, R.W. Forsyth’s, on Edinburgh’s Princes Street. He had one of those fancy-dan sledges made with steel and wood that incorporated a steering system. To steer my sledge, you stuck your legs off the back; its only accessory was a piece of string for pulling it.

One day, Forsyth sledged off down the slope ahead of me. Part way down he came off, leaving his sledge in the middle of the run. I crashed into it at full speed, smashing it to bits and then carried on down the slope minus my sledge, which was undamaged. I got the worst winding I’ve ever had and the bruises on my thighs went through an unlikely rainbow of colours for the next fortnight.

I have a memory that my Dad had to pay for Forsyth’s sledge, which just proves there’s no justice in the world, although his family’s store did close down in 1981.

But we don’t know what winter means in the UK. I spent the winter of 1993/94 with my first wife in Brooklyn, a winter that even seasoned New Yorkers conceded was especially harsh. We decided we’d had enough of constant snow and temperatures that, even in the middle of the day, never rose above 20 Fahrenheit (– 6 centigrade) so we booked a flight to Puerto Rico.

Since we were going to the airport door-to-door by taxi, we wore light clothes. As we got into the cab, a blizzard started and the driver got lost in the whiteout. On the last stretch of freeway to JFK, the driver confirmed my suspicion that he had no idea how to drive in the snow by losing control of the car.

We were only travelling at about 15 mph and glided slowly across four lanes of highway to the hard shoulder, coming to a halt by thumping sideways into a transit van that was already stranded there.

Two of the car-door windows had fallen out in the crash so we continued to JFK with wind and snow howling around the back of the cab. We arrived at the airport just in time to hear the announcement that it was closing for the day.

There were no cabs to be seen, so we had to take the subway back to Brooklyn's Park Slope in in our beach clothes, surrounded by people in fur coats looking at us as if we were stark staring bonkers.