It's minus 15 now in Budapest, or thereabouts. I've been dogged by a cold which found it hard to develop fully in the stew of Vitamin pills and echinacea that's my January blood, and then exploded for a day. Every morning I get into my thermals to go to work. (And quick change out of them as soon as I arrive in the overheated interiors.) The sky is clear and there's always some trick of the morning light that makes the Parliament building pink or peach-coloured. No matter how much of a hurry I'm in, I try to walk the slightly longer but far more scenic river way and watch the cloudpour of vapour from all the heating systems. From the tram today, I caught a glimpse of the ice sculptures for a second time. They're giant versions of the kind of glass animals that might grace some old lady's mantelpiece. They remind me of the plastic ones I collected in a tub when I was a child. They're kitsch, I know - I can tell from a distance. The mammoth, the hummingbird, the gryphon are all a bit cute. But they're ice. And the coloured lights shining through them from behind, playing on the edges, make them look as if they've got Christmas tree lights inside. I make a mental note - which becomes a physical note - to return later. 
When I do, after a good day when I could feel the cold retreat, the animals are surrounded by people and digital cameras. They're illuminated. The lights look as if they're coming from the inside. They pick out patches of haze and some thick veins in the crystalline structure of the ice. Small children wander round, dying to touch, but too well behaved. Would their hands stick to them, perhaps? Nightlit, the creatures are redeemed from their kitschiness - a parade of ambassadors from the ice kingdom - fantastic, rough-hewn, gleaming, perfect.
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