Greetings from Narnia!

Yesterday the kids had their sixth 'snow day' of the year (although two of those days back in January were due to frozen sewage pipes that cracked in the school basement in sub zero temperatures). While Jack firmly believes he can single handedly bring about a snow day by going to bed with his pajamas inside out and a spoon under his pillow, I think it's probably more likely to be down to the disruption of the polar vortex due to the warming of the Arctic.

With Oliver reading The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe for this third grade English class, it's hard not to wonder whether C S Lewis was both prophet as well as allegorist. The similarity to Narnia seems rather stark when the first day of spring brings a dump of snow so heavy schools are closed. The boys spent the day throwing snowballs, resisting homework and piano practice, snacking and creating a ski-slope terrain on the deck for their Lego mini-figures which turned gruesome when Max introduced the red food dye. In the boys' minds, snow days are one of the few things that make the move from California to New York worthwhile.

But however hard Oliver wishes he could actually meet a satyr or centaur, Mr Tumnus is unlikely to be found wandering around in Prospect Park. Neither do I think an Aslan character will come and save us from our own version of the cruel Snow Queen. That's where the parallels to Narnia fall down. Far outside the wardrobe, in the absence of Aslan, we are left to determine our own fate with all we have left, activism and hope.