When I woke up this morning, I glanced out of the window and thought for a moment that I’d sleepwalked into the wardrobe and been transported to Narnia. The street lights were glowing and there was a carpet of smooth, velvety snow covering the ground. But then a man in a bobble hat skidded past, towed along by a massively over-enthusiastic border collie, and I realised that I was still at home. But, boy, was it snowing.

By the time I was up properly and listening to my porridge bubble away on the hob, what had been a paltry two inches of snow was a fairly respectable four. And still it was falling, great big flakes tumbling out of the sky like leaves from a tree.

We wasted no time in getting dressed in our coats, hats, scarves and mittens (Natalie and me) and outdoor hooligan harness (Molly) and heading out to the nearby fields. It had just about got light by now, though the falling snow made it a bit difficult to see where we were going. The schools were shut, none of the buses were running and it was clear from the absence of tyre tracks that most people had given up on the idea of going to work.

Out on the hills, the snow made everything look so clean and new. If it hadn’t been for the trees, with the snow clinging to their branches like frosting on a wedding cake, it would have been difficult to tell where the ground stopped and the sky started.

Needless to say, Molly loved it. She’s a big fan of the snow and had a great time chasing snowballs and barrelling into the few other dogs that were around. And while I’m a big, grown-up adult kind of person, I must admit that I enjoyed playing in the snow, too. (But only a little bit.)

What Molly couldn’t understand, though, was why the snowballs I was throwing for her kept disappearing. She’d leap into the air, catch the snowball in her mouth and then find that all she got was a giant slurp of water. But rather than explain to her the basic laws of physics, I just kept chucking more.

And she kept racing around like a lunatic.

With me tagging along behind her. (You can just see me here on the right.)

As we headed home, we came across an army of little groups heading the way we’d just come. Each group seemed to contain a very harassed (and very well wrapped) parent, a sledge, a grinning dog and eight (or more) very small, very excited (and also very well wrapped) children. All off out to enjoy the snow.