It looks like being another winter without snow. A few scattered snow flakes, perhaps, but there has not been the great snowfalls and drifts that used to characterise the landscape from Christmas to Easter. The 15th century French poet Francois Villon eloquently mourned the demise of winter snows in his famous phrase ‘Ou sont les neiges d’anton?’, or ‘Where are the snows of yesteryear?’ The 15th century must have hosted a snowless period in France similar the one that is taking place here.

It might be just a distorted childhood memory, but I seem to think that snow always started to fall on Boxing Day, and there would be intermittent snowfalls, some transient but some causing massive disruption to life. Schools and roads would be closed, children would enjoy snowball fights, public transport would be unreliable and heavy mechanical snow ploughs were in use clearing the most essential roads in those pre motorway days.

The high forest was often inaccessible. When I worked in Cardiff and lived in St Briavels the village was often cut off from the rest of the forest by heavy snowfalls. Frustrated travellers would be forced to abandon their commute to Bristol, Cardiff or other metropolitan destination, and would return to the village, where landlords George and Lorraine Pritchard would have prepared a roaring fire and breakfasts for thwarted business people in the Crown pub, now sadly no longer a pub. This was one of the rare occasions when the pub would be full of customers in business suits. The loss of the Crown, which closed in 2011, was a sad loss to the cricketers and commuters of St Briavels and district. They now have to find a new equally hospitable pub to retire to next time their journey to work is thwarted by snowfalls.

I suppose that I was a little unfair when in a previous ‘Forest View’ I described the decline of Welsh rugby in my description of its sad performances in the 6 nations rugby championship this year. The Welsh decline remains, but any Welsh supporter would be equally entitled to highlight the English decline in subsequent matches, where the English performances have been equally poor. There’s no time to retrieve the situation. Only two matches remain in the 6 nations tournament. A victory against a weak Italian side would signify nothing, and England will have no chance against a dominant French side. England will share bottom place with Italy and Wales.