When everyone was ready for spring after this the longest and darkest of winters, the snow suddenly started to fall. And then it snowed and snowed and snowed.

I wasn’t really prepared. Snow easily found the openings in the thin wool jacket I’d worn to work and seemed to go straight for the unprotected areas of the neck, ears and wrists. Slightly disgruntled I stomped off the snow from my boots and managed to disentangle myself from my wet scarf and bag and hat as I got home, leaving them in a heap on the floor. The coat on a hanger in the bathroom. Spring, postponed.

I stand by the window now. It’s late, but the snow lights up the sky in an odd orange hue. Together with the snow clad branches of the trees below, it is a fantastical, almost alien landscape. The world seems impossibly quiet. It’s still snowing.