A white blanket is carefully draped across the city, by some god of economic irony. The big smoke’s cogs grind to a halt as a chivalric glove delves into their innards, tucking them in for long awaited hibernation. Chimneys on the docklands splutter then hold their breaths, as the mezzanine is filled by the largest base jumping community in the planet, all holidaying in London Town. The River Thames opens its arms to cradle the newborns in swaddling. Children bound down the banister, diving into ten layers of insulation and charge out the front door, forgetting, of course, to close it behind them. Train services are cancelled, not because the tracks can’t be used, but because the drivers will take any excuse not to go to their god awful jobs. And the roads are desolate, except for a few, struggling to control their newly remodelled white vans; it seems this mentality is infectious, they begin effing and blinding the whole way down the road, arms out the window like a subterranean sloth emerging from its pit. Hypothermia becomes frost bite, and a dear old woman wraps a blanket around her legs for the last time.

Meanwhile the big bad man of the city pulls his head out of his own arse, takes a step back and swigs on some methylated spirits, wondering how this bloody white stuff has balls’d up his empire, once again.

The crystalline ice friend of that rain thing we all know so well, like that enchanted lover of your youth, has emerged back in the streets and like always your heart stopped, your eyes widened and you began to salivate. You saw her from mile off, this girl, no your girl – no that’s not her – oh it is! – is it? Yeah..it is. Her porcelain skin is as delicate and enticing as ever and her hair is trailing out behind her in such sumptuous flurry you just want to grab it all. Here she is, back for you, to save you from your own monotony. She stops dead in your face – you look down in awe at her – she’s become more beautiful with age. Her dress billows around the both of you and you’re cocooned, watching your childhood repeat in sterling colour; lost friends and old houses – forgotten spots in the mind’s star are re-lit. On tip toes she reaches your ear and whispers, “you’re always going to be mine.” Then, turning, and with one exquisite, promise filled finger, she ushers you to follow. Lost in her dress with glistening eyes you’re hers once again.

Not even the city with its omnipotence and omniscience, or you, with your responsibilities and absurd commitments, can stop her. Her touch freezes out all the banal thoughts that consume our minds, normally drenched in worries about the rent, the traffic and the newest nutrient that’s hit the market, promising to prevent cancer or some other obscure terror. Much to the dismay of that money hungry lot, who seem to flounder without a constant flow of that terribly addictive green stuff. The big bad man, having seen you wander off in the trails of her flouting dress, just gurgles at the sky, and watches the world fall apart for one day, knowing that the next will be his once more.