OUTSIDE, snowflakes, dancing like string-puppets, fell from a purple-veined sky of grey sacks; still occasionally pierced by the frozen sun, and these flakes tickled the wet black noses of dogs straining on their leads.

People passing on the pavement looked up at that sky and shook their heads. “Plenty more to come,” said a whisky-faced fellow, who had seen many winters before, as he paused under the street lamp to draw again on his defiant cigarette.

Inside the house, a figure emerged like old musk from the shadows and stood in the frame, where a new door had been hung. He seemed to be a nervous chap awaiting instructions. “Stand over there for a moment, please, Sweetheart,” said my wife, indicating the wall opposite the couch, on which she was sitting with a friend, who had been sucking a maraschino cherry in the gap between her molars and the incisor which, as a Girl Guide on camps, she had put to great effect when releasing the milk from coconuts. I stood on the appointed spot and decided, rather recklessly, to enliven the proceedings with a little turn. To this end, I started to hop, so that I could raise my right foot to the level of my left knee and form an arthritic triangle, while blowing on an imaginary penny whistle in the style of a two-toned fool at the Royal Court.

“He doth not please me,” said my wife, turning to her friend. “Husbands always look wrong in a house, don’t they? They haven’t the right shape or symmetry to go with anything and God didn’t bless them with any sense of style or colour.”

My mouth hung loose, as I gazed upon my blue fisherman’s pullover and green trousers. “Seems a good blend to me,” I whispered to myself.

“Blue and green should not be seen, as we used to say as young gals,” said the friend. How they chortled on the couch, while the day darkened still more, though the wine still sparkled and the cherries awaited the stab of cocktail sticks.

“I thought that the colour co-ordination of the house should be based on Egyptian sand,” added my wife. “It has such a warm look in both carpets and wallpaper. Of course, he has nothing of Egyptian sand in his wardrobe, except an old pair of socks.”

“Pharaoh’s socks,” said the friend. Well, I thought the rocking of their mirth would burst the couch springs. But when the laughter at last subsided, I ventured an observation of my own. “What’s the matter with Rhyl, New Brighton or even Birkenhead sand?” I asked. Briefly, disbelief gripped the air and they blinked in silence, before the lovely turquoise of my wife’s eyes fell upon the huge Christmas tree grown for a castle. Together, we had hauled this tree through the empty frame, where the door now hung.

You see, we have moved from our 30-years-old cottage on the hill of the village that overlooks the town and the brooding river beyond. Now, we are about half a mile away in a 1930s semi of the sort affectionately mocked in the snobbish but evocative poems of the late John Betjeman. But to us it is a paradise of gurgling pipes, stained glass and creaking boards, held within sturdy timbers and good English bricks clad in pebble dashing. And as I gazed on the slow glow of the baubles, I thought of Christmases gone, seen here by the ghosts – in a house built when much of the country was hungry and dictators strutted over Europe, eager to unleash their tanks and bombers, while smoke wheezed up the chimney behind me. In this old house, victories had been celebrated and sorrows endured. Emotions were hidden in the masonry. Somewhere along the way, every house becomes a home for memories.

“Should I put the kettle on now?” I said to my wife and her friend, and the words echoed in the hall. Through the kitchen window, I could see winter birds frisking for their supper on the lawn, amid the patchy, English snow. Our 13-year-old son watched them from his bedroom. Water steamed in the brown pot. On my return with the tea and seasonal fancies, we all looked at the tree. “How are we going to get it out, now that we’ve fitted the door?” I asked. “We must ask for a Twelfth Night miracle,” said my wife, and there was a smile in her eyes.