Low Quality of Clouds Around Here

When water droplets condense, notoriously, something interesting happens. It’s possible that birds see clouds as nothing more than traffic jams. Birds are wrong.

However, if the sky is nature’s monitor screen – and I think we can all agree it is – then winter is a hell of a dull screen saver.

After all, one of the great pointless pleasures in life is to piddle about staring at archipelagos of clouds and imagining in them the faces of traffic wardens we have loved, or favourite doorkeys, or different parts of your own intestine. We've all done it.

You’d think that because winter, with its featureless grey skies, precludes such distractions, we’d all focus instead – ironically - on higher things; or at least on more obvious things. But as everyone’s too knackered, cold and broke to concentrate on anything other than sleep, and perhaps the odd slice of cake, higher things, whatever they may be, don't stand a chance.

So conjure up elusive spirits: cumulus, stratus, nimbus, cirrus...