It is early February and the snows have finally come. In December I long for this seasonal variety, only to wish its swift departure barely two months later. But at least it offers a change in our somewhat circumscribed lives. As I walk through Kensington Gardens in the late afternoon, the Round Pond looks as if it might have frozen over. I am momentarily reminded of those distant figures playing on the ice in Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Hunters in the Snow. This scene, however, is the usual one: parents and their children standing at the water’s edge attempting to feed the mute swans, Egyptian geese and feisty moorhens. Where does the tradition of offering white bread, which can’t be healthy for these creatures, come from? A black swan is also in attendance; though I’m never quite sure whether nowadays this rare bird is meant to be a portent of good or ill. Given the current climate, it could be either. Rather like Bruegel’s painting, there is a muted quality to everything, as if life itself has been suspended.