My Hugh Grant kinda day in a winter wonderland..

I'm going to start by asking you to humour me a while here...before you read on any further I'd like to ask you to just take a couple of moments to close your eyes and imagine England in the winter time...don't think about it too much, just let your mind wander and see what images you come up with..

Ok..so what did you see? Were there little villages covered in a sprinkling of snow, each with a picture postcard church in the middle of them? Were there rolling fields (with or without sheep..apparently we are infested with them..I blame the Welsh..they shag them while they munch on leeks apparently), also covered in snow? Could you see Bridget Jones driving through the village in her little car, on her way to the traditional Boxing Day turkey curry, where Mark Darcy would be wearing 'that' sweater? Was Cameron Diaz running down a snow-covered lane in her high heels, desperate to tell her "Holiday" love interest, Jude Law, that YEY! she loved him too?

(Oh and no..not time for Hugh Grant yet..he comes in a little later..)

The thing is you see, that I have spent all of my life living in England and I can not remember one single white Christmas. Most years of my life I can't remember any snow at all. Some years I remember the odd day of snow, in which I woke up to find a few inches of the white stuff outside the window only to find it completely gone by the evening. A couple of years I remember as having really rather decent snowfalls, that hung around a few days and even enabled me to build freakily distorted snowmen of questionably gender and sexuality. Never though have I recognised the white wonderland that I have seen portrayed in almost every winter-based movie that I have ever watched.

Then I drove my daughter back to university today and an extraordinary thing happened...yep, right there outside every window of my car was a  totally snow covered Narnia. I drove from my house in Peterborough to Lancaster in the north west of England, driving up the east side of the country before crossing the Pennines between Leeds and Manchester, before heading north on the western side of the country. Every single field that I passed was covered in snow and suddenly my country was completely unrecognisable to me. We have always had the churches, the fields, the sheep, the quaint villages and so on but THIS time the snow had given it an almost magical quality...the very magical quality that I have always seen in the movies but missed in real life. To see the whole of England, from north, to south and from east to west, covered in a blanket of snow like that is a once in a lifetime kind of experience (hush now Bert..this is not a global warming post!..come on, resist the temptation...you know you can do it)  and I wallowed in every minute of it.

(What..still no Hugh Grant?)

Because of the dreadful weather, the roads were almost totally empty and the strange sense of isolation that this gave only added further to the magic. Lara was asleep next to me in the car so it was just me, soaking in every minute of the atmosphere, the silence and the beautiful mountains and moorland that I drove right over the top of. I opened the window just a little and breathed in the fresh air a while and just enjoyed a drive that I know I would never be able to repeat.

As I came down from the Pennines and saw Manchester opening up to the left of the car and beautiful hills ahead and to the right of the car, my photographic memory recognised a snapshot taken once before, just a few months ago. This final stage of the journey, from Manchester to Lancaster, was one that I drove with Bert on the second day of our Jolly holiday...the buildings were all the same, the shape of the hills were instantly recognisable and the view opening up ahead was imprinted on my mind..I remember Bert taking photos of so many of the vistas and me commenting on various landmarks, so the picture in my head was very clear. This time though, the whole scene was covered in white and so at the same time as being totally recognisable, it was also completley different...it therefore wasn't at all like doing a carbon copy journey. Far from it, even though everything was inherently the same. It felt like something I remembered seeing once..in a movie...but what? And then in an instant it, or rather *he* came to me..yup, enter Hugh Grant, stage left..

Lights! Camera! Action...Notting Hill..'passing of the seasons market scene', take one...

Anybody who has seen Notting Hill, will remember the scene in which Mr Grant was walking through Notting Hill market in one seamless shot..but behind him, as he continued on his walk, the seasons were changing, as spring turned into summer turned into autumn turned into a snow covered winter of the type that, remember, never happens in real life England. So that was it...that is what that particular part of my drive today was like. It was as though I'd never left the road, the journey felt like it was happening in the same kind of seamless shot as in the movie and all around me the season had completely changed. I very much suspect that that was a one off kind of experience, made possible by the fact that the first journey was so recent, that Bert was taking photos the whole time that I was picturing in my head as I drove on that initial journey and that I was viewing my own country through Bert's eyes and therefore concentrating far more than usual on everything that I saw as I drove.

I felt like I was really a part of the landscape that I passed through today; as though I were somehow a part of the story that it was telling rather than just a distant observer. Added to the magical elements that I have described above, I think one could safely say that today's journey was very much one to remember.

At the risk of having another moment where you will all be told that you aren't allowed to watch a video clearly only fit for the purpose of our very special UK eyes, please find below the Notting Hill clip that popped into my mind a few miles outside Manchester sometime early this morning as the snow fell all around me.