Snow days are rubbish

I know that when schools announce the possibility of a snow day, legions of mums start comparing notes on the perfect hot cocoa recipe, which park to best be seen frolicking with children and other wintery pastimes.
My reality is slightly clouded by work commitments, childcare realities and the searing memory of the great snow of 2009. This resulted in not just one but, I kid you not, 2 consecutive snow days. Day one was spent squidging play-do, potato printing, musical statues and by 10:27 am of that first morning, I was flat out of ideas on how to keep my darlings suitably entertained. Somehow the day passed thanks to a protracted session with Cebeebies and setting cocktail hour slightly earlier than strictly necessary.
I distinctly remember clinging on to my husband at around 6am on day 2. Part of me wanted to encourage him to leave the nuptial bed to report back on the weather but my heart wasn’t truly in it. In a bid not to wake the kids, I found myself stage whispering in a terrified, doe-in-headlights way “don’t-leave-me-at-home-with-them-please-promise-you-won’t-leave-me…..”…and then he did. For eight hours. Its not like we had to toss a coin as he was nearing a deadline and it was not one of my work days. So I girded my loins, bundled the kids up and took them to the park. We too would have that perfect Boden catalogue snowball fight. It was terrific fun for a while until both kids yelled “Uncle” (that’s American for “I give up”) and I stopped grinding their little faces into random snowmen….of course I didn’t but I did think about it when my son, church candles of snot dripping down his little face said “I wanna go home, its cold and you are a big fat tw%t.”
That was about 2 weeks into his elite Church of England education. That was what my precious 4 year old was picking up from the other kids---the kids we wanted him to associate with at the nice villagey school with the caring parents and the softly-softly teachers.
As I quickly scanned over my mental list of strategies, I decided to ignore rather than inflame the situation. This, I felt at the time, was what a seasoned Lieutenant Commander would do when faced with insurgency from a unit comprised of overtired 4 year old recruits. Once decided on this path, I stuck to it all the way home ignoring snotboy’s singsongy taunts of “mummy is a tw%t-a-tw%t-a-tw%%%%%t”. Passersby gave me those pitying looks, those snorts of disapproval for not being in a controlled situation with my offspring, those smug “Gina Ford wouldn’t brook this nonsense glances”, those “Thank God we are sending ours to private school” mutterings. Oh the shame of it burns even today.
So you can take your “yippyhurrah, we may get a snow day, just think of it, some unexpected quality time that wasn’t timetabled into today’s schedule” and stick it where the snow don’t freeze!!!