My gloves are far from watertight, and rapidly soak through with molten handfuls of snow. Kneeling in mounds of it, rolling lumpy, cylindrical balls of it, stripping the ground bare to reveal tracks of surprised-looking grass. Long stains on the trouser knees.

The cold and the wind ice my red ears, haunting possibilities of earache, neglect of scarf or hat. I will assemble a tentative figure of snow, structurally unsound, repeatedly re-built, but eventually upstanding. A couple of sticks and a handful of stones.

Gathering a tin bowlful of snow, mixing with hot chocolate powder in the kitchen, tastes disappointingly watery, and yet repeated year on year in some kind of denial.

The smudge, oily, of coal on my hands, pressing in a row of jacket buttons. It smells faintly of tar and petrol.

The saccharin Christmas carols on an American LP – imagining choirs in artificially snowy shopping malls of neon-lit cityscapes. At the end of Side A, the needle rhythmically hisses against the track end until a grown-up goes through to lift it, gingerly, with the delicate lever. Next up: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.