When me and my beloved popped out to the local shop this morning, we saw no snowmen and hardly any people. An hour later I went out on my own and at the top of the hill somebody had built an impressive snowman complete with hat, arms made from sticks, a face and scarf. He was lovely and made me smile. I thought to take a photograph but didn’t. I went into town for no more than an hour but when I came back the snowman had been smashed to pieces. This depressed me more than words can say.

Who knows why the snowman was destroyed? Does there have to be a reason? I think not these days.

In a world where people torture people, where all sorts of violent crimes exist, where wars and corrupt regimes take so many lives, you’d think, rightly, that the ‘murder’ of a snowman would rank pretty low down on the list of Nasty Things People Do. However, it stands—or rather lies in big pieces—as a metaphor, to a poetic mind like mine, for so much that is so bloody wrong in the 21st Century.

I mean, here was a pretty thing sculpted from ice and snow in the middle of the street on the top of a hill in a town not especially known for being anything other than grey, wet more often than not, and depressingly lacking in social activities and opportunities for cultivating community spirit.

The snowman was probably made by kids, perhaps with the help of adults, and like all fun in the snow the work involved in building this figure afforded a family, maybe two or more families, the chance to enjoy some bonding and innocent fun.

The snowman wasn’t in anybody’s way. It wasn’t blocking traffic. Even council bureaucrats couldn’t have ordered him to be removed.

Whoever destroyed the snowman wanted not only to get rid of a creatively-shaped lump of snow, he or she or they also wanted to hurt someone, perhaps someone they didn’t even know. The snowman was kicked into oblivion because of anger, hatred, malice, jealousy, resentment and a host of other twisted feelings. Mission achieved. Well done you, whoever you are. But to what end, really?

The perpetrator(s) could have been any age, as young as five or way older. I’ve seen these hideous emotions at work on people’s faces and in their actions at all ages, including small children many of whom leave innocence behind as soon as they can crawl. If ours is such a prosperous nation, if money is the measure of how close we are to Heaven, then you have to wonder why so many people are so damnably miserable, bitter and full of hate. Actually, I know why. You probably do too, if you’re reading this. No need to say.

Live people. Live before you die. There are too many wonderful emotions available to us to let the bad ones dictate our every word and deed.

Truth is, we want. We rarely need. And some people, bloated with excess, indulged beyond all good sense, get off on turning joy into sadness. I don’t understand them and I don’t want to. A snowman can be built by anyone, rich or poor. That’s just one of the beautiful things about a snowman: it doesn’t cost any money, it doesn’t require permission from the overlords, it can’t be marketed (not the real thing at any rate). I only wish I’d taken that photograph. The picture accompanying this article isn’t, alas, the snowman that lived for less than an hour. He exists only in memory now.

Whoever built that snowman today in a public space, thank you for brightening my day. He was a most excellent Snowman. To whoever darkened my day by destroying it, you have my pity. And now I’ve exorcised the sadness and depression by writing down the experience, I’ll get on with aiming to make the world a better place. One smile, one good deed, one thoughtful gesture, at a time. I’ll fail some of the time—maybe a lot of the time—but I’ll do my best.

Blessed be.

I was watching TV tonight and around 9.35pm the ending of the novel I’m writing for NaNoWriMo came to me. Bam. Just like that, a lightning bolt straight into my conscious mind. I wasn’t thinking about the novel. I was just doing nothing, and maybe that’s why I got the idea when I did—I was free, for a time, from the internal knots and tensions that every writer is familiar with, and has to wrestle to the ground constantly and never-endingly if he or she is to win through and get the work done.

To say I was excited was an understatement given that the now-known final chapter will turn the entire story round, flip everything on its head, confound and surprise and terrify the reader who, I hope, will already have enjoyed plenty of mystery and surprises from the very first page. It feels weird saying that when I’m only writing chapter four today and am planning a total of thirty—one for each day of the competition. It’s also, remember, only the first draft I’m pumping out right now. There could be one, two, three or more before everything’s ready for take-off.

Continue Reading »