h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

They're not an everyday item, I suppose, but a pair of wetsuit gloves are wonderful if you're doing something that means picking up lots of snow with your hands. My friends built an igloo one winter (we're students, we've got nothing better to do ) and my gloves got soaked through with melted snow. Someone lent me the wetsuit gloves that he goes diving in, and they were great. The snow gets trapped in them, melts, warms up, and then insulates your hands.

I'm originally from one of the snowiest big cities in the world: Buffalo, New York. Snowball fights were a common experience of my childhood but there are dangers in this seemingly innocent game.

We traditionally built snow-forts first (we had a LOT of snow to work with) and then made a stockpile of prepared ammunition (piles of snowballs) at a given signal battle would commence and the mayhem continued until the ammunition was exhausted.

There are RISKS however. We knew that bits of ice or stones could be caught up in the ammunition and could damage the 'enemy' (our friends and neighbours) especially if some poor kid was hit in the eye. We were careful to use only the top layer of new clean snow but this only reduced the risk.

Snoballing was strictly forbidden at school or on the way to or from school. It was an expellable offence!

Knitted wollen gloves are a cheap and superior way of keeping your wet hands functional in a snowball fight. Wool has the ability of retaining its insulating properties even when wet.

Remember to use only fresh top layer snow to avoid sending stones or ice into your friend's face.

When we were kids the mean kids would put rocks in the snowballs on purpose

Did you ever get sick of the snow, aberbloke? Where I grew up in Scotland we'd only get snow a few days a year, and never in the quantities that you get in the US, so it the novelty never wore off.

Snowball fights were banned in our primary school (not that we ever listened to that rule) because the playground was entirely covered in ancient, cracking tarmac. So it wasn't just the mean kids who put stones in their snowballs.