What's all this white stuff?

It snowed this morning, just lightly but enough to remind me that Scotland is not like Australia. I had long had suspicions that snow was a fictitious creation of northern hemisphere media magnates designed to make those of us from tropical climates feel a little bit inferior. I had never seen it for real in all my 36 years of life, except for one trip to a ski resort in Lebanon, but that doesn't quite count as I didn't actually see the snow falling - it was just there looking suspiciously like the stuff you dig out of a freezer when doing a long overdue defrost. During our family's travels around the world I chased it with a kind of desperation, but always to narrow disappointment. Having heard it was snowing in the mountains around some village in Italy, I drove there only to find shrugged shoulders and puddles of water everywhere. "If you had been here a few hours ago, this place was covered in snow, but I'm afraid it melted." It was like Lois Lane bursting in expecting to find Superman and instead seeing Clark Kent hurriedly buttoning his shirt and giving silly excuses for the ‘Man of Steel's’ absence; "He just left Lois, but he told me to tell you that he will see you again, another day." This was the exact relationship between me and snow.

Aberdeen was my chance to verify the existence once for all of this illusive Christmas Card filler but again it seemed my close encounter was to be thwarted by, would you believe it, the warmest winter on record! I was about to relegate this phenomena to the 'Loch Ness Monster' file when, low and behold, the Doris family woke up one chilly February morning to a blanket of white over the landscape. Could it be real? Was this really this thing called snow? Before the kids could even get out of bed, I ran out into the front yard and slipped and skidded around while grabbing handfuls of the fluffy white cold stuff. Much to the disgust of Natasha and Callum, this mild snowfall was not enough to cancel school and so they puttered off to their day prison while mummy went to work. This left daddy to play in the snow. Having felt a slight tinge of responsibility, my dream of building a snow man would have to wait as I had to go to uni for some classes. The snowfall was quote heavy and all parts of the city and the university were covered. Sacred statues were humorously defaced with clumps of white plastic surgery, while somber Scots trudged grumbling to their pedestrian destinations, occasionally scowling at young boys throwing snowballs around on their way to school.
At 3:30pm when both kids had arrived home, we ran out to the back yard to fulfill my lifelong ambition - build a snow man. There was still enough snow left at the end of the day to roll into the large balls required to construct the similitude of life we desired. Interspersed with impromptu life fire target practice, the somewhat short and stumpy new member of the Doris family began to arise from the earth. As there wasn't enough raw materials to make him very tall, we left him hobbit sized while we raced off to find the obligatory woolen hat and scarf. With a carrot nose and twigs for arms, our leg-challenged friend was now ready for photographic memorial. Natasha was very excited to pose for the camera with her new sibling, but Callum, who had decided to make a rival snowman in another corner of the back yard, refused to participate. His own meager attempts looked more like a small ant nest, but it was all his and my son's loyalty could not be shaken. At the end of the day our white back yard was a desecration of footprints and bare patches, while our house stoically withstood the hits from misthrown snowballs. When darkness came, we removed the scarf and hat from our unnamed compatriot and departed for warmth and dinner happy that snow was no longer the Bigfoot of the Doris family but a cherished experience.
That was the only snow day we had all winter. While Southern England experienced the worst snow season in decades, Northern Scotland received nothing of it. Gradually the weather warmed and Spring flowers sprang up on the lawn. Winter was over without the horrible cold winds or blizzards we were warned about. The kids tell me its snowing again, but probably not for long as we have already had sunshine, rain and hail all in a matter of hours today. Of course everyone is blaming global warming for this mild winter, but they would probably say the same thing for almost any weather pattern that occurs.
Alas we will probably have to wait another year for snow now.

If it ever comes to Aberdeen.