15 DECEMBER 2007, Page 55

A Puzzle in Four Seasons

Look at us. It must be Christmas. Our heads are bowed, the lamp close. We could be cracking a code or a body, so intent are we tonight on Spring, whose large foreground of wild daffodils could take us all winter.

We check the lid from time to time like artists more absorbed in what they're doing than what's there: a village coming into itself all at once, in all weathers; yielding itself to nothing more than the hours of its own slow resurrection.

It's not often we come together like this. Nor do we believe for one minute in this village or its charmed stoicism. We attend to it quietly, with quick fingers.

Greta Stoddart