Preparing

The first day of November bears gifts for those who watch the skies. A line of four swans flies in silence among huge flocks of squawking geese arrowing south. A thick, vivid rainbow embraces the library as I get to work.

November brings golden sunrises and swirling pastel sunsets, but when we visit the dene the sun is just a blur of light struggling through gloom. The floodlights have been lit on the football pitches nearby and they seem to be hazed with mist. I remind myself that it is only lunch time, since it feels like the prelude to twilight already. The weekend’s gales have faded into a gentle breeze. I am warm because I am moving, but if I stopped I would feel the bite of cold air. Meteorologists have forecast snow for the coming week and the sensationalist papers are making a fuss about it, but the chances are that we won’t see it much below the north of Scotland.

The dene is slumbering, or so it seems. A few soft twitters from a tit, a brief alarm from a blackbird, but otherwise the trees are silent. The burn is a chain of still puddles. Tawny leaves are interlaced with ivy, raspberry and bramble leaves. A handful of sow thistle and a lone herb robert are the only blooms left. The rushes have yellowed. The avenue of lindens has dropped many of its leaves and they lie in heaps along the path and around the tree roots. One birch among a row of others has been lost to fungi, huge brackets climbing the trunk that have killed it from within.

The pond is peaceful. Trailing willows and floating birds. An older couple circuit the water slowly, holding hands. But then the black headed gulls rise in a frenzy, their screeches filling the air. A man and his son are feeding them. The mallards and moorhens move quietly and determinedly to take their fill among the flurry of white wings.

I know this season isn’t as quiet as it seems. Some creatures are still preparing for winter, hoarding what food they can. Some are busy munching their way through the leaf litter, breaking it down to feed themselves and whatever is nurtured by the remaining mulch. Spiders have been encasing their eggs safely in silk for the winter. They won’t see their children born but have given them the best chance they can. Fungi burst into fruit so that they can send out their spores. Trees pull nutrients back within, renewing themselves for the year to come.

And I’m preparing too. I’m no longer sending stories out, I’m holding them in. At Halloween I festooned my altar with photos of women writers. Not only to honour them, but to honour the thread of creativity that has been passed down through the generations. To remind me that there are others who have come before, women who can inspire and hold space for me when doubt comes. I am no longer languishing, but venturing out in search of stories. And then venturing in to find the words with which to tell them.

The air is full of drizzle on the day after Remembrance Sunday. Knitted poppies adorn the entrance to the cemetery. Rain patters softly on the remaining canopy. Leaves crackle as they fall. These gentle tickings are the only sounds. A discarded pumpkin lantern leers from the base of a tree. Here too, the landscape seems to slumber. But crows dig deep beneath heaps of leaves to find food. A squirrel weaves among the trees. On a nearby gravestone, a gull perches, watching us with interest. And these are only the preparations that we can see.

We walk past the crematorium and overhear part of the eulogy as a funeral takes place. The celebrant talks of a man who enjoyed photography. I smile at that creative thread that links me unexpectedly on this day to a stranger. We prepare, but we never know if our preparations will be enough or when they will no longer matter. Still, we do it, because we hope for a future in which they are enough. I am lucky to have shelter and food for the coming winter. The larder I fill is a creative one. Stories and images are the things I gather to see me through.

Languishing

After the first chill of autumn, comes an interlude of sun and warmth. The tiny creatures respond. On the warm metal of roadside barriers, ladybirds gather. Every foot or so there is another, all with varying colours and arrangements of spots. There are a few ladybird larvae, with their black bodies and orange stripe. Tiny aphids, sunbathing bluebottles, a cranefly and a tiny insect that looks like a stag beetle all share the unexpected warmth.

There is little left in bloom now. A few bindweed trumpets and a single violet among the brambles. A clump of mayweed beside the road. The occasional dandelion shining among fallen leaves and a cluster of wild roses. And yet the violas I planted for summer colour are still in flower and next year’s bulbs have started to shoot. Seeds have been swept up and blown on their way to take their chances. The hogweeds are no more than skeleton spokes and there are only rags of down on the willowherbs.

Summer kept me close to home. I worked from home until September and the heat was too much for adventures. Our walks were short, timed to coincide with cooler parts of the day. I found myself less attentive to the world outside than usual. But I wasn’t idle. The yard has been tidied, weeded and adorned with new plants. I returned to the novel I sent for assessment before lockdown, to complete the suggested revisions. Some of my spring submissions bore fruit. With each rejection I made another submission to keep the work out there. And not everything passed me by. I watched a leaf cutter bee harvest leaves from my rose bush for her nest. I saw a mole building a tunnel on a piece of waste grass, surfacing with a small somersault and retreating underground once more. I watched goldfinches gather on the telegraph wires and sparrows flit through the yard.

In early August, I caught Covid. It seemed ironic after nearly a year and a half of working to keep people safe, a double vaccination and staying close to home, that I caught it at this stage. It was like a bad flu: cough, stuffy nose, congestion, aches and pains, fever, weariness, no appetite. I had bad nights, in which panic attacks returned and I started to worry about the coming winter. I slept and I watched daytime TV. I didn’t have the energy for much more than that. My wife caught it too. As I started to recover, she got the worst of it. But that was nothing. In the same month, a friend of ours in America, also double-jabbed, passed away from the disease.

As summer passed to autumn and the air got cooler, we reclaimed the beach from the crowds. Sanderlings fluted into the silence. A old-fashioned tall ship sailed in front of wind turbines towards the lighthouse. Time has often felt strange during the pandemic, and watching this ship was like seeing another age breaking through. Later, we came upon a group of stones, trailing bladderwrack, planted in a circle, as though the sea gods had placed them there to hold a meeting.

Berries have replaced blooms in the hedgerows. Blackberries are mostly picked or shrivelled on the vine, but there are shiny, plump rosehips, snow berries , haws and elderberries. The ground rustles with leaves and paths are edged with fallen gold, yet looking up, the trees seem as if they are only just on the turn.

I have been languishing in the space between now and normal. But now, everything has changed. If not truly normal, it feels as normal as it will get. I am back in the office for my full working week and have returned to some of my old wandering grounds. I am thinking less about what I have harvested this year and more about what I can do to reap a good harvest in the next. It would be easy to languish here forever, but the season has changed and the winds are calling…

My favourite fairy tale was always Beauty and the Beast, but I was never satisfied when, in the end, the Beast turned into a boring prince. You can read my alternative version, called ‘The Beauty of the Beast’ in the current Firewords magazine, issue 14 on the theme of ‘wild’. You can buy a copy here.

Basking

Late May has brought banks of ox-eye daisies and campion to the motorway verges. It has brought sheep and the yellow of rape to the fields next to the veterinary hospital where we go for Winston’s hydrotherapy. A pheasant, statue-still on the banks. Paddocks of horses and foals.

It has brought a fret from the sea that hangs over the river and rolls through town. All weekend, ships sound their horns, the moans echoing in their wake. The park is unmown, freckled with daisies and dandelion clocks. Cleavers climb the fences with sticky fingers. Clumps of grasses and buttercups have been allowed to flower. Tiny cranesbills carpet the foot of the poplar. The woodpecker drums softly – it sounds like the trees are purring. Everything is in that fresh, abundant state of growth, before the straggly mess of late summer.

Before we get there I imagine how the cemetery will be in the soft sunshine of a bank holiday Monday. I imagine the shafts of light between the trees, the dance of flies and the tangle of wildflowers. Others head for the coast. We avoid the crowds for a sanctuary of green and dappled light.

We’re greeted by blackbird song, high up in the trees. An undertone of wood pigeon and the chirrup of magpies. The mournful vibrato of a robin. A crow approaches, feathers accented with white and very tame. He is joined by others. I’ve seen people leave seed here, along the path by the chapel and these crows are obviously used to people leaving them food. They follow us some way along the path.

The cow parsley is almost as tall as us. Drifts of bluebells mingle with pockets of buttercup and campion. We walk overgrown paths bathed in green and patches of grass laid to meadow. The sun plays over the grave markers, casting some in shadow and highlighting others with pools of light. We bask in the tranquillity of dappled sun and untrodden paths.

When you think nobody will ever like a story of yours again; when you think you’ll get nothing but rejections, it’s then that a little good news comes. You begin to doubt the worth of your words, as you tout them from place to place, imagining them a little more jaded, a little more dishevelled as they are studied and turned away. But then suddenly, someone likes what you’ve done, and then it seems altogether better than you remembered. Often, rejection comes in threes, but this week it was successes. A story that made the longlist for inclusion in a prestigious literary journal. A story to be published in another journal. And a story longlisted, then shortlisted, then winner of the runner’s up prize in a competition.

I wrote The Carousel at my local writers’ circle, following a prompt where we were given a number of ‘things’ to write about. It came almost fully formed, a short story of 500 words. I’m pleased to announce it has won ‘runner up’ in the Retreat West quarterly themed flash fiction competition. One of the prizes was to have it professionally recorded by a sound artist. If you have 5 minutes, click on the link to listen to (or read) the story, but be prepared, it’s a creepy one….CLICK HERE TO READ THE CAROUSEL

Growing

Flowers are like ideas; they bloom when we aren’t watching. All of a sudden, they are there, where they weren’t before, sometimes just a fragile shoot, sometimes a flower fully unfurled. I wonder if it would be possible to witness a flower’s birth. If I had the time and the patience to gaze at a patch of ground, would I see the moment the shoot broke the soil? Perhaps this is one of nature’s private things, slow and hidden to allow the magic to get in. Like the idea that has germinated slowly in the soil of the imagination, but is suddenly there when you need it.

Quite suddenly, the rafts of vivid dandelions have become clocks. The road to the dene has sprouted clouds of cow parsley, peppered with dandelions and a little Herb Robert. The hawthorn unfolds bashfully, most blooms no more than ivory beads, but some boughs offering thick white blossom in contrast to the parsley’s lace. Pinpricks of purple from green alkanet brighten the gloom of the undergrowth, while stinging nettle and white dead nettle line the border between path and hedgerow.

In the upper dene blossom season is in full flow: rowans, service trees and cherries illuminate the banks of the burn. A few patches of bluebells sprout at the base of a sycamore. The stream trickles gently in places but is dry in others. Patches of meadow have been left to grow when the grass has been cut; abstract collections of dandelion, groundsel, ribwort plantain and wild grasses. An old tree stump, with gnarled silver bark rests on the edge of a circular patch of meadow, like a seat waiting for a storyteller. It has become one of those enchanted places in the landscape where anything might happen. From that perch perhaps I could witness the meadow grow.

The burn is crowded with bullrush spears and marsh marigolds. The small pond is green with weed and bulrush. As we cross the bridge to the main pond, past its goat willow guardian, we walk through a drift of down. The water birds are all in hiding. A small flock of feral pigeons pecks around the shore. A wood pigeon forages in a patch of dandelion clocks. Sparrows flutter and chatter between bushes and reeds. There is an orchestra of birdsong. I recognise the blackbirds, the robins, the chiff chaff and tits, but the rest is lost in a sweet cacophony. We sit by the pond for a while, shaded by the weeping willows, listening, watching the sparrows dance. I wonder how many ideas have been planted at the edge of this pond, ideas that will stay hidden until their time is ripe.

When my world is small and I stay close to home, ideas come slowly. Without input, they fail to germinate. Without those many small interactions with the world, the spark doesn’t catch. Movement releases them. Not only these walks in nature, but the casual stroll across the park to work, the view out onto gull-crowded roofs, the bus ride past fields and hedgerows, the dawn walk along the shore. We aren’t at normal yet. Restrictions are lifting, but the cases in our town are rising again. I have had both vaccinations, but I am cautious. My world is still smaller, but it is slowly expanding.

We leave the dene through an arch of blossoming cherries. The trees are noisy with the hiss of starlings. The birds hop from branch to branch, some preening wet feathers of blue, green and purple. For a while their chatter fills the air, until we turn for home and their noise fades. We pass a lone blackbird, perched at the top of a fence. The starlings’ song speaks of careless exuberance, whereas the blackbird seems to be singing for his life. With spring comes movement, both sprightly and serious. Already, the sparks begin to catch. I can’t see it, but the magic is happening, my mind is sprouting ideas.

Rising

It is 5am on May Day morning and we leave the house to a blackbird chorus. First light has lightened the landscape but the sun hasn’t yet risen. We drive through empty streets, stopping at traffic lights for non-existent cars. Gulls and pigeons flock on the roads, slow to move as we approach. This is their time and we are invaders in it.

The sky is a blank canvas, tinged pale blue and yellow. A three-quarter moon wanes in the west. The clouds huddle on the horizon in peculiar shapes, like deformed giants coloured in angry blue and pink. Over by the priory, a massive mushroom cloud hints at distant rain. Opposite that, above cliffs and wind turbines, a blurred hulk that looks like a brush swirled in water. And in the centre, a wide bow contains the sun.

I’ve avoided the coast as others flocked towards it, but now I surrender. On this magical day, I come pursuing the watery dream of peace I had on the eve of the equinox. The first thing is the roar of the sea. It is the bass note for the haunted cries of gulls and the bicker of starlings. It is a writhing mass of metallic blue, with molten waves surging to the shore. The lighthouses flash and waves break over the piers. It will be high tide in an hour or so and the sea is in motion.

Soon, a vivid smudge of orange appears beneath the cloud-mountain. It brightens, becomes bigger, seeps outwards until the horizon is an orange stripe. The sky around it becomes pinker, lilac. We walk down the ramp to the beach, crossing the sand towards the sea. There are a few other people here to witness the sunrise. We wait, watching as the sun makes its way imperceptibly up through the clouds. Shortly, the tops of the clouds are gilded, until finally the sun breaks free, a molten mass of gold, spilling slanted rays and creating a golden path from sea to shore. Watching the sunrise teaches patience. The sun doesn’t hurry; it does what it is supposed to do and takes its time doing it.

May Day is traditionally a time to celebrate fertility. The land flourishes with the signs of new life and we celebrate sensuality, passion and creativity. Lately, I’ve been filling my head with women: strong women, talented women, creative women. Writers. Artists. Singers. Activists. Women whose lives as well as their art have inspired me. If I peer hard, I can see them, dancing around the Beltane fire, some long gone, some still very much with us. I thank them for the richness of their language, the strength of their dreams, their many examples of creativity. I thank them for what they leave behind – not only their creations, but their company.

It wouldn’t be May Day without blossom and though the hawthorn is yet to show, our path is festooned with trees in full bloom. We are followed from the sea by golden light. Frost on the grass sparkles in its illumination. We stood at the edge of the shore and watched this sun be born. Now the day is ours and who knows what we might create?

Rolling

It has been more than a year since I climbed to the sundial. I would often walk here near dawn, when I had to visit work’s HQ, just across the road, but I haven’t been here since before the first lockdown. We come at midday on a Sunday, the sun unrelenting. The song of a robin accompanies us as we step into the reserve. We pass the butterburr patch, where the flowers are blooming, purple heads tilting towards the sun. Hazel and hawthorn branches clickle and clackle in the wind as we walk a path between them. Then through an embrace of bushy scots pines, until we reach the water.

The ponds are opaque and mucky green. Drowned alders droop towards water that looks thick and lifeless. The water birds are in hiding. We turn to the hill path. Cowslips scatter the grassland and a few primroses have yet to open. Predominant are gorse and blackthorn. The lemon of the gorse and the white of the blackthorn vivid in the landscape. At times they are threshold trees, pointing the way to a meandering path.

A wild wind whips around the top of the sundial. They say we’ll have snow tomorrow, but that seems difficult to believe. The horizon is clear. I see a ship passing behind the distant lighthouse, watch the turbines turning out at sea. It is just past noon and the sundial’s shadow is unequivocal. It’s looking a little neglected: graffiti on the gnomon, broken glass on the ground. A couple exercise by running up and down the steps. Two women and a spaniel join us at the peak. We see a couple of bees. A pair of great tits. A magpie.

In the lonely hours of the night, winter steals back in. Snow flirts in the shadows leaving just a sheen of ice on the morning grass. For the next week it comes and goes, small whirling flakes that appear without warning, while the sun also shines. I watch from the window as I work. One night it stays, gracing the rooftops and the ground with a light covering. The sun shines and it looks like spring, but the cold is bitter.

Time has been on my mind. In these last two years it has stretched and bent, lingered and vanished. Memories pile up, often making me cringe and shrink. But I remember things too, things I liked, things that influenced me – things of another age. Watching Prince Philip’s funeral, I find myself thinking about endings. I wonder if everyone gets to an age where each death, each pause, seems to signal the end of an era we think of as ours. If life is a general knowledge quiz, then I’m getting to the point where I no longer know the answers.

Still, spring rolls on. The hedges are fresh with hawthorn leaves and blackthorn blossom. The cherry blossom buds are about to unfurl. The grass has had its first cut. There are some bluebells in the park and the dandelions are blindingly bright. And I move on too. My wintry paintings move towards summer colour. I send out stories, Some are rejected. I send them out again. I don’t know all the answers, but I know how to keep moving.

Firsts

Spring is a season of firsts. The first crocuses. The first snowdrops. The first daffodils. A piece of tangled waste ground offers the season’s first coltsfoot flowers, lemon discs among frazzled grass. I see my first bee on the edge of the park, frantically seeking nectar, a day after the spring equinox. The hawthorn leaves are unfurling. Daisies and dandelions scatter the grass and crocuses have given way to lesser celandine. There are other firsts throughout the year – the first snow, the first leaves turning – but no season offers as many firsts as spring.

On the eve of the equinox I have my first Covid vaccination. My wife and I visit the local sports centre and have our jabs together. It is quick, friendly and efficient. We walk home light-footed, stickers on our jackets proclaiming we’ve been vaccinated. That night I dream vividly. I am standing at the edge of a canal in a perfect, purple dawn. The landscape is luminous, as it often is beside water at sunrise. Water and land seem to seep into each other so I can’t be sure which I am walking on. I am filled with peace. Later, some tiny birds have been caught in a spiders’ web and I have to gently brush strands of spider silk away from their feathers to set them free – I wake not knowing if I succeeded.

The cemetery is shades of green and yellow. The crocuses are all but gone now, but the daffodils are in full bloom: clumps and trails and sunbursts in and around the graves. I see my first primroses: less abundant and less showy than the daffodils, they form delicate clusters close to the ground. I find a handful of wood anemones and a single spray of snake’s head fritillary. A few early bluebells stipple the ground and pink blossom droops from a group of gracefully spreading trees.

There is a soundscape of birdsong. The great tit is the star of the bird choir, in volume if not tunefulness, with others as a quieter accompaniment. Magpies chirrup high up in the trees. I see a crow in the long grass, a pair of collared doves silent in a tree above, a trio of woodpigeons resting on a grave. Most of the birds are busy in the canopy, staking claim to territory and perhaps building the first nests of the season.

Spring’s firsts never lose their charms. I have seen fifty springs but I still thrill at the first flowers shooting through the soil, the sound of a renewed dawn chorus and signs of new life. Every spring is the same and every spring is different. We can rely on the return of those same firsts, but we will never experience them in quite the same way. The lengthening days give us hope and energy, but I think it is also the profusion of firsts that stir our vitality at this time of year.

The first of our lockdown restrictions are lifted today. We are following a timetable that suggests we will be back to some kind of normality by the summer solstice. Nothing feels much different at the moment. I find it impossible to believe that in a few short months this will be over. I imagine us like children emerging from the pandemic, eyes squinting in the sunlight. I hope we approach it with childlike wonder, rather than teenage rebellion. Those first hugs. Those first outings. Those first holidays. They will be the foundation of a what might be a better future. I hope we savour them.

Trembling

Nature trembles on the edge of spring. The sun reaches for the earth with renewed strength and the wind whips through the land with a renewed spirit. In places, spring breaks through. The lilac crocus shoots in the park that survived the snow have become delicate starbursts with hot orange centres. A single snowdrop and a single daffodil plant are pioneers from elsewhere, not normally seen here. Delicate nettle leaves and the shoots of bluebells have appeared. Five new trees have been planted. Everything is small, tender and pretty. Only the strident call of the great tit and the drumming of the woodpecker have any urgency. It is a gentle start to spring that belies the activity beneath the surface. We are about to experience the most excitable season of the year.

When I am about to create something, there is a flutter in my chest. Excitement at the idea that is just there, waiting to be born. This is the liminal moment – the moment before creation begins, when I tremble at the edge of possibility. There is excitement that it will work out exactly as I envision it, flavoured by a hint of fear that it won’t. I wonder if this is how nature feels on the brink of spring, knowing that her most creative time is about to begin. A twitch in the roots of the trees, a throbbing in the soil, a note in the song of the birds: the world, trembling with anticipation at what is to come.

Tiny cleavers and a single white deadnettle with pendulous flowers fringe the path to the dene. Hollies dominate the still-naked trees, gleaming in the sunlight. In the dene, spring waits. The burn is a trickle. Alder catkins sway at its edges. Silver birches dazzle. It feels like spring should be further along than it is. I walk down the avenue of linden trees and glance up. A kestrel hovers. I watch it through the branches until it gives up and flies off. A single clump of snowdrops lies on the edge of a pathway of purple crocuses. Dozens of shoots are waiting to bloom into daffodils, and a few already have. A great tit flies across my path. A small bird that might be a young greenfinch follows it. The two-note call of the great tit strikes the air. On the pond, the ducks are snoozing, hidden among the reeds. Two moorhens preen on a shared rock.

The river trembles on the point of a turning tide. A light mist hangs over the landscape. Out on the flats, fishermen dig for worms and crabs. Gulls cluster on the rocks and forage at the edge of the tide. Great hulks of driftwood are like giants’ bodies lounging on the sand. Someone has left flowers beside a driftwood memorial. Slightly upriver, an enormous cruise ship looms over the marina. It would usually be sailing the Mediterranean or the Caribbean, but it is waiting for the moment it can cruise again. In the meantime, 3,000 passenger cabins stand empty. One of the crew jogs back and forth along a deck below the many balconies.

It is my fiftieth birthday. I tremble on the edge of another decade. There’s a kind of excitement at reaching this age and wondering what the future might bring. I know that I have most likely lived longer than the years I have left but I don’t regret that. My concern is only how best to use it. Memories flash through my head unbidden, often from the earliest of years, and remind me that I wouldn’t wish to be young again – not for a minute. I look forward to seeing how I will grow into elderhood. My mind is full of dreams and plans, including all the creations yet to come. Life has a habit of surprising us, and as I stand on another threshold, I feel that tremble of excitement about what is to come.

Imagining

The first brave crocuses have broken through muddy grass. Small lilac spears that look too fragile to live. There is a shift in the light and birds are more visible. The sparrows squabble again in the privet at the end of the road. Blackbirds strut beneath the hedges in the park. A young birch has been planted in memoriam of a lost brother. Trees nurse new buds on spindly fingers.

Candlemas day is grey. Heavy sleet and rain drown any hint of spring. I spend the day at my desk, working, watching the rain batter the window. Folklore says that if this day is wintry, it means winter has ended. That will prove not to be true. In the following week the wind, rain and sleet hardly stop. Soon, we get the snow-fall that has eluded us this far.

Candlemas is for dreaming of new beginnings. It is for hope in the face of uncertainty, because we aren’t yet sure that spring will come. The land is still covered in snow, ice or mud and we can’t yet guess what it will sprout. We can only look at the world with the innocence and wonder of a child and envision what it could be. This year many of us are weary, not only of the privations of winter, but of the curtailment of freedoms and the shrinking of our world. There is hope that things may move towards some kind of normal, some time this year, but we don’t know what that normal will be. If ever there was a need to imagine a new world, it is now.

A week after Candlemas and the snow begins with drifts of tiny spheres. What it lacks in size, it makes up for in noise: like pebbles flung at the windows. It leaves a dusting on the roofs and pavements that don’t get the morning sun. The air is freezing. The fire is on and we bundle ourselves up again. By afternoon, it is icy underfoot. There are wispy showers all day – and some heavy ones – but it isn’t until night that the silent, heavy snow falls.

I wake to snow that is deep enough to creak when I walk on it. There are already early footprints on the pavement. I follow them to the park, where parallel tracks of foot and paw let me know that someone has been here before us. A thrush is singing and there are soft, musical calls echoing in the silence. The sky is filled with drama. Clouds of dark grey and clouds of vivid orange. Full-bodied violet puffs and airbrushed smears. I can hear the distant cries of gulls. A crow takes a bath, tunnelling its beak and body through the snow. Throughout the day snow flurries turn the sky from blue to grey.

Recently, I’ve been drawn to painting wintry scenes, but on the evening before the snow came, I felt a shift towards spring. I spent a few hours submitting short stories for the first time since last summer. New – and old – writing ideas have begun to tickle at the edge of my imagination. I wonder what my new world will be like? More movement…more writing….more art….It isn’t yet clear. It’s not yet time to throw off the blanket of winter. I’ve heard the whisper of spring but I’ll sigh contentedly and turn over for another hour in bed. I have a little longer to dream about what my new reality will be.

For almost a week, the snow is enticing, but then it begins to turn to ice. It is hard to walk. I find a sparrow, dead on the pavement and I wonder if the cold killed it. It is a miserable day, with icy sleet and a biting wind. But it washes the ice away. The next day dawns bright and sunny as if the snow hadn’t come at all. Great tits trumpet from the trees. In the park, I look for those crocuses that had sprouted feebly just before the snow. They had sprouted at the promise of spring, only to be smothered in winter once more. But they are still there. Not only that, but there are more of them. Perhaps under the snow they imagined their way into being, but they are no longer fragile shoots, they have grown into flowers opening at the touch of the sun.

Stilled

It seems we are in the still of the storms. For three days there is rain, lots of rain. It is steadfast and soft. I still walk in it, past the greyed river and lush green gabion slopes. It gets me wet but not unpleasantly so. Elsewhere, rivers flood and snow falls, but here there is just the soft rain that fades away as quietly as it has come.

We walk out to the glitter of frost and the chatter of starlings on chimney pots. The sun is strong in a gentle sky. The land has been stilled in ice. Large puddles are opaque expanses of glass. Gutters have turned white. The pavement is crossed by frozen trails from the run-off of drainpipes. In the places that the sun hasn’t yet warmed, the ground is dusted white.

It’s Saturday and the streets are full of people. Older couples pass us on their way to and from the local vaccination centre. Young people congregate at the skate park. A queue of cars heads for the town centre. We move into the peace of the dene, where leaves look sugar-coated and the grass sparkles. Raspberry leaves are cross-hatched with ice crystals. Frozen puddles surround the roots of trees. Two tiny violets are vivid among the ivy.

Despite a chittering of tits in the trees. it seems like a birdless landscape. There are people: at least five family groups and a few lone dog walkers. It might be an ordinary day – not a day in lockdown. The pond is frozen. Children throw chunks of ice from the edge onto the middle, making loud clunks. It’s no wonder the ducks are hiding somewhere in the reeds. A huge cruise ship is moored at the marina, blocking the horizon. A man is training a new puppy on the grass.

The world of people rarely slows, even, it seems, when we have been told it should. I have come out today to rid myself of a week I’ve found particularly hard. To spend a few still moments with the earth, without having to think about that thing that consumes us all. There is the trickle of water in the burn. Daffodil shoots pushing through the frozen ground. A moorhen’s call and a pair of gliding crows. On our return home, we can hear the slow drip of frost melting, and some of the puddles have already thawed. The starlings are still chattering on the chimneys. Somewhere else the world is busy, but here the stillness lingers.