They had fake snow at the market one year. A big trough of it. You could go and dip your hand in and swirl it around. The people behind the counter were selling it in little tubes. Here, said one of them. Old wrinkly man with yellow teeth all angles. Hold out your hand.

I took off my glove and gave it to Maisie and held out my hand. The man emptied some powder out of one of the tubes into my hand and then dripped a couple of drops of water from a plastic bottle onto it. The stuff fuzzed up in a second. It tickled in the palm of my hand.

That's exciting, isn't it? said Maisie. Isn't that exciting? It wasn't. The stuff was just fluff. Nothing at all like real snow. Nothing at all like anything real. I brushed it off my hand into the big trough and took my glove back from Maisie. The fake snow wasn't even cold.