Cold comfort farm

THE advantage of no central heating is that Jack Frost still etches on the windows; the ferny designs—which are ghost prints of Earth’s Mesozoic past—sometimes remain until midday, even later. I consider this proper frosted glass, rather than the pallid stuff they manufacture for lavatories.

At about 8am that day, I scratched a porthole in the ice of the scullery window to see a sea of white as far as I could see. I was late getting up, a heavy cold slowing me down; the lead boots