Fifteen feet of pure white snow...
Flakes falling from the sky - my favourite. But is there anything original to be said on the subject of snow?

Not much.

Here's a story. When I was ten years old there were two options at lunchtime: attempt to play football or attempt to gossip about Home and Away. I didn't know much about either, but threw my lot in with the football anyway. This involved religiously avoiding the ball either because I didn't know what to do with it or because I was too fat to catch up with play.

The situation couldn't really be taken too seriously anyway: run more than a few paces and you'd fall into a big pothole; our pitch was like the Somme. The rules were interpreted according to the whims of the toughest player on the field, which led to abuse on a comical level. Penalty re-takes were frequent: on the right team your penalty was taken until it was scored. On the wrong team your penalty was re-taken until it was missed. For some reason everyone other than me could take this seriously.

Every now and then a past pupil, Brian, would hop the wall and join in. He was about twenty and had a motorbike. Whatever team he joined seemed for some reason to automatically win, and after a while it was realised that the only evenly matched game he could play was on his own, with a goalkeeper, against 15 of us. He still won regularly, even if all 15 of us lined up in the goalmouth. This, however, simply induced him to kick the ball against our defences as hard as possible. Thighs were bruised and testicles were threatened, a situation far from ideal.

Other strategies included a slick passing game in which he was denied possession at all times. This failed due not to our lack of passing prowess, but the poor playing conditions. It always bobbled, I swear. And sadly the Roman Centurion Tortoise formation has never quite caught the imagination of football tacticians, but don't say we weren't innovative. I still harbour hopes that it will appear in the Premiership within my lifetime.

Childhood was snowy. Whether it came down lightly or heavily, it would always stick around - west Wicklow is a dismally cold place when it wants to be, which is most of the time. This occasion was the first time we had been allowed out for lunch after the winter's snow, which had become ice and was therefore deemed unsafe to play on. For days we stayed in watching the greatest toy in the world dissolve before our eyes. By the time we had been freed it was almost too late.

I needed a snowball. Alice had one. She was going to throw it at Grainne, which would have been a waste because she would have missed. This was the last snowball of the winter and it deserved a higher purpose. I bought it off her for 10p. She didn't really want to throw it at Grainne because they were best friends, but she had the snowball and there really wasn't anything else she could think to do with it.

And what a snowball! This was solid ice, with lovely bits of mud and pebble in it. It was a vicious bastard of an ice-grenade and not only was there no defence, there was no retaliation. Unless your opponent remembered the assault a good 11 months later there could be no reply because there was no more snow. And remembering was completely out of the question. Hitting someone with this yolk guaranteed certain victory; name your price.

So why not use it to guarantee certain victory on the football field? It didn't take long for an opportunity to arise. The game was finely poised, probably something in the order of 20-all. I waited until what was going to be the last play before the bell went. Right on cue, Brian went on an epic solo run from one goal to the other, neutralising the opposition with use of a rugby-style hand-off. I stepped back to allow him past and fired the hateful thing right in his face at point blank range.

I still have this freeze-frame image of the look of unbelieving pain displayed on his face. It was like 'The Scream' had Edvard Munch been brought up in a shack on a bog reading the Farmers' Journal aloud to his sheepdog. I might as well have hit the fucker with a rock. He shouted in torture and booted the ball forcefully, defeating our 'keeper and winning the match. And he kept running, his hands raised to his face, and leapt the wall and rode off without saying goodbye. The bell rang. Nobody moved. They just stood there contemplating the weirdness that had just happened in front of their eyes.

It was just as difficult for me to know what to think. On one side of the argument, I had contributed everything I possibly could in the absence of knowing how to dribble, tackle, pass or indeed play football. But be that as it may, I had failed. The toughest player walked over to me, and a binding judgement on the matter was inevitable.

"Eh... that was really low."

Mabye I should have gone for Home And Away.


***

This weekend I read that Stanley Kubrick, while finishing his 2001: A Space Odyssey, attempted to arrange insurance with Lloyds of London to cover the possibility that Martians would soon be discovered, thus scuppering the appeal of the film.

In light of this I don't think I should ever feel the need to apologise for being paranoid or neurotic. We already have a winner.