Footsteps through Unfallen Snow

Just into Sunday afternoon. Em sits on the sofa reading the Guardian while I crouch on the floor, attempting to type while shielding my eyes from the sun.
Em is wrapped in a quilt, even though she is fully dressed, which gives some indication of quite how cold it is today. This is proper winter cold, where the temperature seems made of needles, the air of vodka, and everything is sharp and spiky, as if someone has tidied up all the angles overnight.
I can see my breath as I type.
This is the type of cold - and the time of year - that preceded famous childhood snowfalls - the winter of 1986 or 1990 perhaps (even though for the latter I was eighteen). A period of snowfall would always seem to begin with a period of bright sun and blue skies. There would be something inimical about the sun and the sky - too clean, too pure, too sharp - that would tell you that snow would be coming. Walking the streets of Ickenham or Forres or Kinloss, taking in the last sights of pavements and grass and playgrounds, and all those other things that would soon be obscured by snow.
I would always wake before dawn if there was a snowfall, look out through my curtains at that sinister beguiling world. No footsteps through the snow, just that odd cathedral-like snow silence.
I look back up at the sun outside. I would like to think that those may be snow clouds gathering just over the spire of the church. Though it feels like snow, I think this feeling may just be a mixture of nostalgia and faulty clairvoyance, and that too bright, too clear, too sharp sun getting in my eyes.