Monday 2 February 2009

How strange....

So, its been the thickest snow for 18 years has it? Doesn't that sound a long time ago. Yet when you say 1991, it doesn't somehow. Sounds a very recent year. Where does the time go?

I remember that snow like yesterday. At the time i was working in the city at Bishopsgate as a PA. They sent us home at 3 pm as the snow started to fall. Liverpool Street Station had very helpfully shut down and i was left standing there like a lot of other commuters, cold and bewildered. I eventually climbed on a bus goin to Ponders End and i remember sitting upstairs at the front of the bus and reading a Zoe Fairburns novel Daddy's Girls that she had autographed for me a few days before. But tears kept splashing on the pages as the day outside turned quickly into night.

I was in a volatile and passionate relationship at the time and I convinced myself HE wouldn't care i was struggling on a bus, not really knowing how to get home, if i ever would get home. The tears came fast and thick. No mobile phones then of course. just very oversubscribed phone boxes.

Five hours i was on that fracking bus, eventually alighting us at a grotty pub just by the Hertford Road. I went straight in there and phoned HIM from a callbox by the bar - whilst getting chatted up by a scouser, and HE immediately came and got me. isn't it funny how love makes you so sensitive ? so worried about nothing.

We spent the next two days snowed in together. What absolute bliss and happiness. He was a teacher - so no school for him - and my office didn't even open.

Of course, a few months later, after a blissful holiday together, he really started to get on my tits. Not to mention him running off with some former student or another. And there were no more tears on the bus nor anywhere else. But i will never forget that time we had in the snow.

And now, it strikes me as i look out the window how very different my life is now. can anyone else recall that snow in February 1991 and what they were doing?

8 comments:

Henry the Dog said...

No, mum can't recall that snow. Perhaps it wasn't snowing in Doncaster. It's funny how weather can evoke memories. Though snow always makes mum feel happy and excited, but she reckons that goes back to her childhood, because she loved how it used to brighten up a grey winter. Thanks for sharing that with us, Jennysmith xx

Tim Atkinson said...

But 1991 is just a year or two ago, isn't it? And as for the '80s...

I was probably enjoying a day or two off; school was definitely closed (and that was rare in Cheshire - we didn't even get frosts, let alone snow. I think ICI Runcorn was to blame).

French Fancy... said...

I can't remember it at all.

Just think back then you never knew you would be married and have two lovely kids by the time the next lot of bad snow happened. I wonder where we will all be in 18 years time.

Marie and John said...

I can remember it. We must have had at least 8 inches of snow.

I couldn't get the car out of the garage as it was snowed in so had to go to work by bus.

Hardly anyone turned in that day and those of us who had made it in were sent home at 2pm and given a two hour flexi credit.

I can also remember going home from work and struggling to walk home as the snow was so deep.

Brrr....
xxx

Elaine Denning said...

Aww, that was sad :(

I can remember a few snowfalls when Dan was little, but not one that deep!

Polly said...

Well it never snows here and I was 15 in 1991 - probably in love with someone different every other month. But I did love your story and its memories.

Jennysmith said...

Hi Henry. I thought snow was always worse "up north". But yes, its true the weather can store such powerful memories. Especially as a child.

I know, D, its terrible. I couldn't beleive it was 18 years ago! i was all grown up and everything. So you had a day off under false pretences eh? Reportin that right now.

Hi FF,Yes, thats an interesting question. What will happen in the next 18 years? I bet the kids will still be giving me grief. Or someone will.

So you also had a tough time going home, Marie. Not sure i could cope with that now. But you just sort of get on with it really.

Hi Elaine and Polly, glad you liked my memories. No, its a bit different when kids are little, you're too tired to enjoy any snow or anything. and P, being 15 in the snow is very different xxxx

Mean Mom said...

I don't remember that particular occasion, but I do remember snowy conditions in 1977, when I was living in the Midlands. I trudged to my mother's house, in the dark after work, through the snow, because there were no buses. It was about an hour's walk. I'd had a dreadful argument with my husband in the morning and it was weighing on my mind. When I got to my mother's, he was already there. He had been riding around in the car, looking for me and we were OK again.