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Some of the girls danced to Susan Maughan ( 'Bobby's Girl'), Neil Sedaka ( 'Breaking Up is Hard to Do') and Chris Waites and the Carrollers ('Christmas Caroline'), but I played Snakes & Ladders. Up the ladders, down the snakes –comforting, meaningless movement.

Wendy Coburn put on 'Love Me Do'.

'You can't call that din music,' said John the Martian, who only likes classical. 'It's just a bunch of yobs making a noise.'

'You're not "with-it", Martian,' said Gillian, teasing.

'This is the best and most important 45 single of the last five years,' I said. 'For the rest of your life, you'll remember that you were there when the Beatles started.'

Wendy and her clique were dancing dreamily. Even without the benefit of the long view, it was obvious that The Beatles were special. Poor Chris Waites wasn't even playing in the same division.

'It isn't exactly Mozart,' John snorted.

'Grandfather says Mozart was a bad-mannered show-off with a silly hairstyle,' I said, 'who made a racket just to get attention.'

Grandfather has longer hair than the Fab Four, I should mention.

'It's what grown-ups say about pop groups we like,' I carried on. 'It's always been like that. It's because adults are threatened. When music changes, it means that we're taking over. The young.'

John was looking at me oddly.

'Where did that come from, Forehead? Deep thoughts. And they call me "the Martian"?'

I must be more careful.

Later –

The door of the Box was iced over when I got back to Totter's Lane. Before I could get inside for my tea, I had to use a scraper from the junkyard to chip it free.

Grandfather didn't notice.

At the moment, he's interested in the cold.

'John's Dad says it's the Russians,' I told him.

'Hardly likely, child.'

'He says the Russkis only ever win wars when they have the snow on their side.'

'Don't take that too literally.'

Even in the Box, it's cold. And that shouldn't be possible. 'Snow, Susan, isn't on anybody's side.'

Saturday, March 30th, 1963

No School today. And I did my homework yesterday evening.

Grandfather is busy.

When he thinks about the cold, he becomes cold.

Sometimes, he's just normally grumpy and crotchety, which is what you expect from grown-ups throughout the universe.

But now he's different.

It's as if he's an organic machine, doing what he was designed to do. Calculating and tabulating but not connecting, not caring, not feeling.

Even being irritated is feeling something.

This is standing outside a window, looking in, watching a child being beaten but not smashing through to do anything. Finding it interesting, but having no reason to change it, as if the whole universe were a big painting in a gallery, to be admired for its technique but which we should never think to add a brushstroke to, not even to repair damage or improve on a shoddy bit of work.

Where we come from, all people are like that. I worry that if the fog ever clears, I'll find that I'm like that too.

Grandfather can't be like that at bottom, or we wouldn't be here.

We wouldn't have run away.

I have a headache, a bad one. I must stop thinking about this.

Later –

I went out, wrapped up warm and being careful on the iced pavements. Safety notices are up everywhere.

The British government likes nothing better than telling people what to do for their own good. And the British people like to grumble, ignore the Men from the Ministry and make do with cups of tea.

Since we're here, I suppose Grandfather and I are honorarily British.

We both like tea, and I suppose we grumble and know better than officials too.

It could have been a lot worse. We could be honorary Americans. I expect we'd be noisier, smile more and have guns.

The snow-cleaning crews have stopped coming down Totter's Lane. They have to concentrate on the High Street and the arterial roads, which mean streets where people only live have to get by as best they can. A few humps in the Lane show where parked cars are buried, awaiting archaeologists from a future society. Mrs Faulke at Number