THE HOUSES stood like squat, disgruntled cocker spaniels along the snow-mantled streets, wearing thick woolen snow-white shawls puckered by the black-ribbed line of gutters running along the sides of the rooftops, the serrated slates showing thinly in thawing patches. Where the main traffic ran a long mushy path of dirty-brown slush had been churned up; kids were already making slides down the road, using for toboggans frames of prams long outgrown by the babies who had used them, the lids off ashbins and sheets of tin uprooted from backyard railings. At first the snow had fallen in heavy, slanting veils, obscuring everything between ground and sky, mounting thickly on pavements and the golden-privet hedges of the little square front gardens, blocking the front paths until the men had to come out with jackets buttoned up to the neck and heavy Russian boots to shovel a passage through the encrusted snow for their womenfolk to get to and from the shops; then slowly it had thinned out and rare bits of sky broke the uniform dullness of the wintry scene, and a weak sun appeared, as timid and weak as a convalescent after a long time in bed.

From the window of the back-bedroom backyard spread out like a checkerboard, cut up into black-circled squares heaped with snow; mongrels prowled for food, moving like dark asterisks on the frozen earth, noses to the ground, snarling and snapping viciously at each other, bony with hunger; the cats walked with a more dignified gait, sliding gently under hedges and bushes, whiskers quivering like antennae, lean backs arched sinuously over bins and buckets of waste pigfeed, crouching under trees, almost hidden, merging with the shadows, ecstatic and intent with watchfulness… (64)

Brown, Christie (1970) Down All the Days. London: Pan Books.