4.Winter dropped on Paris out of nowhere. In barely two hours the city was covered in a thick white carpet, several centimetres deep. I watched through the window as large snowflakes spread over the road. It made for a pretty view. A delicate innocence overlay every inch, as if to remove any blemishes built up over the year. The objects whitened by the snow are then revived. Fresh and neat, clean and renewed, they seem coated in a new skin, ready to face the new year. Snow has a magical, purifying quality.
I was to spend Christmas alone for the first time. In Russia, this holiday season is celebrated differently to in France. Owing to the communism of years gone by, the tradition had practically disappeared. Boosted by a resurgence in orthodoxy, people now spend it together more and more
