Going by the light, it's still early morning. But the clock says it's already seven. Must be the shortest day soon? The weather, these past few mornings, has developed a trick of bringing heavy black cloud across the sky from above me, thus down over the window, like the spaceship at the beginning of the very first Star Wars film to be seen (number four now, I think). That was impressive to see for the first time, in a cinema, not long after release. I remember an interview with, I imagine, George Lucas, talking about how he had wanted to create a "used future", and how all of it was new then.
    Pity to lose the sense of newness. It's all new, or let's treat it so. A week of solitude just passed, whole week: resting mother and baby gone, presumably rested, then the family onto the train to Bath for a pre-Christmas week of shopping (taking bicycles). Spent the time at the laptop in the kitchen (keep the dog company), but also walking, chopping/sawing logs, restoring the tarpaulins on the shed roof. Got them secure now, although everything inside is thoroughly rinsed. Perhaps a secure tarpaulin is a charm against any more wind and rain this year. Got out of bed this morning and wondered if I'd aged ten years in the night. No, but using my new sledgehammer in the splitting of logs - I have previously undiscovered muscles, and they ache.
     Interesting week to have the radio on in the background. The drama about the veto in Europe and the impossibility of a "wait and see" stance in politics. Everybody arguing from a position of indignant certainty, even while using "could be" rather than "will be". And arguing from an unquestioned assumption that their "road not taken" would have been the right road. No sense of irony or absurdity. As if one lot of politicians were efficient saints, and the other lot dangerous incompetents. The radio is where you hear people talk about "ordinary people", as though there are two kinds, and say things like "we must". Who's "we"?
    That Boson thing has been sending out signals again. The Higgs Boson. Soon, we'll have established its existence or non-existence. The toolkit from which "Reality" was made has (not) a Higgs Boson in it, right there next to the spanner. Great. What does that tell us about the owner of the toolbox? Change goes on, stays the same, journey brings us to our beginning, brings us here, all is well.
    And yesterday evening, I bought the complete works of Dickens on my Kindle, for 99p. Voices raised in Russia. Storms. So much. "They fall, and falling, are given wings." Rumi, from memory.

Sitting here in the kitchen listening to the radio. Just after seven. Still dark. Bright moonlight on the front of the house. The clock stopped at 9.15. They're arguing about the euro deal, which will take months to put in place. I wonder if the bond markets will wait. Birds wheeling over the valley. I thought the wind had died down, but I can see branches moving against the sky.
    How long does gazing across the room at the window take? All of a sudden it's Thought for the Day and the big, heavy black cloud has rolled forward across the sky to close the horizon to a crack. But the birds are white now, so there must be light. I like the dusk colours.

There we are. I've put a picture at the top. The old one, the generic Weebly one that goes with this template, reminded me of a park in the middle of Frankfurt, or maybe it was Brussels, or maybe it was some other city altogether. Walking through it together with a pushchair and, if memory can be manipulated to include this detail, a bag of pains chocolat and a couple of takeaway coffees. Bench: black-painted ironwork, ornate, and wooden - no, black metal worn down to grey - slats to sit on. Birds to eat the crumbs. The long wide walkways, gravel, and at each intersection, a big circular edged statue, or maybe fountain, with either water or maybe in this memory we'll make it a planting of flowers. Are those plane trees, shedding their grey bark, and who are those generals on their horses, on the plinths?
    Flat grass and space for couples and groups on blankets, football games, children, prams. And I remember that brave young couple, sitting under a tree, she astride him; perhaps part of the dare was not to find a place further from the rest of us. In one, in fact, two, of the parks where we walked, there was a zoo, and there were always fountains. Not sure whether the question is: why did we visit so many parks, or: why did they make such an impression? Possible answer to question two: a very small boy taken daily to Kensington Gardens, climbing around on the Albert Memorial (before they blocked it off), fingering those carved figures, setting in place a positive association with parks and their metalwork.
    All of which adds up to: I liked that old picture, but it's time. I've said more than once, "Yes, I think you should put your picture on your website," and I only know that because each time I've exempted myself from my own advice - not a good habit. [In other news: storm during the night; tarpaulin finally blown off the shed roof; rain massing in the clouds. But at least the bird feeders are refilled. On the radio this morning, somebody was calling for a "national innovation strategy". Can you imagine? Nothing more guaranteed to kill innovation stone dead.] Sorry about the park picture, but you can find it again at Weebly.

All these short, slow days. Sun rising behind a band of cloud so that it's more a leakage of colour into the horizon, than a whole new day. Deliberately slow, at first, taking the available time, like pausing on a bridge despite the pull of the other side, pausing in this extended moment. In the process, detecting - and questioning - the givens, the assumptions, that make up so much of the pull. Why, now I come to think of it, should I rush to get this done, that done, the birds fed? It seems to me that the choice to live in the moment may be taken at one level of consciousness, while the obstacles to living in the same moment are at a deeper, less apparent, even less conscious, level. I choose to live in the moment, just as soon as I've got this done.
    I'm with the people who consider washing up to be a meditation. Doesn't get the dishes done any quicker, and if you've got a tidy kitchen on the other side of your bridge, yeah, okay, I'll do the drying because you're quicker than I am. Told last week by a talkative friend that meditation is very difficult. Said friend has only really meditated - really managed to do it properly - twice in her life, she said, but each of those times, she came away feeling so refreshed, so very much better. I think we define our own lives, and attach labels and conditions that aren't always helpful.
    One day, I shall teach a relaxation technique that involves filling a sink with warm, soapy water, immersing your hands, and rubbing one or more dishes, rhythmically, oh so rhythmically, with a sponge until they shine. In the gift shop, I shall sell squeezy bottles of liquid for relaxation, and a range of 'relaxation dishes'. My friend is happy to see meditation on the other side of the bridge. She seems relaxed, tranquil, cheerful, all the words that add up to: alive.

Once upon a time in Canada, driving through forest at the start of Autumn, got used to "Look! Fall colours!" every time we passed a tree that had gone early from green to the red-gold colours of the Fall. Saw the work of the Group of Seven artists at the gallery in Ottawa. Today, had a "Look! Winter colours!" moment, standing up the slope from a perspective of four apple trees, no apples, no leaves, gnarled, old, covered in lichen, shiny wet with the cloudburst of a moment before, blue-grey, reflecting the back-lit cloudy sky, beautiful. Would a camera get that? Don't think so. But a Group of Seven artist might have been inspired to switch from gold to silver. Some moments, you understand why painting endures in the age of cameras.
    The birds are hungry. They've emptied the feeders over the weekend; time for a refill. Been away in Bath - driving a vanload of furniture up on Saturday, empty van back Sunday. Curious town, Bath. Yes, the stone is lovely. Ramshackle corners, alleys and shops that reminded me of Rome. All the obvious chainstores on the main pedestrian ways, but a few more original, artisan, craft places in the narrow short cuts. Quantities of people and cars that went beyond any conception of overcrowding and all the way into the ridiculous; laugh-out-loud crowds. Seemed impossible to buy any item of clothing, or accessory, that wasn't - in a narrow sense - fashionable. As if we're all imitating something - but the original has no substance beyond its own advertisement.
    All I wanted was something to put on my (cold) head, but I didn't want it with a logo prominently displayed. Failure. Remained cold. A shopping town full of people indifferently, happily, reluctantly projecting a narrow set of brand identities rather than just being their own identity. Is this just an observation drawn from a very specific situation - Saturday afternoon, dusk, shopping town, early December - or is there a question to be asked: you've got the style; where's the substance? The saying in advertising used to be: if you're selling a burger, "sell the sizzle". Perhaps if you spend to long being sold and thus buying the sizzle, you eventually lose contact with the substance. Did you enjoy your burger? It sounded great. What about the taste? Don't understand the question.
    Enough. Hungry birds tapping at the putty holding my windows together. A sound with a meaning.