A far-off low grumble sometime in the night. Grows in strength, reverberates through the street, then dopplers away.
The not-dark, dark time. It’s hard to judge the hour, as the smothering snow swallows sound, and reflects a street light thickened with wind-spun spindrift into a monochromatic sepia of sodium soup. A low grumble that might be a passing cargo jet or a solitary plough out on the highway. It fades, and the insulating, frigid silence settles down yet again.
Later, another light disturbance: the crump-scratch of plastic on stone, the chip-chap of metal on ‘crete, the scritch-scratch of plastic on glass. Somebody is shovelling, clearing their driveway, chapping their scoop to clean off the clag of snow, blade rasping, scraping the frozen crud from their windscreen. Like reading a script with my eyes closed, I can easily watch the world outside our window. A genderless muffled entity, cloaked deep in sensible attire, dark stark against the pristine armour of fresh snow, will be edging their way along their frontage of pavement. Casting scooped gobbets of snow far into their garden. The ‘Good Citizen’….
Still there’s no indication of time, for the neighbour is indulging in that Canadian rite-of-season; the solace of snow clearance, a pastime that adheres to neither clock nor time.
I’m in the throes of jet-lag, my body and geography in a delicate debate that encompasses both coastlines of the Atlantic Ocean. A discussion that is slowly resolving, finding a conclusion, one where the western seashore will inevitably win. Still, it’s four in the morning and I’m wide awake yet again and so able to follow the audio minutiae from Toronto’s new day, and the first of the winter’s snowfalls.
Now Scot’s snaw clearance generally entails grabbing whatever immediately comes to hand; often that will entail scrabbling through the coal bunker searching for a corroded shovel, one that comes with a rat-chewed, worm-eaten short shank, sunk and rotting in a drift of coal dross. Yout back is bent double when it folds into an origami crumple as you attempt to clear what might be mistaken for a snow-driftlet. It’s not a problem, because by the time you’ve found a replacement, the snow will have melted into a slurry of slush, and another Scottish lowland white-winter will be over. However we’re spending a week in Ontario with my cousin and like the good guest I resolve to mimic that ‘Good Citizen’, in a city where white-winter has just begun….early.
No indecision in searching out some inappropriate substitution; here all is in readiness – you just have to decide on the appropriate tool from a rack of choices. Is it to be the metal tipped pushing blade, with the ergonomically crafted handle? Or the load and haul scoop with the aesthetically pleasing shaft? Or the one with the plain black head and the straight long staff? I opt to start with the ‘haul’, hurling dollops in front of me, clearing a path down the vennel, trying not to step on any fresh snow, for that will only compact an icy lumpen problem which won’t scrape off, requiring yet another implement: the ‘ice chipper’. As if that wasn’t enough indecision, now comes the various concoctions of chemicals and grits to help with slipping and melting.
Pick your tool
Down the passage between the houses, gouging out a clearway, scrape off the steps for the junk mail postman, down the garden path then turn right and as a ‘Good Citizen’ I tackle the public sidewalk.
What wasn’t on offer was the toy that a neighbour used: a mechanical snow-blower. He too was clearing his property, great arching cascades clearing the fence, right into next-door’s yard. Not the Good Citizen.