COLD WEATHER

A week into the new year and I still haven't written anything. I intended to start on the 5th ,when school started back, but school didn't happen because of the snow and the -16 temperature,the same as that in Moscow. So there has been no school since before Christmas,and my motivation to write has been frozen. We have made a snowman (demolished by others),re-waxed the runners of my 1963 sledge,but the novelty of snow has worn off. The pipes have frozen and been coaxed into life by the hair dryer.We are fed up with the cold,with the lack of salted roads and pavements. Each day we go out to get some fresh air.My son skids along on the ice;I take dolly steps, frightened of falling. We make our way through the blinding white and cold of the snow to the town, where cars and buses move along the salted, sludgy roads and there is normality. Not only school closed but events cancelled.We totter home with our shopping-the supermarket has a salted car park-back along the pavements iced like glass,back up the hill to the isolation of land-locked cars and frozen snow.Only our cat is enjoying the blindingly white cold weather, his paw prints criss cross the paths. I call him to come into the warm, his name echoes through the white air.