On Valentine's day it looked like Spring was here. Tonight is a week later, and it's snowing. All the cars have got little icicles hanging from them, and when you walk you're crunching lumps of ice under the layer of snow. The wind's swirling the snow into fancy cake-icing patterns; there's only an inch of snow, but when it drifts it's two or three and your feet begin to sink in it. It's twenty past eleven in the evening and I've just got in, buoyed with bourbon and music from Andy's house, and I'm about to go out again and revel in the snow in the west Hendon park where there's some wild scrub and no people, because everyone's too sensible to be out in the snow tonight. There's a big road nearby, and a school, and tower blocks leaning over the reservoir on the edge of the park. It'll be completely empty, and stark white, hazy blurred-out grey on black sky and maybe bits of grass sticking out above the snow. And water. Frozen water. 1996