Snow in Bolton on Friday - it was gone by Saturday
AS I brushed the snow off my car windscreen and set off to work with freezing cold hands I thought how glad I was that snow just isn't as good as it used to be.
I have bad memories of snow as a child. As an eight-year-old I went racing out of the school playground in an attempt to make it home as quick as possible, only to fall flat on my face and smash a tooth.
Memories of primary school snow seem to consist of being hit in the face with solid balls of ice - come to think of it, perhaps I should have sued as the teachers ignored this obvious bullying which has now caused around 30 years of mental trauma, only relieved by this cathartic outpouring.
Football played with an orange ball on the white stuff is an endearing memory crushed by wading through the snow to school the day after my grandma died, only to be sent straight back home as barely anyone else had made it except my brother and I.
The drifts that day were appropriately deep and I can remember barely being able to walk through them.
The views we had from home on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales were quite spectacular when the surrounding hills were covered in white, but it was a biting cold place to live with not a lot to do when the weather turned bad, and I remember spending inordinate amounts of time staring out of my bedroom window at night at the pitch black skies lit up by flashes of snow and the orange street lights climbing into the hills in the distance.
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If you're not careful that sort of activity could leave you as a dysfunctional adult, but then again so could a childhood spent hanging around a bus station all day with second generation chavs.
A particularly bad snow-related incident occurred when two local "lads" attacked me and held me face down while they sent my friend off to get money from his parents.
If he didn't return they would kill me, they said. He didn't and they didn't. I went home and meekly fended off questions as to how I had managed to get so wet.
These days I could probably report that and force the police and a whole load of social workers to waste their time investigating the incident and have the two lads - and I still remember their names - put into some kind of correctional facility. Instead, I just got on with my life.
I also remember, in my 20s, driving down the hills above Bradford into Keighley and sliding the whole way down, luckily missing all parked cars en route.
Now though, snow is simply an irritation. There's not enough to build a proper snowman (when was the last time you saw a decent one with a carrot as a nose?), go sledging or snowboarding and if you fancy moving into an igloo, forget it.
Obviously, the weathermen are to blame for producing small flurries which turn to sludge minutes after hitting the ground, but that's better than six foot drifts and potential death traps.
Snow is one thing I'm glad is perhaps not as good as it used to be.
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