‘The most serious charge which can be brought against New England,’ declared the American critic Joseph Wood Krutch, ‘is not Puritanism but February.’ Much the same might be said of Old England or at least the not-so-old version I lived in for so long. As I recall, February didn’t have much going for it. For centuries it was popularly known as February Filldyke, for all too obvious reasons. It was the time when, in bad years, villages became snowed in and it was discovered once again that areas where snowfall was comparatively rare did not have enough snow-ploughs to keep the roads clear. Even in less bad years, it was a time when one pressed on in grim determination, sustained by a distant prospect of spring.

The other day in one of the local supermarkets we came across a plastic packet containing numerous strange-looking short, dark filaments. They looked a bit like cherry stems and, on closer examination, that is just what they proved to be. What, we wondered, could they possibly be for?