• However now there was a lot to smile about as on this particular day the weather was mystically white, with sparkling snowflakes falling from the hidden, white skies. The air itself was a swirling, frozen diamond, in which I could feel the powers of the coal black raven and the lucid grey wolf of winter, circulating, that was a story my late mother had told me as a younger child. Oddly enough there was still a single bird flying high above the houses and as I continued looking it dived and swivelled, happily through the cluster of clouds, disappearing almost at once into the milky, soft void.

    I wish I had time to appreciate all that beauty but as usual it was time to set up shop. I deliberately picked out the best of fathers wood work, and dusted them as best as I could with the sleeve of my cardigan. Then I placed them carefully at the front of the quickly assembled stall.

    At the end of the day as the sun began to wrap itself inside its starry cloak, which quickly turned from a fiery orange to a cool dark blue, as elegantly as an angel’s wing. My father and I began to pack up, dissembling each plank of dry wood from the stall and throwing them carelessly into a crater on the horse drawn cart. Once everything had been wrapped up and securely stored, my father sat up on the driver’s seat and clutched at the leathery reins. I threw myself unto on the crates at the back, eyes a blaze with the thrill of the night, but sadly unbeknownst to the events which were to follow the very next day…

    It was a crowded snowy street, with soft cotton wool buds falling from the bitter air, with the same huddled groups of people trudging as if in zero gravity through the endless blanket of white. Everything was the same all the usual normality, the shop keepers presenting their newly acquired foods, and household items in their large glass windows. The early morning town criers plodding in a circle in the square, while ringing their neatly polished bells, and shouting the latest news of the day. There were even children playing in the snow, carelessly throwing snowballs or constructing wobbly looking snow angels on the ground. All was normal; all was the same except for one thing my father was not there.