A Survival Guide
(Please note: those seeking actual useful information about snow, stop reading now)
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the film “The Day After Tomorrow” well the 3D version just came out; look around you, it’s called “The UK”. Yes, the apocalypse has arrived; we’ll never be warm again, ever: lets all go and panic buy bread. For three nights running my local news channel (ok, it’s in Wales) has had NO OTHER STORIES except snow. I don’t need to see it on the news- I can see it outside! Watching the telly is almost exactly the same as looking out my window, only with an annoying woman stood in front of it telling me what I’m looking at.
So, my frankly quite shit survival guide goes a bit like this:
1. Supplies
When it snows, people get up early in a frenzy of panic and buy all the useful things in the supermarket: like food. So, once you muster enough effort to drag yourself out of a warm bed to go to the shop there is nothing left for the normal, sane people. Take heart: these idiots always buy stuff like bread and milk, and happily you will find the alcohol section resplendently full.
If your local dealer isn’t willing to traipse through the snow like a Christmas elf dispensing his wares then you can also take a look at the much neglected pharmaceuticals and vitamin section. Here, you can recapture the innocence of your youth, by trying to make your own drugs. Hmm, chewable vitamin C, Neurophen, and cough mixture…this is surely the recipe for a heady and blissful experience! (This statement is for comic effect: Example magazine and their associates do not advocate the mixing and consumption of substances bought from your local supermarket-idiot)
Junk food: no one panic buys it; it is yours for the purchasing.
Drag your haul back, feeling like a hunter-gatherer for the new generation.
2. Entertainment
After the first day, snow is dull. I myself arise on the morning of first snow, giddy with childish excitement and nuanced wonderment at the world and its mysteries. But now the roads are a gritty slushy mess, things are closed for no reason and the buses aren’t running. It is hard to convince people to go out to clubs/bars or to get anywhere fun.
So, a few activities to see you through:
Build a penis out of snow: is anything more hilarious? No, no it is not. Yes, it is also puerile, idiotic and possibly offensive, but fuck it: what else can you do?
Have a house party: Not one of those big loud, epic ones that you spend weeks organising and everyone talks about, like, forever. No, just have a shit one- you have all your lovely alcohol, invite some lovely friends (the posers and people that don’t really like you won’t come all the way in the snow). Play all your most shameful music as loud as you can through any medium, have i-pod DJ battles, take your homemade “drugs”, make snacks, dress in your silliest clothes, hell, play board games if you like: and do all the things you couldn’t do at a cool party.
Films and Snacks. With regards to the former: the older the better. With regards to the latter: well, the opposite I guess. Just make sure you have plenty of both.
3. Keeping Warm
Get into bed, and get as many people to join you as you can. Alternatively buy a hot water bottle- They are very cheap and slightly less emotionally dangerous than group sex.
Run around a lot: it doesn’t matter if you fall over like a red cheeked idiot every five seconds: you’ll be warm as toast and mark my words you won’t give damn.
Heat stuff you would normally eat cold: its not just good sense, it’s sort of like science, like an experiment that once day you may get a Nobel Prize for. So, coco pops: with hot milk, an apple: popped in the microwave for 30 seconds, a salad: stir fried. Cook everything that goes into your mouth to a temperature you find almost unbearable: that will see you right.
Keep safe arctic explorers, I’ll see you on the other side!
Goodbye Cruel World