A white duvet

As the train passes the nature reserve, I can't tell whether the huddled ducks are floating on water or held fast in the ice by their legs. The train's speed doesn't give me a moment to work out whether the ducks are living or, as I briefly fear, a pattern of compact corpses against the white-grey landscape. The cold has returned.

I wasn't quite housebound in the first winter freeze. The cold tore at my throat when I left home and my calves felt weak after the morning and evening expeditions to work. The walk to the station, which I can usually do in five minutes if I must, needed twenty as I balanced on the ridged ice and compacted snow which formed the new surface of our suburban streets and pavements.

Like many people, I developed a cold and fierce, hacking cough but I was lucky. Services and deliveries halted but I had food in store and my son was prepared to venture to the corner shop – and further – in temperatures ten degrees below zero. The cold sapped my appetite but there was food and drink when I needed it. I missed one Russian class and two evenings of fencing but reached work on time every day.

The Russian tutor, from Novosibirsk, found the winter mild and flourished in the cold. Our shivering must have amused her but she smiled sympathetically. My desire to visit Russia – or anywhere – diminished. But walking back from the class, teeth chattering despite the layers of warmth in which I'd swathed myself, I caught sight of a duvet in a doorway.

It seemed to be a clean duvet, without a cover. I was struck by its whiteness compared to the grubby pavement-surface of trodden ice and frost. Heaped snow quickly acquires the colour and texture of charcoal when it's near a busy road.

I wondered if I should inspect the duvet. There were a couple of bags close by which suggested that this was someone's night-time home. The temperature was minus seven, and falling. I didn't want to take a step more than necessary in case I fell. I was a couple of yards from the doorway and did my best to inspect the duvet from a distance. I was almost sure there was no-one huddled inside it. I walked on down the hill, my feet searching for secure footholds, wondering if I should have done more.

If I had seen the resident of the doorway, I would have had to stop. At least, I think I would. No-one should sleep in a doorway on such a night. If I couldn't find a hostel place – and I wouldn't know where to start – surely at least I could buy a rough sleeper a cup of coffee, a meal or a night in a hotel. But there's nothing to be done about an empty duvet, whose owner was, I hope, warm somewhere else.

Days later, I mentioned my dilemma. “No-one will be sleeping out in this,” one friend declared. I knew, because I'd checked, that there were emergency hostel places and was briefly reassured. But then another friend spoke of going out with the soup run. In the English midlands, in the twenty-first century, human beings are finding what shelter they can in doorways, cardboard boxes and caves. They are queuing for soup in the coldest winter for more than forty years, just as cuts and economic anxiety leads charities to plead for more donations.

The latest snowfall hasn't been so bad here. From a distance it looks like a thick scatter of icing sugar on earth, grass, leaves and cars. Close to, it's evident that the snow is hard and sharp as tempered steel.

Next year our local council is cutting 200 hostel places for homeless people. I'm saving for loft insulation and double glazing. On my few daytime expeditions, I see beggars crouching in doorways. None of them haunts me as much as the memory of that white duvet next to the blackened snow and white-grey ice.

Station approaches

I'm never quite sure if I like Derby. Of the triangle of East Midlands cities, it's the one I know least. I'm more often there to change trains than to visit. But on impulse I decided to catch the train. There was a film I wanted to see at the Quad - the recent French film, The Army of Crime - and, after five weeks of overwork combined with a succession of viruses, it seemed splendid to be heading out for a treat on a Friday afternoon.

I found to my delight that I was once more able to run for the train - it was a very last-minute decision - and, once on the train, reflected that my life was suddenly becoming quite self-indulgent. I'd been to a bonfire, firework and pizza party the night before and now I was off to the cinema. By the time I arrived in Derby, I'd decided I liked the city. Perhaps I could even move there, one day. I considered the advantages: good train services, easier access to the Peak District, the Joseph Wright paintings in the museum, the Victorian market hall. Above all, it would be a new place and I would feel as though I were starting life again. I started to think about small, manageable houses without gardens and in good repair. I tried not to think about the horror of moving or getting a house in sufficiently good order to be shown to buyers.

I can never remember the quickest way from Derby station to the city centre. I took a slightly complicated route, past small modern factories and the huge Westfield shopping centre. It all seemed slightly dull in the November drizzle but I reminded myself that this was my afternoon out and determined to enjoy myself.

I'd never been in the Quad before and this wasn't a good start. I'd just got my money out when I saw the sign "An Army of Crime - cancelled, replaced by Casablanca." I asked what had happened but didn't exactly follow the answer: something about the equipment failing to "ingest" the film. "Is it digital?" I asked, in an attempt to understand. I didn't understand at all. Apparently digital films have to be ingested at least two hours before the screening. However a new copy was on its way. I bought a ticket, with cash, for the early evening screening and headed out in the rain to explore Derby.

I must have spent two and a half hours wandering, mainly gazing in shop windows in the hope that I'd feel inspired about birthday and Christmas presents. Then I thought I'd return to check that the replacement copy of the film had arrived and was being ingested safely.

The courier, due at two, hadn't arrived and it was nearly four. I decided to wait in the faint hope that the film would arrive and sat in the foyer, leafing through the film programme. The woman running the box office was suddenly concerned about my wasted afternoon and offered me a complimentary drink from the bar. I asked for a pot of chai so I was at least warmer when the news came that the film had been cancelled. The box office woman gave me my money back and offered me a complimentary ticket for any film in November. I accepted, though I'm not sure I'll make it to Derby again. But the kindness began to make up for my disappointment. I finished my tea and headed along the damp, dreary route past the overhang of the Westfield centre and bleak garages toward the railway station.

This time I managed the quick route and noticed the attractive railwaymen's cottages close the station. There were a couple of promising pubs too and an excellent chip shop. I began to fantasise about moving into one of the railwaymen's cottages. I thought I'd like being near the station. I always enjoy the possibility of easy escape. And I liked the idea of living in a railwayman's cottage. My dad was a railwayman - he worked as a fitter on the London Underground for 39 years and still takes an interest in trains.

I was unexpectedly tired when I reached home. I should have picked up some work but felt unable. I went to bed with a couple of books and decided I'd have a lie in on Saturday. But in the morning I felt the after-effects of the Derby drizzle. I had a bad cold and was aching too much to go anywhere. I coughed, spluttered and slept.

I have stopped dreaming of a move to Derby.

"The waies deep, the weather sharp, the daies short, the sun farthest off"

I came across that account of winter through T.S. Eliot's poem, "The Journey of the Magi." It's not a poem I greatly admire but I dutifully followed the reference in Southam's student notes and discovered the sermons of Lancelot Andrews. I couldn't agree with Andrews' theology - he was a high church Anglican and defender of the Divine Right of Kings - but I loved the way evocative phrases emerged from his careful translation and exposition, often in the movement between Latin and English. The passage quoted in the title of this post concludes by drifting into Latin and back to English: "in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter." Andrews may be trying to conjure up the journey of the wise men but, for me, what he offers is a harsh English winter, thick frost on the countryside and the muffled crackle of frozen stubble underfoot.

This New Year, the hard frost and fog seems to lock people into their separate houses. But the two young people and I set out for our separate new year celebrations: one to a party, one to a club and me to a dinner party prefaced with champagne and concluding with single malt whisky.

I reckon I had the best of it. I could hear the conversation, which (in the case of my fellow diners at least) sparkled while the food was excellent. There was even a special vegetarian dish for me - chestnut a la bourguignonne - served with side dishes of savoy cabbage and a delicious potato and celeriac mash. I'm lucky to include a terrific chef among my friends.

There were hints of other celebrations as I went out - young people, bottles in hand, checking house numbers. And at midnight the fireworks began at Nottingham Castle and the middle-aged, black cat whose house it was hid behind the bookshelves.

The only thing to spoil the evening was the lack of public transport. I contemplated cycling both ways but was deterred by the predicted minus 4 temperature. The combination of ice and alcohol would, at least, make me a danger to myself. And I feared the number of drunk drivers on the roads.

The dinner party was in Nottingham. Usually there are night buses, running every hour, but the companies claimed there was no demand for transport on the evening of New Year's Eve or on New Year's Day. The final buses ran at about 8.00 p.m. Taxis charge double in the early hours of New Year's Day. This is reasonable enough - years ago I used to babysit and welcomed double pay at Christmas and New Year. But not everyone can afford taxis. I worried about the risk from drink-drivers and feared that young revellers in skimpy party clothes might succumb to hypothermia when walking three or four miles home.

I reached home safely. So did the young people. The frost continues. There may be a little snow, or fog. And that takes me back to Lancelot Andrews:

"The waies deep, the weather sharp, the daies short, the sun farthest off, in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter."

Cold

A month or so again it was still warm. That's when I saw him: a stocky, cheerful, black-bearded man smoking a cigarette and reading a paperback book. He looked as though he was enjoying life. And that struck me because he was snuggled in a sleeping bag beneath a blanket in a shop doorway. He had half an hour or so till the shop would open and was enjoying the his daylight solitude.

It's not hard to see rough-sleepers in any town if you get up early. There's an underpass which usually houses one or two men (usually men, sometimes women) who, on cold nights, burrow deep into their sleeping bags so that only their hair or a woolly hat is visible. Every so often the underpass floods and the sleepers aren't there any more. I don't know where they go.

I don't know where they go in the snow and hard frosts we've had in the past fortnight. There are hostels - but not many - and I've heard that some rough-sleepers are frightened of them. The people who use them are sometimes drunk or mentally ill. People who are homeless have rarely had a comfortable, secure past.

I don't know what to do to help rough sleepers. I know money would help, because it would provide warmth, which must be a major need. But money is short in a time of financial crisis - people (including me) cling to what they have.

Most vulnerable of all are the asylum seekers forced into destitution because their claims for help have been refused. Some fear deportation - what they fear must be terrible if they choose homelessness and near-starvation in preference. Failed asylum seekers are forbidden to work, forbidden to claim benefits, forced to beg for survival. A local organisation hands out supplies but it doesn't have much money. Destitute asylum seekers are given a bag of food a week if they can find somewhere to cook it or £2.50 a week if they cannot.

Meanwhile, we prepare to celebrate Christmas. The story tells of a young couple forced to shelter in a stable because there is nowhere else for them to sleep. Later, with a small baby, they seek asylum in Egypt because they fear persecution at home.

When the shops open, the rough sleepers move on. The Christmas carols mingle with more recent songs in the city centres.