A silent and shining fairytale world

AFTER a week of deluges the days are brightened with a yellow sun and at night the stars glitter in a clear sky.

Walking home late, my breath makes clouds in the frosty air. Streets and pavement are white and, on the verges, the montbretia which, in August, flowered more orange than the setting sun, is now a skeleton of drooping leaves, stiff and sparkling.

Wall tops are frosted as if sprinkled with snow and the frosted briar leaves catch the moonlight. Lawns are glittering plains upon which small fires flash and die. Jack Frost tightens his iron grip on nature and transforms it. The dead beech leaves which, in the wet weeks just past, lay dark and decaying are changed to a silver, deep-pile carpet spread across the pavement, crunchy underfoot. It is a fairytale world, all silent and shining, the village all a-bed and not a leaf stirring or a soul abroad but myself.