WHERE ARE THE SNOWS OF YESTERYEAR?

This morning the view from my window looked like this:

This evening it’s all gone. Was that winter? In the words of Sir Saint Bob Geldorf: Is that it? I nearly blinked and missed it. At least I had an opportunity to dig out my Polish fur-lined boots. I have a wardrobe full of heavy winter gear purchased during my time in Poland, which thanks to climate change I may never get to wear again. Shame -- that rabbit fur chapka was so Dr Zhivago.

With global warming and all that, a real winter will become one of those things that old people will reminisce about, like free education and post offices. The young people will laugh scornfully and say we are making it up, as they gather round the Christmas Day barbecue in their shorts and sunglasses, with no concept of what “a cold snap” or “freezing fog” means. I will show them Harold’s old beige cardigan, and they will gather round in puzzlement, trying to figure out where the legs went.

But I remember the winter of 1963. I was a child, obviously, but I’m sure I remember patches of ice still hanging around in June from the late snows of April. We would toboggan down the slopes of our vast grounds, while Nanny Basia looked on fondly from the dacha, and afterwards we would grill kielbasy on the fire. Then Papa would take us on a ride around the estate on the big sled pulled by six white horses, while Tomek stayed home and read Mickiewicz, being too frail for the bitter cold of the Tatras in winter. The peasants would turn out to greet us, dressed in their best rags, and we would throw orange peel at them and laugh at their lack of fashion sense. Such happy times! When Papa defected to the West, leaving us all to fend for ourselves, the Party took everything back, and we survived by selling iron filings scavenged on the outskirts of Nowa Huta steelworks, until we were taken pity on by a defrocked Orthodox priest and got to England hidden in the props basket of a Russian ballet company.Once at Heathrow, we leaped the barriers shouting “Asylum! Asylum!” in our native tongue, and ran to join Papa in his palatial council house in Slough. However, I only have to hear the “Internationale” sung in Polish to feel the tears welling up, in remembrance of better days.