Not so beautiful snow and the right salami

The flurry of excitement that came with the snow yesterday morning has melted into a slush of disappointment today.  Perhaps because we so rarely have snow here, it is hard not to find it slightly magical: waking up to a world that is, for a few minutes at least, clean and bright and crunchy white. Although I am not generally a snow fan. Kids look at snow and see snowball fights and building snowmen and the potential for school to be closed for the day.  I look at it and see cold and traffic jams and cancelled trains.  But there is a part of me that still longs for that sense of awe and wonder that waking up to a snowy world can bring.  Yesterday morning I watched from our living room window as a mum walked along the road, carrying her 1 year old son, wrapped up warm in her arms.  As they walked past hedges, he reached out his gloved hand and touched the white leaves, giggling with excitement as the snow fell off. He and his mum were so caught up in excitement at the novelty of a newly white world, at the sound and feel of snow, that it was impossible not to smile as you watched them.
Perhaps it is not snow that I don't like snow. Perhaps it is that I don't like what it reminds me of: that the older you get, the harder it is to find things new and exciting and beautiful.

When I was only 18 and the world was still new and exciting and I had just arrived as an au-pair in the South of France, I was dispatched by the family I was working for to buy a special salami at the weekly market.  The mum was about to have a baby and hadn't been allowed to eat salami through her pregnancy because of the high salt content.  She made her husband promise to bring a baguette packed with this special salami to the labour ward so she could eat it as soon as the baby was born.  They explained carefully which stall I should the father usually bought it from at the market but when I got there, there were hundreds of different salamis.  Looking confused, I explained to the stall holder, in my broken French, that the husband always came to this stall to buy this special salami.
Sensing my foreign- ness, he replied slowly.
" Describe to me," he said.
I took a deep breath.
" Well, he has curly hair, quite short, wears glasses and a shirt and jacket ...."
I stopped. The stall holder was staring at me strangely.
" I meant describe the salami," he said.
"Well,