I'M SAT at my kitchen table looking out at proper snow falling thick and fast and it's remarkable because I'm 50 and it's only about the third time in my life that I can remember watching snow settling on the ground and staying beyond midday.

I remember working at the Herald Express back in the days when the presses used to roll at Barton at lunchtime and our deadline was 10.30 in the morning.

The front page headline that day was 'White Hell' which seemed ridiculous less than two hours later when the paper hit the streets, because the sun came out and it was positively balmy by the time readers got their papers.

Torquay's a lovely place to live and grow up, but not a great place for winter sports. My parents bought us a beautiful blue sledge after a winter like this one, sometime in the mid 1960s. It sat in a cupboard for the rest of my childhood waiting for another good snowfall, which never came.

So this morning as soon as I saw the perfect blanket of virgin snow covering the garden at 7am, not exactly deep but crisp and even, I knew it was going to be a special day for my eight-year-old son and I.

I woke him up early and without a thought about the real world (school or writing this column or a dental appointment) we headed straight out into the snow without breakfast or brushing our teeth.

Snow means more to my little boy than to most. All Christmas he has been carrying around a framed photo of him and his dad, taken playing in the snow last year at his dad's house on top of Wolborough Hill in Newton Abbot. To him, having lost his dad so suddenly last summer, that photograph is a symbol of all the happy things they used to do together.

On Christmas Eve he stood the picture up next to the little Christmas tree on his bedside table.

Then he brought it downstairs and put it on the table for Christmas lunch, so that daddy wouldn't be left upstairs on his own, he said.

And on Boxing Day I told him to take some toys in a bag for our trip down to Cornwall, and he packed the photo. All during the cold weather he's been hoping for snow every day, telling me over and over how that day, when he'd played snowballs and gone sledging with his dad, was 'the happiest day of his life'.

So this morning when I looked out at 7am and saw the perfect blanket of snow I knew we were going to have to go out and play.

We were out of the door by 7.30am and I loved the way the snow transformed not just the mundane streets, but the people we met as well. Nobody just walked by. Everybody stopped for a chat.

Very sensibly, he got bundled up in layers of clothes and we set off on a two-hour journey which eventually ended with him going to school, but not wearing his uniform.

It's only as I write this that I realise he's gone to school wearing his long fleecy pyjama bottoms under his camouflage trousers. Mind you, that was a good thing because he normally refuses to wear anything but shorts.

He also wore his hat with the giant bobble, which he made me buy at TKMaxx in Cardiff (did you know it's called TJMaxx in America?). The bobble really is as big as his entire head. He talked me into buying it in Cardiff and I said he'd never wear it. Not only does he wear it constantly, but barely a day goes by without somebody saying 'great hat'.

Stupidly, I didn't follow his example. I thought we were going into the garden to make a few snowballs before breakfast. Instead we mounted a serious expedition into the wild wilderness which was the Lincombes under snow, and I didn't get home for about three hours.

The street lights were casting a warming glow onto the snow. It looks like Narnia. I kept expecting to see Mr Tumnus jumping out of the trees.

The first person we saw was a girl in her 20s, also wearing a suitably silly bobble hat, who said: "Awesome isn't it? I couldn't sleep. I had to come out for a walk too."

The next person we saw was JonPaul, from the Herald, on his way to work on foot, with his dad.

"Great hat," he said.

Then we wandered about throwing snowballs and sliding about and taking photos of the snow.

Next we went to his best friend's house, on top of the highest hill in Torquay and ended up having breakfast with them while they attempted — and failed — to get two cars out of their side road.

By then we discovered that school was open and decided to walk the boys down the hill. As well as being improperly dressed (PJs underneath Call of Duty-style camouflage outfit isn't your usual primary school wear) we'd come out without a packed lunch, so I had to scavenge in his best friend's mum's kitchen.

On the way down the hill I remembered that I'd forgotten all about the dentist and phoned to apologise. But they apologised first. The dentist was snowed in too.

We eventually got to school at about 10am and I walked back down the main road, where there was practically no snow and the cars and buses were all running normally — apart from one police car driving in slo-mo with all its blues and twos flashing for no obvious reason.

Everything about today has had an air of unreality and randomness. Nothing was planned, but everything worked out just fine.

It's now lunchtime and not a single car has made it down my hill so far today. So I know I won't be able to get mine out of the drive and I'm about to set off to walk back to school. This time I'll wrap up and equip myself properly. There's a feeling in this weather that any little trip may turn into a great adventure.

TALKING of randomness. While I was checking out the weather reports on the internet early today the most read story on the BBC in England was: "The G-spot 'doesn't appear to exist', say researchers."

But I laughed when I saw that the single most popular news story in the whole of Australasia was England's: 'Schools closed and travellers hit as snow continues'.

Fascinating. It's not just us Brits who are endlessly obsessed by our bizarre weather, even people living on the other side of the world in sunny Oz apparently find our snowy days more interesting than sex.