Well, that was a truly bizarre evening.
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hathy_col and I left the centre of Preston at 10pm. The idea was for us to take half an hour getting into Ormskirk, where rather than subject Colleen and her car to the rural roads, I'd get on a train home, which would be laborious (it goes round the houses) but warm and safe for all of us.
Cut to the M58, after dark. Picture this like a film, one of those Richard Curtis confections about being home for Christmas - you're driving along in the dim lights, listening to Amanda Palmer, or at least Colleen is driving and I'm making unhelpful cracks about how at least we haven't been hit by an iceberg yet, small blessings, etc, and then the snow comes down and suddenly we're somewhere else entirely. I've never seen snow like this in England, never. It came down in enormous blizzard flakes, driving into the windscreen, layering on the embankment and the verges, encroaching inwards until suddenly you couldn't see the hard shoulder, and then you couldn't see the right-hand lane, and then the traffic was in single file, other than the bastard four by fours who think they're not risking everyone's neck by overtaking, and the snow began to creep.
We made it into Ormskirk slooooooowly, and then I couldn't persuade my father not to come and rescue me from there. I said I'd get a taxi; he raised the very good point that there isn't a taxi firm in existence that would come out tonight; I said I'd stay the night, and then realised of course that since the bastards stole my handbag last month I don't have keys to my parents' house any more. Lord, is there anything more embarrassing then being rescued by your parents your first night at home for four months? But desperate times, etc., and actually when my father appeared he seemed to be quite enjoying the adventure. And all the way, there was the blessing of the gorgeous Christmas card look to everything. For the benefit of my American and Canadian friends who are going "snow, what of it" round about now, I was born in Liverpool, a place known for salty air and seawater and not, shall we say, rural snowy idyll. In other words, it has never snowed - properly, I mean, not dissolving-on-contact-with-tarmac snow - where I grew up since I was a very tiny person indeed. (The internet suggests that 1990 was a snowy year - I do remember it, vaguely.) And suddenly there's all these familiar places, these places which I know so well, suddenly unfamiliar - suddenly as though we're in another place altogether. Colleen and I wandered down the road and looked at perfect snowy firs and electrical wires marked out with snow against the sky and lovely virgin snow we could crunch over, and the light was reflecting over and over off it unti there was a sort of two am lividity to everything, and I was charmed.
All things considered, it could have been a lot worse; for one thing, Colleen and I got home without incident, and yesterday I made it home from Edinburgh on the main line trains without major incident - I was a little late, but nothing serious at all. I'm impressed with the train companies this week, I must say; first the East Coast line, then the western route, and the local trains are all running.
At this point one might be moved to ask why I was in Preston tonight anyway.
( IANTO PANTO ) On the whole, it was a very strange evening, but I think I liked it.
Tomorrow, it is Christmas Eve and there's four inches of snow in the garden. I think I may make a snowman.
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