When I woke up yesterday morning, the first thing I did was rush over to the window eagerly. I did it with such eagerness that a casual observer could easily have assumed that on the window sill lay a big bag of digestive biscuits.
However, the attraction was not a big bag of digestive biscuits. In fact, I wanted to see whether there was any snow about. I pulled back the curtains… and not a drop of snow was to be seen. Oh well.
But then, as if by magic, it actually started snowing. Incredible, I thought.
It wasn’t what I’d call proper full-fat snow, creamy snow with the. It was the definition of weediness. One could have been forgiven for assuming that a slightly clumsy chap had been making glacé icing outside. But still, it was snow, and it made things look a bit picturesque.
Later, I found myself swaddled in a coat and a scarf and gloves and just about every other warm garment under the sun. This was not because I was taking part in National Dress Up As Michelin Man Day – after all, there is no such thing as National Dress Up As Michelin Man Day – but because I was heading into the cold outdoors.
Outside, as I walked to the car, I noticed that the chickens were glowing. They could quite possibly have been involved in some sort of explosion at a florescent paint factory. It was remarkable. I considered getting my camera out so as to capture the remarkableness on film. However, we were a bit late, so I told myself that I would be able to do my snapping on our return later.
We arrived at our destination – my grandmother’s bungalow – to find the smell of cooking filling the air. My cousin was cooking something involving couscous and chickpeas. As I sat down at the piano with my grandmother for my weekly piano lesson, I looked forward to the delicacies with which I would be able to quench my hunger once the ivories had been tickled sufficiently.
As soon a I had closed the book of piano music and got up from the piano, my fingers throbbing a little bit, my cousin came hopping from the kitchen. It emerged that the chickpeas involved in the the dish must be slowly cooked for eight hours, after a few decades of preparatory soaking, if they are to not be dangerously toxic. This was not viable, as the dish had been cooking for a mere hour, and we were hungry.
Fortunately, we managed to fish the poisonous chickpeas out of the stew, and we ate the stew without the chickpeas, and there have been no fatalities yet. Thank goodness for that. The stew was a little bit less substantial without the chickpeas, but that is a small price to pay for not falling victim to a rather embarrassing sticky end. When I die, I hope I get ripped to pieces by a bear, rather than something rubbish like a high-protein vegetable. Although, I suppose I won’t really care when I’m dead.
Once we had guzzled a considerable heap of food, my cousin and I decided to go outside, for some fun shenanigans. In the absence of a sledge, we decided to use a body-board – one of those polystyrene floaty things popular among beach-goers – to slide about merrily on the snowy ground. Paucity of snow did not stop us from having some fun.
It was great. In the absence of some wolves, we tied the body-board to a bicycle, which was a bad idea. Oh, I haven’t had so much fun since I played Eraser Football.
I managed to shoot some video of the action. Once I had decided that my blood was close to freezing, we went inside and watched it. It was OK.
Maybe I will upload some of it here. I know you like nothing more than videos of people dicking about with some string, a body-board and a bicycle.
At five o’clock, we returned home. I staggered out of the car, past the chickens’ place. The sun was setting. Apparently, the chickens had stopped glowing, and they had gone inside their house. I was disappointed by the missed photo opportunity, but I did not care. I was fortunate to be alive, and to have not been killed by chickpeas.