It is in the air: it is waiting.

We took Clover the sheepdog for a walk this morning. My compact little terrier is made for weather such as this. Sub zero temperatures simply allow him to be the best he is.

But after a stiff sprint across the top of the iron age fort, in the chilly dazzling sunlight of a day approaching midwinter, his thoroughbred long-legged companion flopped down on the sandy earth. And she was steaming.

It was rising off her in billowing clouds and I marvelled at what kind of engine must lie under that bonnet. She seemed perfectly happy to steam, however, and we made our way onwards.

We passed a forester chopping trees to clear them away from a power line. The sun was hard and cold and brilliant, and we each had a huge grin on our face, in the midst of all that woodland, as we bade each other Good Morning.

Here, pleasantries are always about the weather. “Fabulous morning”, I volunteered happily. “Isn’t the sun beautiful?”

“Sure is”, he replied, “But not for long. Better enjoy it while it lasts. They say snow’s on the way.”

This is how every casual conversation goes in this country, right now. We know it is coming.

I chatted to a parent at the school gate. She went to the garden centre this morning, and stacked up, higher than the tallest conceivable customer, are two commodities this country has rarely needed in living memory: sledges, and snow shovels.

We in this country are waiting, poised on the edge of something new, uncertain as to how it will affect us. You see, we haven’t traditionally had much snow. White Christmases surrendered long ago to wet Christmases.

And then two years ago, the first of the heavy falls came. And all our comfortable little systems for coping with the tiny amounts we usually get, ground to a halt. Councils ran out of sand; roads became treacherous no-go areas; schools closed their doors.

We have a new snowbound social memory on which to reflect.

As the day has worn on, the glittering light has given way to grey sheet cloud. And in the playground this afternoon, while I chatted to my friend Wendy, something small and white darted between us.

Was that what I thought it was? I asked, and Wendy said yes, she very much thought it was.

It hasn’t arrived yet. I wonder if it will.

Whether it does or not, we shall soon be off on our midwinter holiday.  Uncannily, the dog seems to know we are going long before we start to pack.

Early on, while clothes still sit in drawers waiting to be loaded into suitcases, and canine food sits in its customary tub awaiting transfer, the dog’s ears become angular.

His eyes seek out ours. He employs every possible non-verbal signal to show us that he is ready, thank you, to accompany us. Occasionally he will simply take himself out and sit in the car.

The question is, how does he know? What tiny signals must he be picking up on, which show that change is on its way?

He just has this feeling, and he is invariably correct.

As was another character, a modern-day Romeo. He had a feeling something was on the way, and Leonard Bernstein helped him get it off his chest.

Tony, caught up in gang warfare in the streets of New York, is about to have his life first changed out of all recognition, and then suddenly snuffed out.

“Something’s Coming” is not one of the most sought after songs of West Side Story, but it distils an experience some of us have had, just a few times in our lives: the conviction that a life-changing event is about to happen.

Tony has no idea what it is. He’s just working at a chemist’s, trying as hard as a boy from the streets can to stay out of trouble.

He knows there’s something about to happen, just out of his reach. Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics grope at expression, but it is the fluttering impatience of Bernstein’s score that epitomises the elation that anonymous hope like this can bring.

Tony is about to fall hopelessly and tragically in love.

Nameless conviction has happened to me just twice in my life. The first was on the cusp of growing up. Aged 14, I had holidayed with my family and now the rest of the Summer stretched out rather plain before me.

I simply knew something would turn up. After about a week of this inexplicable elation, it did. My mother knew a group of young adults off on a walking pilgrimage from Cambridge to the shrine of Walsingham. She asked me: would I like to go?

I knew no-one, but I said yes. And that week turned out to be full of glorious moments: the first time sitting at a pub with one’s mates and a glass of lager; lying an open field, in sleeping bags, trying to count shooting stars in that August asteroid belt: attempting to persuade a young Byron off the roof rack of our car because he had indulged in rather a lot of contraband communion wine.

The second time was just before I began to go out with my husband. And for a summary of how that has turned out, I refer you to the 135 previous posts which chart our lives. Good luck with that one.

I’d say he merited the three months of unexplainable unsettling restlessness: the conviction that something was on its way.

It sure was.

And now, Dear Reader, it’s back. That nameless conviction.

And I have not the faintest idea why.

Felix and I are wading happily through the snowdrifts of CS Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.

He has become acquainted with the snow-locked world of its early pages, and as outside temperatures plummet to match those of Narnia, the icy land has become status quo to my son.

But word has just come through to the four children central to the plot, and the country’s future: Aslan is abroad once more in Narnia.

I know what Felix doesn’t: that soon the snows there will come to an end. The awful witch who torments the land is about to have a lot of trouble getting to work in the morning because her sledge will no longer have the frozen tracks it needs to operate.

Change is afoot.

We are waiting.