For these parts, anyway, where “really, really cold” usually means -5C. …Everything is gently silvered around the edges, as if God dusted the whole area with a really high grade of confectioners’ sugar last night. Gravel doesn’t crunch underfoot: it’s like stone. Leaves glitter. 
The big long-dead oak tree across the field is tastefully adorned with rooks, all holding still, their feathers fluffed up against the cold; and at the top of the tree, like a Hallowe’en ornament, perches a single raven.
In the pre-birdsong silence, incoming red-eyes have begun to streak the sky. The only sound is the engine of a car heading up the road past the house — and then, as it tries to take the curve onto the hill, the wheelspin-whine and hitting-the-gravel skrunnnnch! of the driver’s attempt to control his/her skid on hitting the ice that inevitably forms there.
Take the digital camera outside for a few shots, and after no more than two minutes, your fingers are numb.
Here comes winter…
