By Rebekka Hodges
WHEN I WOKE up on the morning of Sunday, 5 February, I looked out of my bedroom window, saw an amazing backdrop of brilliant white snow and was instantly transported back to my childhood.
I am six-years-old and am having a pillow fight with my older brother. He has three years on me, and easily an extra foot. Every time our pillows connect with one and other, the slip rips a little more, until finally the cover explodes, and as we look up, we throw our hands into the air and allow ourselves to be blanketed by a light dusting of feathers.
This month’s European snow dusting was not the first time that I had seen snow. In fact, I spent a few years of my childhood living at the foot of Mount Hotham in Victoria. But as I stared out the window, I found myself hypnotized by the enormous snowflakes tumbling from the sky, and for those few moments, everything seemed to be perfectly silent.
As is the case for many Australians, the sight of snow is a rarity. So, when it does happen, it tends to send us a little mad. Despite the fact I’d just risen from bed and was dressed for the balmy temperature created by the indoor heating, I raced out of the house and threw myself into the already ankle deep powder, waving my arms by my side like a lunatic to make angels in the snow.
“Rentre a l’intérieur, tu vas mourir de froid,” the woman I was staying with yelled from the comfort of her house; warning me that I may freeze to death.
Continuing to lay there, oblivious to the cold, I let the snow fall down on me, trying unsuccessfully to capture a flake in my hand to see the unique form of its crystals.
I never thought that I would say it, in fact I have until this day always be a self-professed beach girl, but there is something quite special about the cold. Something so magical that reverts you back to that feeling, that moment when you are young again, carefree and having a pillow fight with your brother.
Read our other London snow encounters:
– Nice to snow you
– Snowflakes are falling on my head
– Let it snow