I don’t hate snow, really. It’s just different. It invites us to be indoors, to exclude the cold air, the blinding whiteness, the threats of slip and slide and sink and fall. If it’s around too long, it starts to bug me. Last Friday while reading, I got frustrated by the pinprick of light that seemed to obliterate whatever word I was looking at. Then the pinprick became a ball-bearing, then an expanding ring. A migraine aura. Perhaps going outside earlier when sun on snow had dazzled me caused it. An hour of lying, eyes closed, listening to a dark and frighteningly funny play about the erstwhile president of the USA saw it off but left me uneasy. The sun was gone, and greyness encroached, but I needed exercise, daylight and an antidote to foreboding.

Snow lay thickly on the ground, with an intensity and doggedness that bludgeoned the senses. Dense, white cloud merged into white fields, but it was not easy to know if I was looking at land or air, except where snatches of stubble or deer-scuffed soil peered through a thin, white fog. There were no distant views; everything seemed close, oppressive, heavy and inert.

Vision impaired, a mild headache bleakly persisting, and the opacity of the veil of snow deadening all sound. Small flocks of monochrome birds passed over, silent and anonymous. Solitary grey figures slipped soundlessly across the edges of fields or emerged from woods; we did not acknowledge that we’d seen each other. The sounds I could hear were only in my head; ringing of tinnitus, a faint roaring; result of a year of being virtually locked down and unwilling to self-treat blocked ears after causing an infection with my last attempt.

Seeking light, I went into an open field. The snow immediately came over the tops of my boots and slid down to my heels. I looked for patches of exposed stubble, and followed deer, humans and dog prints to avoid drifts, but they confounded me. The effort of trudging uphill took concentration. I could only see the spot where I would place my next mark on crusty, half-frozen snow.

When I got home in the dim, shrouding dusk, I was surprised to see the hens still out. I stepped into the polytunnel to knock snow off the top from inside. The sight of green, growing plants, brown soil, terracotta pots and little piles of compost waiting to be spread filled me with strange relief. I sat for a few minutes in a garden chair, relishing the last remnants of colour before nightfall. Then I punched the thick layer of snow from the top and sides. It slid off with a rushing sigh. And I saw then that it was not yet dark – the hens were right. Night had not yet fallen, and into this small green space came a brief shudder of light, clarity and hope.

(When I open the curtains onto the first serious snow of January, I am just like any other child.)