LostInTheWoods

Well it has snowed, and I really should not be that surprised living in Sweden. The winter has been very mild up until recently, but then the other night temperatures dropped to -9C, and the next day we got blustering snow.

To a Brit who has come from just outside of London, snow is a distant childhood memory, something that happened a long time ago, and the snow even then only lasted a day and a half.

Here and now, any white stuff that falls out of the sky has a good chance of hanging around for a good few weeks. So life here is now a little different than UK. In addition to the aforementioned folding shovel (see previous post), we also keep a big soft brush in the car for brushing snow off it, a big bottle of windscreen (-shield) wash that you should keep away from naked flames and there are two front seats that warm your bum and make you feel as though you have wet yourself. Sweet.

In addition I now never go anywhere without a hat that I can pull over my dumbo-esque ears (see my picture at the top of this page). In the UK I never wore a hat. Never. But needs now must.

Today I was caught out by two snow ploughs as I was out for my daily constitutional. I saw a the big one coming from a long way off, and I thought that the wave of snow that it was producing was at a safe distance to me (heavy stuff snow). It was, it landed beside me.

But, I hadn't seen the smaller nimbler snow plough, that was right behind the first scraping the road of what is known in some parts as “white asphalt”, the hard packed snow on the road that the first snow plough didn't clear (and helped to lay down). The stuff it kicked up had a, lets say, larger trajectory.

I was dignified.

A few weeks ago there was snow in the UK, and from news reports it may as well have been the next apocalypse. Schools closed, questions in Parliament, “stay at home” warnings. Here nobody batters an eyelid, they wear the proper clothes and get on with life.

That is all.

LostInTheWoods