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ICE AND SNOW
has returned with a vengeance to Cornwall, and none of us can stop talking about it. It’s just so unusual, to have so much for such a long period. Those few fine days in mid-January fooled us into believing that the wayward weather had finished once and for all, but we were wrong.

It is now the first week of February and the temperature hasn’t been above freezing for days. We haven’t had any more snow since the couple of inches that fell that night the Wintersons moved in, but neither has it melted. A thin coating of ice still covers many ponds and puddles, and some of the roads are treacherously slippery.

So I’ve been extra careful, delivering the post. Extra careful, too, in dressing properly, snug jumpers underneath my thick outerwear, thermal gloves, woolly hat. I even bought a pair of those funny ice grips that fit over boots or shoes to keep you from slipping on the ice. My round takes extra time, not only because I walk and drive much more slowly than normal, but also because I, and the other postmen and -women, are concerned about the folk who might be stuck in their homes because of the weather, especially the elderly and the isolated. I’ve delivered steaming hot pots of soup from one customer to another a mile or so away, and medicine prescriptions from the pharmacy to those kept inside because of the snow.

Despite the icy mornings, the extreme cold, the precarious roads, I feel exhilarated. In the past week the wind has dropped and at least during the day, it feels warmer than the temperature says, for the sun has come out and although it’s not strong enough to even begin to melt the ice, the blue of the sky belies the freezing air. But there’s no sign of dawn yet this early morning as I pick up the Royal Mail van and prepare for my round. The sky is rampant with stars, and there’s not a sound but the soft lapping of waves on the sandy shore near the boat yard. All the little shops and cafés that line the long main street are dark, except for a few low-key security lights. The street runs parallel to the sea, and at this early hour, the water seems to reflect the town, totally dark except for a lone light on the horizon from some faraway freighter. I stand still for a few moments, watching my breath steam out into the icy air. When I look up, I see a falling star shoot down into the sea.

The main roads are fine now but many of the narrow country lanes remain icy. I go dead slow up a long, steep hill and it’s a good thing I do, for a tractor carrying a load of hay is chuntering down. I back up carefully to the nearest layby. When the tractor passes, the driver, a farmer I deliver to, stops. ‘Still not gritted this bit yet,’ he mutters. ‘Good job you be going slow, maid.’

‘It’s the only way to go on these roads,’ I reply.

‘Hah, tell that to some of the second homers who were here holiday time. ’Twas ice and snow then, but did that stop some of them zooming around as if they’d be late for the New Year if they’d slowed a bit? No way.’

I commiserate, saying I noticed it, too, on my rounds. There were too many drivers who assumed that just because the main roads were cleared and gritted, every road in Cornwall would be the same. They had no idea that there are far too many for the snow ploughs and gritters to get to every single tiny lane. ‘But at least the holiday homers are gone now,’ I say. ‘We’ll have the roads mostly to ourselves till half term.’

‘A good thing, too. Look, maid, I’ll take the post seeing as I’ll be on my way home soon as I take this hay to the sheep. Save you going down our long drive.’

As I thank him he adds, ‘I’ll take the post up to me old matey at the farm above as well, if you like.’

Seeing me hesitate, he says, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t just put it somewhere without checking that he’s all right. The missus has been keeping an eye on him, too. I know you do as well, all this ice and snow about.’

I’m relieved at this, for it’ll save me some time and a drive up two pot-holed farm lanes, part of which are still covered in snow. I’m glad that the neighbours are keeping an eye on each other in this weather.

Later, I’m in the village of Poldowe, where I leave the van by the church and walk up and down the main street to deliver this part of the post on foot. Though the footpath there is mostly cleared of snow, and sand has been put on the worst icy bits, it’s very patchy and I walk carefully. I pass several of my customers walking to the local shop, a farmer called Jim who tells me his bad hip is better now, and a young woman, Mary, who has just split up from her boyfriend but has already found another. Men and women of all ages have armed themselves with walking sticks after a flurry of falls and broken bones when the ice and snow first came. Many are clutching on to each other to keep from slipping. Everyone seems cheery enough, though, because the storms and gales have stopped and the sky is a clear blue panorama. In the distance beyond the town, the sea glitters. Everything is doubly bright with the sun reflecting the snow, and I’ve dug out my old sunglasses from the glove compartment of the van where I left them last summer. No matter what van I’m in, I always manage to leave a pair of sunglasses behind. It’s a good thing I can only afford the cheap kind so I don’t worry about it; I know they’ll turn up eventually.

I stop at the shop for some provisions for my next lot of customers who live slightly further out. Although for a long time now I’ve delivered odds and ends for some of them, especially the old and isolated ones, this winter has seen my errands double and even triple. This is fine with me; I learned very early on that in Cornwall, a postie is not just a deliverer of mail but a social worker, therapist, errand woman/man, newspaper deliverer, and an array of other things. I like this part of the job enormously for not only do I feel I’m doing a bit of good, I’ve also met some interesting people whose conversation and company I’ve enjoyed.

Today the tiny shop is crowded. The fact that the fierce east wind, which brought much of the snow and blizzard-like conditions, has gone, and the sun is actually out, have brought droves of people venturing out for the first time in several days. I greet Melanie, the shopkeeper, and listen to the talk around me as I pick up supplies. ‘I do believe you can’t beat the hardwoods, oak especially, for burning. Gives more heat than anything, lasts longer, too. Mind, it must be dry.’ Three locals, two men and a woman, are standing around having a lively discussion about wood. This is a conversation that’s been repeated in every village shop I’ve been in, as well as amongst friends and neighbours whenever a couple of us get together. Everyone is obsessed with keeping warm this winter. It’s understandable, as in this part of the world we’ve been lucky to live in a pocket of relatively mild weather, so trying to cope with this new phenomenon of extended below-freezing temperatures is on everyone’s mind.

‘To be sure the oak needs be dry and seasoned. All summer, outdoors.’ The first man who spoke is still musing about firewood.

‘All summer?’ the woman snorts. ‘You must be joking. A year, is what I reckon. Oak needs a year of drying to be right.’

As they start arguing this fine point, the second says. ‘Me. Well, I got a load of softwood. Pine, larch. Burns like nobody’s business. Good heat, too.’

The other two pounce on this. ‘Might be as you say, but pine fouls up your chimney sure enough. All that resin.’

He nods, acknowledging this. ‘I just ordered a load of ash. Freshly chopped, but that don’t matter. Burns all right, just cut.’

The faces of the other two light up. ‘Ah, ash! Like my dad used to say, Ash green, fit for a queen! ’Tis the only wood I know you can burn green. Beech, oak, larch – they all be needing seasoning.’

Melanie, handing me my change, gives me a wink. ‘They go on about wood every time they come in. Mind you, I’m all ears. It’s not been easy, keeping warm this winter. And I wouldn’t be surprised if there be more to come.’

‘You’re not the only one thinking like that,’ I say, looking around the shop. ‘Looks like people are stocking up for the next batch of snow.’

‘So they are. Folk don’t like leaving their homes in this, and not just the old ones either. A couple of the younger ones have broken a wrist and an ankle on the ice.’

‘So I heard.’

‘And Clara.’ Melanie rolls her eyes. She’s a motherly woman of indeterminate age, with salt and pepper hair pinned back helter skelter with several hairgrips. She and her husband Tufty – his real name is Bill but no one calls him that – both wear colourful fingerless gloves when serving in the shop, winter and summer. Tufty, who is serving someone while Melanie chats with me, is wearing a deep blue pair with a bright neon green stripe around the knuckles and thumb, while his wife’s gloves are crimson with a fluorescent yellow stripe in the same place. They have quite a collection of these gloves, all knitted with wonderfully vivid yarns with the same two edgings of a bright neon colour on each pair. Tufty’s mother knits them for the couple. She’s a quiet, placid woman living on her own in a tiny, tumbledown cottage behind the village at St Geraint, a cottage that despite its state of disrepair will be worth a fortune when she finally has to sell. Unfortunately none of her children will be able to afford to buy it, so that will be another house gone to second homers.

We go back to talk of Clara. ‘Is she still refusing to go out?’ I ask. ‘She’s not ill, is she? I only saw her the other day.’

‘No, she’s not physically ill. But she won’t go out. Hasn’t been outside since this freezing weather began.’

This is not the first time we’ve discussed Clara, as the villagers are getting concerned about her. Tufty comes over and joins us, saying, ‘I just don’t understand that woman. She’s not old, not frail, but she won’t even take a peep out of her house.’

Melanie nods. ‘She doesn’t even call in on Delia, but that’s no problem, she knows the rest of us look in on her every day, and I’ve told Clara she’s done enough anyway. She always takes over seeing to Delia during holiday times, when the shop is extra busy.’

Delia is an elderly woman living in the village, who has hardly left her little terraced house since her husband died nearly a decade ago. As she has no family, the locals have taken over her care, bringing her meals, keeping an eye on her. Melanie goes on, ‘It’s Clara I’m worried about. I hope she’s not going to get like Delia, not wanting to go out. Let’s face it, Delia was seventy when she became housebound, and Clara’s thirty-odd years younger.’

‘I’ve got some post for Clara. I’ll see how she’s doing.’

‘Well, try to get her out of that house. It’s not healthy, stopping in the way she’s been doing.’

I promise Melanie I’ll do my best and leave the shop. Clara’s house is at the edge of the village, a small bungalow next to a field. When I arrive she’s waiting at the door, looking out over the footpath in front of the house with dismay. ‘Tessa, oh, look it’s not melting at all. It’s still icy. Another day gone.’

Clara, from what I’ve gathered from the others, is pathologically terrified of snow and ice. Many years ago, on a trip to Canada to visit her husband’s relatives, she was involved in a bad car crash. Her husband, a reckless driver anyway (so the villagers say), skidded on a patch of ice and careered off the road down a sharp incline, hitting a tree. Miraculously, the two survived, though Clara came home badly bruised and shaken from the accident. The terror of hurtling off the road in a snowstorm has never left her, and she still has nightmares about it. Now, she not only refuses to drive on ice but to walk on it as well, for unfortunately that same holiday, she slipped on a patch of wet snow and ended up with a broken elbow and numerous stitches on her face. She still has the scar on her cheek, though it’s very faint.

Her obsessive avoidance of frozen weather was manageable when she moved back to her native Cornwall after her husband left and they divorced. Here on the south coast the winters are unusually mild, but this year has been traumatic for Clara and I worry that if she doesn’t get out soon she’ll have a breakdown, for her anxieties are definitely getting worse.

I hand Clara the newspaper from the shop she’s asked me to bring daily since the temperatures dropped below freezing, along with a carton of milk, a loaf of bread, and some cat food. ‘Thanks so much, Tessa.’ She takes the supplies gratefully. I look at her carefully, noting how pale she is. As she takes the groceries from me I see that her nails are bitten down to the quick. The poor woman really is a mess.

‘Can you come on in for a minute?’ she says. ‘I’ve got a big favour to ask.’

She shuts the door behind us and I follow her into the kitchen, where three sleek black and white cats mill around our ankles. They set up a yowl as Clara pours dry cat food into their bowls. I know there are at least another three cats, probably more, somewhere around the house: half-grown kittens, elderly toms, strays of all sizes and shapes that Clara has rescued from homelessness. She runs the Cats Protection Service in our area, something she started from nothing when she moved back here and discovered there was a need for a cat rescue organisation in the community.

She’s cooing over the eating cats, which ignore her as they munch away. ‘Oh, little pusskins, how hungry you were! You must thank the nice postie for bringing us food while the weather is so bad. Tessa, a cup of tea? Do say yes; it’s so lonely these days when I can’t get out.’

I refuse tea but sit down for a few minutes, watching her with the cats. Her whole body language has changed and she seems far less uptight. Even her face has softened, the grim frightened look gone. I say gently, ‘Clara, actually you can get out. It’s a beautiful day today, look out of the window.’

‘I have, I know, but the temperature hasn’t gone above freezing. There’s still ice everywhere.’

‘Yes, but there’s sand on the footpath, over the ice. Why don’t you give it a try? I’ll go with you if you like.’

She looks as if I’ve thrown boiling water over her head. Her face is a picture of shock and dismay, as if her best friend has just betrayed her. But I know I’m not the first person who has tried to get her out during the last few weeks, especially on days like today when it’s actually stopped snowing and the wind has dropped. Working from home as a freelance bookkeeper to supplement the small income she gets from her ex-husband, theoretically she never has to go out, especially as customers come to her. She has a friend who runs the Cat Protection Service with her who drives a van to collect the stray cats and take them to volunteers who keep them until they’re found new homes, but he’s getting concerned. ‘You’ve got to get her out of that house, Tessa,’ Guy said to me recently when I met him in St Geraint. ‘She’s always tended towards agoraphobia, and now with the snow and ice, she’s got an excuse to stay in. If she doesn’t get out soon, I’m worried she never will.’