Friday Fiction
It’s Snowing
20 April 2018
I wish it was fiction, but it isn’t. Friday, 20 April, 2018: clouds fill the sky, thick, fluffy clots drift down nodding at me as they pass my window. An inch of snow covers grass, deck, pathways, lawn.
It’s snowing.
I check the weather forecast: +6C / 43F with light rain forecast for today. So much for the computer and the weather forecast. Look outside: snow is tumbling down, and it’s getting thicker. The blonde bimbo who waves her arms across the weather map with its bars and contours tells me it’s raining. She’s trapped indoors, in a tv studio, reading from a teleprinter. Wake up, lady, and smell the green tea. Then look out the window. But wrap up warmly … because it’s snowing.
Why is it snowing? Several reasons:
- I took my snow tires off the car last week: a sure sign it will snow.
- I got my hair cut yesterday: that always brings a change, for the worst in the weather, especially when I get a summer haircut, nice and short.
- To reassure me that my choice in coming to Canada was the correct one: I could have gone to Australia where my cousins are in danger of being burned out yet again by their third major bush fire in ten years. Here, it just snows. And snows. And so …
It’s snowing on April 20. This is personal. This is a personal attack on my humanity and sanity. I know: I chose to come here, to spend my life here, and I love it … but snow on April 20, when the tv bimbo is calling for rain and wet weather?
What will the robins do? Yesterday, they wandered in little groups all over the grass, chirping happily, singing for their suppers, pulling worms out of the brown earth as fast as they could go. Today, not a robin in sight. Not one.
But the crows are back: ubiquitous, omnipresent, omniscient, eternal, the seculae seculorum crows squat, feathers fluffed, beaks to the wind, hunkered down in skeletal trees, counting the snow flakes as the fall … caw … caw … caw …
Crows and snow: I think of school porridge, burning for breakfast. I can’t shake off those memories. They haunt me at breakfast time. Porridge suddenly appears as if from nowhere. The smell of burning tickles my nose. My cereal plate fills with the grinning face of porridge. It makes faces at me, nurdling and grimacing as I try to picture Corn Flakes, Rice Crispies, and Sugar Frosted Flakes, robins, not crows, green grass, not this bright, white table cloth spread on the lawn before me.
Oh for the sweetness of the robin’s song, the dawn chorus of a thousand songbirds lighting up the morning, sunlight on the grass … not a hope … forget it … look out of the window …
It’s snowing.
Oh Roger, I feel for you! Always wait till the first of May for that haircut! I feel like this happens to me too… We have a pool and inevitably when I schedule the opening for later, it gets hot early and when I schedule it early it stays cold until June!
LikeLiked by 1 person
It’s brighter now and the rain and snow have both stopped falling. I guess it’s just one of those half dozy days when looking out the window is hard work and words slip and slide down the page like raindrops, never standing still. I have a horrible haircut, too. Shaved up the sides and a tuft on top, like a coconut. Clare laughs every time she sees me and I have turned all the mirrors to the wall. That will teach me to experiment with a new barber. They were playing rap music too. Clicking their scissors and stomping their feet to Raging Ronnie or Danny and the Blah-blahs. Yuck: it’s one of those larger than life days when the words escape through the holes in my skull left when the hair roots vanished.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s the new style Roger! All the footballers wear their hair that way! Lol! Well, take some comfort in the fact that hair always grows back, and men’s haircuts revert even faster! 😃
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s true, Meg. My hair has grown since yesterday. It will come back very quickly. Then I’ll look like a coconot.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hahahahaha! Always keep your sense of humor!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Indeed, it is snowong; an occasion for you to amuse me with this lovely, poetic opine. Thank you! Chuck
LikeLike
So glad to see you here, Chuck. It’s just started to rain up here. Actually, it’s a grey and white streaky mix, and falling slowly.
LikeLike
It never stops even when it’s relatively ‘warm’ out. I think you nailed down the reasons though. 😉
LikeLiked by 1 person
The snow tires really did it … and that haircut. I’m not paranoid: I know they’re out to get me. It’s stopped snowing now and just started to rain. What a mess! I could understand it if it was April the First!
LikeLiked by 1 person