The snow of 1987 has been followed by nothing but disappointment

The 1987 snow ruined me. Because it raised expectations that there would be similar snow every year. But most snows since then have been, quite frankly, crap, writes Colm O’Regan

We’ll always have 1987. Probably the best snow of all. I was nine — an age optimally suited to snow. I had shaken off the twice-daily colds of earlier years. I was a bit hardier, in peak physical condition for the enjoyment of snow.

It started on a Friday afternoon. We were like New York 80s yuppies: A little bit of white powder for the weekend. But soon it was full-on Scarface. For the whole of the next week, school was closed.

There was drifting. Drifting! Long before Two Fast Two Furious, 57 varieties of Heinz Beans or the dreams of 19-year olds driving Micras with two exhausts, drifting was the Holy Grail of a snow event.

Roads that had seemed familiar were now a few feet wide, closed in like in the snow-issue of the Beano or Dandy. It was the only snow that I slid down a hill on the bonnet of a car. Having a scrapped bonnet and enough snow was a perfect storm, a super-blood-moon of snow. Normally it was fertiliser bags until it became apparent you were really just sliding on mud.

The 1987 snow ruined me. Because it raised expectations that there would be similar snow every year. But most snows since then have been, quite frankly, crap.

As children we became experts in a depressing science of figuring out whether the snow would stick.

By and large, the snow didn’t stick. But it did for others. The front page of the Examiner taunted us the following day with a picture of “Pixie the Dog and little Timmy Donovan enjoying the snow” up in somewhere higher, colder and

inlandier. Ah feck off Pixie and little Timmy. Pixie and little Timmy didn’t have the same day we had. Analysing, speculating. If the snow comes too early and there’s a bit of sun, then that’ll melt it and it won’t stick to wet ground. Are those snowflakes big? Is that a good thing? No, they’re the big wet shit kind. That’s actually sleet. How can you tell? Because of the unfairness of life.

IT’S STICKING TO THE CAR! All snow sticks to cars. It’s the ground we need. OH IT’S HEAVY NOW. AH THAT’S RAIN!

Is there anything colder than rain when it’s supposed to snow. It’s cold tinged with pain. Exclusion. Like being forbidden from going on a school tour.

And because we didn’t have rainfall radar like now, we couldn’t know how long the shower would last. A car might pass with a lot of snow on the bonnet. Where has he come from? Is he a visitor from the future or the past? It’s only on the back bonnet.

How is that possible? He must have parked near the hedge? Does he know he has snow on the bonnet. Would he stop and give us some?

Let me get this straight. I’m not advocating bad weather. I know snow is bad for lots of reasons: transport disruption, isolation for vulnerable members of society, dangerous conditions.

I just wish for once that when they said it was going to snow, it snowed properly. I have always lived in places that didn’t get as much snow as somewhere else nearby.

There was of course 2010 and the man who slipped on the ice, but by then I had responsibilities. Places to be. Out in the car listening out to ice warnings.

Now that I have children of my own I’m torn about snow. They have yet to see decent snow. And I don’t know whether I should say anything to them. Oh look snow!, I want to shout, but I don’t want to get hopes up. I have been hurt too many times. I can’t let the same happen to them.

So the next time Met Eireann mentions the possibility of wintry showers, until it’s up to the first floor and I’m digging a tunnel out to the road like in the Beano, I’m saying snow-more about it.