Well we don’t have any but I’m sure some of you do and over on Instagram this week, for those who don’t ‘do’ it I had a bit of a reminisce for something known as #throwbackthursday ( when you post a picture from your past) about the winter of 1978.
It all started when this picture of Bookhound surfaced and with it came a cascade of memories about the community nurse’s house in the Devon village of Buckland Monachorum that we had just moved into in the autumn of 1978. The house came with my first health visiting job and was an unexpected bonus (along with an ex-police panda car) which it seemed silly not to take for the chance it would give us to save up the deposit for a home of our own that the Halifax Building Society could then buy for us for £12,300 approx. That was our absolute limit. £14,000, which was the cheapest in the village at the time, was beyond our reach and we were sad to leave Buckland Monachorum when we eventually did in 1980, for the bustling metropolis (by comparison) that was Tavistock.
Anyway the house was unfurnished and freezingly bitingly cold as I think you can tell from Bookhound’s layering approach to clothing. We had painted the walls in Cinnamon and Spice aka brown and another shade of brown, which seemed like the height of avant-garde decoration, to match the vast amount of brown and orange accessories we had been given as wedding presents two years earlier. We had two orange chairs and a pub advert mirror (also the zenith of 70's household decor) until we eventually bought a pine table with benches (uncomfortable) and a pine Habitat sofa with big striped cushions (even more uncomfortable) and please take note of that Christmas spindle tree in the background. I think my mum and dad had donated it to our cause from their attic along with the chairs. My mum had knitted us one of those Aran jumpers each in that His and Hers 70' style, and I expect I’m wearing mine as I took the picture.
But best of all, there’s our little border collie puppy Ben. We had bought him from a farm at Peter Tavy a few weeks previously. Ben would spend seventeen more Christmases with us, tolerate three children and two more house moves before a very tearful farewell on Boxing Day 1994.
Our 'now' dogs have barely seen snow, Nell especially being only five, though Rusty at seven was a newly-arrived puppy for this in 2010...
Ben on the other hand (or paw) was initiated instantly in 1978 and almost disappeared in a snowdrift after we took him for a walk and got caught in a blizzard that December. It’s hard to believe that even though we were familiar with the landscape and the fields it was nigh on impossible to find our way, or know which direction we were headed, so with Ben tucked down inside Bookhound’s jacket we were more than happy to stumble across the church and know that the pub was nigh.
I have been waiting for the merest hint of the white stuff in order to read Marcus Sedgwick’s ‘Snow’, published by Little Toller as part of their Monograph series. I had bought this aeons ago in an effort to be completist about the Monographs which are a series I covet for their pocket-sized range of interesting topics...
'Snow, of all weathers has affected the author Marcus Sedgwick the most.While his friends and family went in search of sun, sea and sand for their annual holidays, Marcus travelled to the cold and snowy parts of the world: Russia, Scandinavia, the Arctic Circle. Then, five years ago, he moved to a mountain house, an old chalet d-alpage, high in the Haute Savoie. Here. for the first time, he truly understood what it meant to live in a place where snowfall shaped the boundaries of life.
Imitating the six sides of a snowflake, the six chapters of this book explore the art, literature and science of snow, alongside Marcus Sedgwick's own experiences and memories. Why is snow so powerful to our imagination ? So transformative?
As fundamental as our responses to darkness and sunlight, our relationship with snow is both universal and deeply personal. By asking whether it really did snow more during his boyhood in Kent, Marcus also explores the implications of climate change for himself, asking if snow could become a thing of the past.'
I flicked through the book as snow fell everywhere else but here yesterday and read this...
'Our memories are not good. No matter how much we like to think we have strong and accurate power of recall, the evidence of psychologists suggests otherwise. We easily fabricate, recast, adapt and destroy our memories, and one of the greatest obstacles we face when trying to keep accurate memories is time...'
Now I'm thinking...was it 1978...did my mum knit those jumpers...was the house really that cold...did we paint the walls brown and brown, did we get caught in the blizzard. Fortunately the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.
I had been wavering about whether to read Snow now, whilst there's snow everywhere else but not in Devon, or hang on until we get our portion and the light and the sound do that magical bright and muffled thing, but I am now so intrigued I'm diving in this weekend in case that's it for the winter.
And alongside I'm going to be playing Marcus Sedgwick's playlist of snow songs.
Any snow over your way yet Northern Hemisphere residents...
I'm thinking some of you might have had enough of it already...
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