Snow

Whenever we have snow I am reminded of my old headmaster. He took the lesson one day when our English teacher was away and spoke about  Essay Writing.   He suggested how to write an essay on “Snow” and began “When I wake up I know it has been snowing because the shadows on the ceiling are quite different.  Then I look out of the window - and there is a carpet of white!”.   He went on in that vein with a description of what he could see and I thought “This isn’t an essay - it’s a short story!  I can write short stories - I’ve even had one published.  If it’s short stories they want, that’s what they’ll get!”.
I cannot remember what the topic was for the next essay - perhaps “A shopping trip” - but I approached  it in quite a different way, bringing in my Mother, trams (that’s what we travelled on then, not horse & cart ), and all sorts of other things, hardly even mentioning shopping.
At the next English lesson our usual teacher scowled at me and said “Who wrote this for you, Foster?” and I said “No-one, Sir, it’s all my own work”.  “Rubbish”, he said “you’ve never written an essay like this before”.  So I explained about Mr Nordern and after making a sarcastic remark about how I must have been awake for once, he called me out and made me read the essay/short story to the whole class - and held it up as an  excellent example.
So that’s why all always think of my old headmaster when I see snow.  End of essay.