There is a luminescence in the snow, a mild purple - as purple as this prose is at risk of being - a natural dim glow in the light of the midweek waxing moon. Only the light that evades the bare trees surrounding the park illuminates the corrugations of freshly-fallen snow underfoot. A late Wednesday night walk on the way home through Zaimov Park, with all the lights switched off, so that Sofia can save energy needed because of the gas crisis.

My office was frigid enough after two weeks of the central heating having been switched off rather than futilely left to heat a space left unpeopled during the Festive Season holidays. Hardly had it began to warm up when Vladimir Putin told Gazprom's Alexei Miller "do it" (as seen on the video made available by the Kremlin) and Bulgaria became one of the countries left in the cold by the shutoff of natural gas.

Our house does not have central heating. It does have an imposingly large air conditioner in the sitting room and electric wall heaters in the bedrooms and kitchen, and so we had no (cold) war tales to tell, unlike so many in the city who felt the warmth ebb away from their radiators and who joined those who had cash or credit left to buy electric oil heaters. For all the reports that Bulgarians ignored the credit crunch to spend 400 million euro on Christmas gifts, I suspect that some electrical goods stores did brisker trade this week than they had during gift-giving time.

Would Bulgarians complain less about their supposedly inflated electricity bills when it was all over? Just a few days before the gas shutoff, there had been a news report on television about people querying the amounts on their bills. They did not believe the accuracy of the meter-reading. A woman told a reporter's proffered microphone: "I don't believe anyone about anything anymore". No need, then, to find her again and ask her which side she believed, Russia or Ukraine.

As neighbouring Serbia also felt the chill take hold, participants in a forum on a Serbian website expressed an appropriately icy indignation: "I thought Russia was supposed to be our friend". Ah, but that was about Kosovo. And anyway, Moscow policy differs on different issues; it should not have escaped anyone's attention in these parts that the Kremlin does not see any equivalence in Kosovo and South Ossetia.

Among governments, the tale of the natural gas crisis was reminiscent of initial reactions to the global credit crunch. First, denial. Then, the realisation that you cannot substitute hot air for natural gas (or politicians would be a great deal more useful creatures than they tend to be). Then, assurances that there are sufficient reserves, even though it is going to be bad (for "cash reserves" a little while ago, read "gas" now). Then, contingency plans, where applicable, and cries for help, and a sudden spurt of action about a crisis that could have been foreseen.
Bulgaria's bunch, for once, did not do that badly. It was astonishing that, for once, it seemed that there were plans in place for just such a contingency. Action was actually taken to shut things down and divert resources and switch off things like park lights and Christmas lights and lamps illuminating Government buildings. Inevitably, a flash of populism, with calls to switch back on Kozloduy nuclear power station's two units mothballed on EU accession.

Astonishing, for once there were plans. Not plans of the kind that the Government piles up high for the European Commission, the better to hide behind, nor plans of the kind that I suspect most politicians limit themselves to, involving a prosperous retirement.

The National Consultative Council on Security managed to meet without undue histrionics and posturing and seemingly actually had a constructive session, and there were no more than the customary number of calls for the Government and at least one individual minister to resign. That minister was, of course, Emel Etem, whose portfolio is disaster management but who seems to have misunderstood her job title as disastrous management. At regular intervals in recent years, she has been the brunt of calls to resign over a lack of official response to, respectively, floods and snow blockages of highways.

The Aunt Sally of most in the opposition and many in the media, Etem has tended to plead that she has, in effect, no real power over disaster management (she is a deputy prime minister, like the minister of education, who fortunately does not say he has no power over schools, like the foreign minister, who fortunately does not say that foreign affairs are not his affair, and like the deputy prime minister in charge of the use of European Union funds, to whom I wish good luck).

So seasonal disasters tend to bring seasonal rituals of calling on Etem to quit. I must admit I had not thought of her as complicit in this episode, but rather watched with interest the performance of Government, opposition and municipal authorities, of whom there may be a reasonable expectation that they should do something to thaw the people who pay taxes and thus, their salaries.

Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov, for whom I hold no brief but who had the good sense to switch off the lights in our park and allow me a memorably atmospheric night's walk, has listed Etem's party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, as one with which his party will not form a coalition after his cohorts, as he and many others expect, win the largest share of votes in this summer's parliamentary elections.

Conversing on topics ranging from politics to the substantial number of layers of clothing that currently is the fashionable norm, I said to a Bulgarian colleague, as we stood amid the heaps of cleared-away snow, "Imagine a coalition without the MRF".
He replied: "At this stage, I can imagine anything".