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Published 2005

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Mantled in grey, the dusk steals slowly in, Crossing the dead, dull fields with footsteps cold. The rain drips drearily; night’s fingers spin A web of drifting mist o’er wood and wold

Philip Larkin, Winter Nocturne.

It is, beyond doubt, an English winter that Larkin is describing: grey, dreary and dank. It is the kind of winter that I loathe; miserable and depressing, it wipes the smiles from people’s faces, makes them huddle in their clothes.

Dry cold, bright skies and snow are a different matter. I remember walking in Moscow in mid-winter, snow piled in towering banks along the pavements, the temperature well below zero, and seeing, with amazement, people eating ice cream. The kiosks were doing brisk business; I joined a queue; the ice cream was excellent (unlike most Russian food at that time) and I was converted to the pleasure of ice cream in winter. I remembered, too, reading of snow helva made on the Anatolian plateau in Turkey and of a Russian recipe using snow in pancakes.

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