PATHETIC… A slight flurry on Friday night, a gentle dusting on Saturday morning and that was it. So much for the UK ‘bracing itself for Arctic conditions’.

In the last few years the snow has been consistently conspicuous by its absence.

As I walked into town on Saturday night, the gritters were out, sprinkling the streets in anticipation that something might happen, watched by pub-goers in the forlorn hope that it would. It didn’t. For another year, the sleds remain in the shed – unused, neglected and now outgrown.

Are memories of a childhood of closed schools, impassable roads and families gathering on the hillside to toboggan a trick of my wistful imagination?

One of the very few early childhood memories I have of my father is him taking us out tobogganing when we were unable to get to school and he was unable to commute to work. I remember the smell of damp clothes drying on the coal-fired classroom stove after we got soaked at playtime playing snowballs and building snowmen.

I have an uneasy feeling that this is not simply a ‘remember the good old days’ trick of memory but that time has indeed run out for my own children to build up a store of such memories.

Scientific and professional opinion is undivided. With the exception of the handful of fossil fuel addicts that now surround Donald Trump, man-made global warming is an uncontested fact.

Winters are now warmer and wetter than they were when I was younger. Salisbury can no longer expect snow in winter. It will be the exception rather than the rule. My memories will not be my son’s. Regrettable though that may be, it will not be the disaster that global warming will be for many with whom we share this planet.

Coastlines will change, communities will face loss of livelihood and habitation, harvests will be threatened. For many, a hard life will become impossible. As sea levels rise, impoverished countries like Bangladesh will slide further into destitution.

All this is wholly avoidable. We have become tethered to the treadmill of the pursuit of short-term financial gain (economic growth to outstrip the competition) at the expense of the long-term health of our planet.

Yes, there are things we can press our politicians to do – invest in renewable energy, encourage more recycling and low energy solutions. There are things we can do as individuals – recycling, composting, fitting low energy light bulbs, walking, cycling or using public transport, putting on a cooler wash, showering rather than bathing, set an example to our children and show them that we care about them enough to put up with a little inconvenience.

Too late, I fear, to make it snow. Not too late to safeguard their future.