I struggled along the tow-path on monday under sky so low and grey it didn't even get light at lunchtime. The birds had stayed in, too; just a single magpie on the frozen field, a lonely gull white against a whiter sky. The snow had turned to filthy slush, churned black along Folly Bridge, slippery and vile.

This morning I was expecting things to be about the same; but some tiny fractional increase of light and warmth had woken up the birds. There was a robin, perched outside a narrowboat, waiting for the inhabitants to wake up and give him breakfast. Here a mob of gulls checking me for food. And as I walked across the bridge, hand clamped to the metal rail, guard against slipping in the slush, a wren darted out from almost under my hand, close enough I could feel the flap of its wings. She'd probably been hinting spiders in the crevices on the bridge; they're still there, even in the cold, guarding their egg sacs.

I tried to photograph one, but it was just too dark.