No business like snow business
Lisa Ashari's joyous first experience of snow
After a month at imperial, my friends had found out that I hadn’t ever touched snow. Naturally I was mildly teased as they took amusement from my winter noobness. As soon as the prospect of snow arrived in the form of a little icon on the BBC online weather forecast, I was over the moon. Of course, I was expecting to wake up to a snow day the next day so when I went to lectures that day I was rather excited. As soon as people said “it won’t settle”, I just nodded and toned down the outward enthusiasm. One Google search later I realised that meant it’ll be in the sky but not on the ground. Sad face.
Skip to next Tuesday at 7:30AM I receive a text saying, “SNOW!” My obvious response to this is to immediately rip my covers off and, in one swift movement, tear open the curtains while launching myself toward the window with enough force to have my face collide with the glass. Potential facial bruises aside, seeing the little white things falling from the sky was astonishing.
A flash memory of my mother’s email reminding me to layer up prompted me to wear all of my UNIQLO gear at the same time, and then some
I do not remember how long I stood there but once I removed myself from the fairytale, I frantically sent out a text along the lines of “as soon as you are awake enough to play in the snow with me, text me!!!!” after that I leaped over to my wardrobe to get changed. I soon realised I wasn’t sure what to wear, but then a flash memory of my mother’s email reminding me to layer up prompted me to wear all of my UNIQLO gear at the same time, and then some. It took me about 20 minutes to put on 5 layers made up of 21 items of clothing. I then stuffed my pockets with any money I could find, just in case being in the snow brings on sudden expenses. Not a minute later, I received a reply from a friend from my old school (also very obviously a snow virgin) informing me that he and our other friend from before were in Princes Gardens freaking their shit over the snow. Eager to join them, I hurled myself down the stairs with enough force to stop a bus, and quickly exited Beit.
Being outside in the snow was utterly magical. In my head there are two kinds of snow: snow from romantic comedies and snow from action movies. I was officially in a rom-com. After the initial shock of having cold small things touch my cheeks, I was on my very merry way to Prince’s Gardens. While walking I wasn’t aware that I had an unnaturally large smile attached to my face until people started staring. Even after I realised I looked like I had just snorted some new class A drug, I was too giddy to care and so carried on scaring the south ken residents in a joker like fashion.
After meeting my friends, we just stood in the snow; open mouthed trying to catch it on our tongues. After that failed, we settled for copious amounts of prancing, leaping and other forms general joyousness. This is when I realised crunchy snow is like crunchy leaves on steroids, and this is coming from someone who will go WELL out of her way to step on a crunchy leaf. Naturally, this made me unbelievably happy as every step in the patch of snow gave a very satisfying crunch. Although the snow that day was minor, it was more than good enough for me and I proceeded with abnormally high spirits, a spring in my step and the same freakish smile plastered across my face.
