First of all you need some snow, and not just any old snow. It has to be suitably wet and grippy.  But it appears that a whole generation of British school kids is missing out on the very best of chilly fun.  In recent winters it been either too warm or we’ve been getting – as good ol’ British Rail used to say – the wrong sort of snow.

Powder is fine for skiing, but hopeless for making ammo and it finds its way into diesel locomotives where it creates all sorts of mischief.

Research conducted by Chill Factore, Manchester’s indoor ski slope, shows that an astonishing 68% of parents with children aged 10 and under admit their kids have no idea how to make a snowball.

Huh? Napoleon Bonaparte could have given lessons. In early 1784 at his military boarding school in Chateau-Le-Brienne in Champagne he directed a jolly wheeze of a fight between rival factions. First he got one lot to build a snow fortress and then the other lot to attack it.  All went well until a group of the boy soldiers started throwing stones disguised with thin layers of snow. One boy had his skull cracked open and a dozen ended up in hospital. No prizes for guessing the name of the winning commander.

No, we don’t want Napoleon Bonaparte, but fortunately we’ve got the Chill Factore which is launching snowball classes for school kids at the slope. Chief executive, Morwenna Angove, says: “It snows all year round at the Chill Factore, so the least we can do is use our snow expertise to give these kids a little bit of what they’ve been missing.”