VANCOUVER - The Chronicles of Nah-Nah-Nah

Regular sufferers of my contrary mind will know that despite my constant exposure to the great wonders of the Earth's natural beauty; I am constantly moaning about not seeing enough snow. Obviously someone got as sick of hearing about it as the rest of you because, for the past two days, West Vancouver has been deluged in the white stuff.


St. Francis-in-the-Snowdrift.

Really, and I'm not complaining here, Vancouver has had rather a lot to deal with over the past few weeks. We had the torrential rain which flooded the highways and caused much spinning out of control type incidents (I was driving to the stables that day) and the huge storm which brought down trees and dumped so many pollutants into the city's reservoirs that water boiling advisorys were put in place for over a fortnight (I was walking to the office that day) and now, just a few short days later, a couple of feet of snow have been dumped over the city (I was driving to buy the bedding for my new apartment at the time. Even a blizzard could not keep me away from the sixty buck comforter clearance at Home Sense)

In many ways, it's made the past twenty four hours or so rather quiet. Church attendance was down to under two dozen on Sunday; the evening lecture series had similar numbers... And then the snow got *really* heavy. There's still at least one car sitting outside the church brought by folks who came to that lecture and haven't been able to get it back out yet.


Insert your wise-ass "faun-and-sign/lamposts-in-the-snow" type jokes here.

Monday morning, then, opened with even *more* snow and the news of public and private school closures across the north shore (Christine's screams of delight, it should be noted, were even louder than Aaron and Anna-Mae's) and had this particular youth worker been staying anywhere else but the rectory he wouldn't have trekked into work either. Sadly, I'm pulling double duties this week as both youth worker and parish administrator (sitting in an office, dealing with phonecalls and editing a newsletter... Wait? Does this sound familiar?)

What struck me, as I mentioned before, was just how quiet the day was. Aside from a few phone enquiries ("Have the snow ploughs been down yet?...") a couple of hardy visitors, the morning was cool, crisp and silent. The kids may have all been off school but, besides a few cursory taboggon runs, Caulfield Cove remained silent. It later transpired that all the kids had gone up to the top of the hill to find steeper runs. Which were mostly in the playing fields of local schools. In other words, on the one day nobody needed to go there; the one place you were guaranteed to find kids today was at school. It turned out that those who had stayed away were the wise ones. All visitors who made it to the church in anything but a four wheel drive car were promptly stuck soonafter. Special mention must go to the guy who came in to drop off some flooring equipment and got stuck for so long that he did a whole day's work stripping out the carpet in the lounge for reflooring tomorrow.

All this relatively peace and quiet went swimmingly until early afternoon. When, just as the print order for the newsletter was being written up, the power went out. Cue several hours of darkness; some huddling around the gas cooker and me raiding the hot chocolate supplies which didn't get used at youth group (to which nobody turned up. A first, then. Youth group competes with school - and loses)


When the snows come, the fabled mountain dogs of West Vancouver emerge from hiding to take control of the Earth... Either that or some dog walkers decided to brave the snow. Whatever.

Still no sign of the snow ploughs as night falls and, although the snow has stopped, the temperature isn't forecast to rise about freezing for another couple of days. In fact, with the windchill factored in, we're predicted a cool minus nineteen degrees for the night... Needless to say, plans for moving into my new apartment at the end of the week are looking slightly shaky. First order of business tomorrow will be to find the Chevy. I parked it in its normal space on Sunday evening and it's getting pretty hidden right about now. And then there's that newsletter to finish. And all the other office work. And, wait, aren't I also a youth worker?

What is the handy little moral at the end of these recent adventures and hardships, I hear you ask? What is the philosophical bon mot I plan to leave you with? Well, here it is: we got a whole pile of snow; and the rest of you didn't. Nah-nah!