Welcome Home Snowbaby

I was born at home on the day of the great snowstorm, March 14th
1964.

I was a late guest to this table of life.


However, it must be said, and with a lot of
conviction, not as late as the monstrous Glaswegian mid-wife who
eventfully and eventually delivered me on that crystal night.


It's family folklore.

What
was she like?

The mid-wife?


Well.

By all reports.


She was a theatrical tour de force of Widow Twanky
proportions that entered ten minutes before kick off time ranting
furiously of a flat tyre and un-gritted paths. She flapped and whistled
through the heavily panicked two up, two down terraced house in
Basildon and was attired in the full Hattie Jacques garb. She wore far
too much make up and had the attitude of a pent up racehorse on
amphetamines.

Her name was Maggi.


My Nan despised her at once and gave her the nickname of
'Mental Maggie'

'She did not even wipe her feet
the rude cow.'

This crazed creation enhanced her
growing reputation even further by ordering my Dad away from his
crumpled 'Sporting Life' and demanding that he make her freezing hands
some soup.

'A bairn born to warmly hands is a
bonny bairn.'

'A midwife named Maggi is a mental
Haggy' responded Nan

I was born at 8.25pm with a
slapped arse to Mulligatawny hands.

Maggi wasn't
finished yet; she informed the now edgy and exhausted household that
she might be here for a while longer because of the blizzard and her
precarious broken bicycle. She blamed her tiredness on my indignant
reluctance to come out and play with the world.


This was an out and out lie.

Ask me Dad
and he will back me up.

The truth is when she
finally left it was close to midnight and she was slightly squiffy from
Metaxa brandy that she continually helped herself to.


Christ knows how she got her hands on it. It's still a
mystery.

Nan said that she had nothing to do with
it.

This brandy came from the legendry special
draw that was only opened on special occasions such as Christmas or
when West Ham United won, which incidentally was getting more and more
frequent as the season progressed that year. My Dad, a big, burly
assertive man always tells me that he had planned to offer Maggi a
little nip as she was preparing to leave but said that Maggi had got
her soupy hands on the bottle seconds after I popped out and the whole
matter got out of control.

He still states to this
day that this was the only time in his life that he had been bullied
and that this woman actually frightened him.

Maggi
majestically slipped on some ice outside the front door as she left,
her front tyre between her woollen legs.

Nan
screeched with laughter.

It has been told
constantly this story, a slice of family fairy cake that has been iced
more and more down the years.

Last year it had
been updated to the point where the mid-wife was on the verge of
seducing Dad while Mum, Nan, my brother Frank and I slept soundly
through a land of white.

It was the night of the
storms.

I do not know what to believe.


It definitely did snow though. That is in the history books.


*

On March 14th 1964 it
snowed, snowed heavy, especially in the town of Basildon. The heaviest
for thirty years my mum said. It snowed the following week as well.
People were cut off, could not get to work and schools were closed. A
party atmosphere ensued. Neighbours became neighbourly; they helped
each other out, they cleared snow from footpaths, gave the elderly
surplus food and blankets. It was almost like the war my mum said,
almost like the old East End.

The thaw came with
brilliant sunshine, turning the sky a periwinkle blue. Pipes burst
turning paths and roads into chocolate slush within hours. It was
followed by rain that lasted on and off for a month.


*

I am not superstitious man by any
means. I have my Dads healthy cynicism, but there has to be something
in this.

I have always had a strong need for snow
you see. An addiction possibly. All through my life it's held me in
awe. I always want it in winter, sometimes in summer. As a boy I would
wait for it when it was forecast, I'd forever stare out of the window
in my pyjamas throughout long nights. When it started I would be
entranced, I would not sleep. I would wake the whole house up time and
time again. The thing is, no one would be annoyed in my family, they
found it endearing. They would call me the Snowbaby.


They still do.

I remember my first white
Christmas; it's scrawled in my mind like the faulty' Etch a Sketch'
that I received that morning.

It was 1971.


It caught me by surprise the snow that year. It
was not on the cards and I was delightfully furious when my brother
Frank got there before me.

'Wake up Snowbaby,
you'll never guess what's happened.'

I did not
know what to do. Half of me was at the window, the other half in a
ripping unwrapping frenzy.

I was torn.


The only present that I remember from that year was a
complete West Ham United football kit. I did not get boots just
plimsolls but I did not mind, it was snowing. My brother frank got a
Chelsea kit, he got boots though, he was older and that's fair.


That's how irrational this kind of weather made me
back then.

We went outside in our kits, I had my
shirt firmly tucked into my shorts like Bobby Moore and Frank had his
hanging out as a tribute to Peter Osgood. It was freezing and falling
around us in perfection. We decided to have a one-a-side match. We fell
all over the place in the deep fresh snow, we shivered and our shirts
froze. It was glorious.

Frank thrashed me of
course. He had boots.

We then made a huge rolling
snowball the size of a Space-Hopper that we left in the middle of the
road. I don't know how that all ended up because our Mum called us in
for dinner. I remember though that there were no other children playing
out that Christmas Day.

By Boxing Day the snow had
gone and I had terrible flu that lasted until New Year.


I was always ill during my childhood.


From the age of five to fourteen I suffered from what I can
only call pus syndrome. I had boils on my bum and sty's on my eye
continually. I was always tired and in and out of the health centre
with some plague or other.

I once had a lump on my
knee that swelled to the size of a melon. I was rushed into hospital
and stayed there for a week. Doctors gave me all sorts of tests,
tablets and swabs, but they found nothing wrong with me. One doctor
with a clown smile tried to humour me.

"We'll have
to cut it off."

I screamed for two days.


My Dad punched him I think.


They never found out what it was and the swelling subsided.


Another time I had to go the hospital to have a
blood test because of a septic eye.

I hate
needles. I hated them then and I hate them now.


Before I went in to have the injection I sat in what was a
normal busy waiting room with my Dad. When I returned after the test
the room was silent and full of white faces.

You
could have heard a needle drop.

I was a big
screamer.

Dad had to hold me down in the doctor's
chair you see, he was wearing a heavy duffle coat at the time and
sweated so much with the effort that he still swears to this day that
he lost half a stone in weight.

It was a winter's
day I remember, snow had just melted.

Maybe that
had something to do with it.

*


My teenage and early adult years were textbook. I still had a
fascination with the weather but the obsession had faded somewhat.


It all changed when I was 27.


The girl that I was living with at the time wanted us to have
children. I was pretty keen myself.

Nothing
happened. I went to the hospital.

Same waiting
room, same doctor

I cannot and never could have
children ever.

The girlfriend vanished and I
started snow chasing again.

I coped, got on with
life. Got better jobs, a better girlfriend who understood. I travailed
the world.

I still do.

I have
a wonderful life.

*

I have
not hunted snow for years but am doing so tonight.


I'm listening out for the weather bulletins on the radio.


It's consuming me. I can't concentrate on anything
else.

Why is this?

An old
friend of mine whom I discussed this with this earlier tonight said
that I might be waiting and hoping for change.

She
may have a point.

Because right now things are
bad.

My beloved Dad is ill.


The world is at war.

My dreams are
fading.

I'm standing at the window, watching the
clouds form.

It's got to happen.


Soon!

Welcome home Snowbaby.