Snowmob Rule

I'm not sure about this snowman:

I would've been more impressed had the head had actually been carved from the living ice itself, and was merely the start of what would be an artistic tour de force in contemporary frozen water sculpting.

But it wasn't. It was a mannequin head.

Now I'm not one to judge, but the person responsible should be fined and made to attend a compulsory snow character creation course.

Okay, it would appear that I am, in fact, one to judge.

Still, at least the person in question, who has actually been known to wear a scotch bonnet to the pub (despite being neither Scottish nor a lady, judging by the beard and profanities that regularly accompany him) has made a bit of an effort, so maybe that's all that counts.

Down our road, there are only two snowpersons*, including that one and my own creation (called Honky) and seeing as the street is mostly full of very old, very retired and very frail people, you'd think they might've found time in the day to rectify this.

If the pensioners had got off their mobility scooters and burrowed through the drifts on their own front lawns, we could have had an army of snow-sentinels looking down either side of the avenue in a variety of poses, maybe a snowrabble or a snowmob, unnerving the postmanperson and reducing crime.

Instead, they had to waste their time with some pointless huddling, switching the fire on every few days and asking if we've got any spare blankets.

There's just not as much dedication as there used to be.

And broken hips heal, don't they?

But it's not just down our way that there is a dearth of such artifice. All across the nation, snowmenwomen are showing signs of tardiness. Gone are the coal eyes and carrot nose. Away are the second hand scarf and old mittens. No more the pipe and cane that would once lend the scenario a modicum of cheery warmth, as frost-bitten urchins gambolled about on frozen lakes, their cheery smiles chattering in accompaniment to some nearby carol singers holding a glowing lamp on a stick and vainly trying to hijack christmas for christians.

No, these days, the average snowhomonid generally consists of a couple of cylinders of yellowing snow stacked on top of each other in the local park, with the hope that facial features will form naturally from the dog faeces collected as the snow rolled over it. Effort is apparent in some respects because there will almost certainly be both boobs and oversize male genitalia, and decoration will be a couple of Rizlas expertly coned and lovingly inserted into the dog poo mouth.

The arms will be Special Brew cans jammed onto the end of windscreen wipers scrumped from a nearby car park.

It's just not the same.

Because the art of snowhomunculus creation is becoming a lost science, it doesn't take much to impress people when one is actually built.

The National Physics Laboratory, for instance, created this one, which measures just one nanometre wide, or 0.001 mm, and then they have the nerve to brag about it. It's tiny!

Mine's bigger than that, and it only comes up to my shoulders.

Where's my grant from the EU Science Budget?


*The suffragettes didn't trip up horses so we could continue calling it a snowman you know, even if it has got a top hat, courgette penis and testicles made of chilly kiwi fruit.