I love travelling. I love to ski too. So perhaps it’s no wonder I collect foreign words for snow. Gatsch is a good one. It’s the Austrian word for wet, sludgy mud, but it’s used for slush as well, and it sounds exactly like the hiss of exasperation that catches in your throat when you try to ski it.

Even better is snosmocka. That’s how the Swedes describe a blizzard that closes railway lines and blocks roads. It literally whacks you round the face. My all-time favourite, however, is altogether softer, and it comes from a mountain valley buried deep in the Italian Alps.