The view from here

This is the view from my sewing room window transformed overnight. I think of the days in my childhood when I would wake aware of something indefinably different about the light and then open the curtains onto a changed magical world. We didn't miss school but would also go sledging wearing wellies and wrapped up in woolly scarf and hat. We weren't accompanied by parents but would be in parties. Jumps would be constructed and the giddy flight to the bottom of Brooks Bottom (now covered in houses) would be succeeded by the slow drag back to the top. Later the trudge home with cold wet feet and hands. In front of the fire mottled patterns would appear on bare legs. The girls wore skirts and the boys short trousers. In the sloping flagged playground at school lethal slides would be formed which the bigger boys flashed down. The world is indeed transformed.