In the warming room that boasts a Bullerjan, I can just make out a glowing fire way back inside its fat, black barrel bristling with metal tubes, like exhaust pipes on a Spitfire.
Past the candle lights and through the window, double-glazed against the cold, lead-grey afternoon, stands the leafless skeleton of a sprawling lime, whose branches start thick near the trunk but grow ever thinner, as they divide and divide again, to end like capillaries, like a satellite image of Coopers Creek. Or so it seems.
And away to the horizon, the snow-covered Pyrenees, majestic, ethereal, like a Bob Ross painting.
I love to take shelter from the bitter cold. Having grown up in Queensland, the European winter is still a bit of a novelty. I can't wait for snow, which is predicted for next week.
