Coasting

Early March and curlews forage in the stubbled wheat field. We follow the road round to the island, past meadows dried to straw. The horizon opens out into big, bold clouds. On the headland, someone has left flowers at Curry’s Point, where the murderer Michael Curry was hung in a gibbet in 1739 for murdering the landlord of a local inn. We struggle past, through the wind down to the causeway.

On rocks green with gut weed, a black backed gull stalks. She picks out a crab from a rock pool. A crow, dwarfed by her size, follows her every move, hoping for a morsel. The sea is streaks of blue and aqua, fraying to grey and white at the edges. Far out, there is a blue ship. Behind the lighthouse, the turbines rotate on the horizon.

The beach is strewn with patches of small pebbles, bladderwrack and stems of kelp. A pied wagtail pecks among the seaweed. Gulls soar above the cliffs, revelling in the lift of the wind. A red container ship leaves Blyth port, sounding its horn to announce its passage. Winston plays with his ball for a while but then we walk up to the cliffs.

All is dry and bare on the cliff top. Spring is hardly noticeable here. There are two small patches of daffodils. Shrubs with fiery branches and lichen covered bark. A single wizened hawthorn is still laden with berries. Its companions in the hedgerows all bow inwards, grown in the direction of the wind. Just before we leave, a rainbow reaches out of the waves to embrace the lighthouse.

Later in the month, we walk high above the river. The sun is bright behind clouds and the light is exquisite: pale, soft and blurred. As the sun moves, it lights up the water like bouncing diamonds. The tide is in and the waves are rough. White spume fans over the piers and the deadly black midden rocks.

I walk Winston down a path lined with Alexanders, lime flowers against fresh green leaves. Smoke from a garden bonfire scents the path. The sound of the sea crescendos as we walk, until we pass under a sylvan arch and the mouth of the river is laid out before us. The lighthouse on the south pier is open to the elements, its top having been blown off in a storm last year and never found. Herd Groyne lighthouse glows crimson in the harbour. On the beach behind it, there appears to be a sand storm, waves of sand rolling like mist. To our left, Lord Collingwood gazes forever out to sea, canons poised beneath him, gull perched on his head.

Easter weekend. The equinox has just passed and tomorrow the clocks will be wound forward for spring. We join people down at the fish quay for the traditional Good Friday fish and chips. We are early and the queues still small, but they will get much longer as the day goes on. Spring is still settling into balance – sun and showers today, snow forecast for next week. The hedgerows are full of blackthorn blossom and I have seen a parakeet in the park, but there will be more storms before the season fully turns.

Stirring

Strings of crocuses herald Candlemas. Butter yellow globes and eerie lilac spears in the plant pots in front of the house, in the park, and along the roadside. They are still buds, closed up tight but ready to burst, brave signals of the season to come. On the eve of Candlemas the sky is aflame: indigo and lilac clouds against an azure sky, pink and orange stripes across the horizon.

At dawn, all that remains of the colour is a thick orange band across the horizon. In a sky of two halves, white clouds scud against blue to the north and a mass of grey veils the south. There is a stillness within the whipping wind that accords with the deep energy of Candlemas. It isn’t yet spring, but spring is stirring. Deep within the earth, transformation is afoot. The shoots and the catkins and the baby leaves give something away, but for now the earth holds onto her mysteries.

The blossom tree that toppled in a storm two years ago is still alive, lying on its side. A small flock of wood pigeons forage on the grass before it. Another of the fallen has been denuded and bleached, but is a skeletal limb on the ground. The landscape seems to be a tangle of ivy, its berries mostly eaten.

At the creek, a group of long-tailed tits bounce over the path from one tree to another, calling softly. The burn is low and still. A robin sings from high up in the canopy. A pair of mallards float quietly on the small weed-choked pond. Six magpies squabble on the grass and a seagull soars on the wind high above. The reeds that line the burn have all been scythed, I think because they were being set on fire by local ruffians. A few marsh marigold flowers are vivid yellow splashes in the stream. 

Mahonia blooms at the edge of the pond. The daffodil shoots are out but there is no hint of any flowers yet. Mallards float languidly and a couple of black headed gulls swoop in. Moorhens flute softly from the reeds. A pair of mallards bob heads in unison. A heron is hunched on the edge of the reeds, back turned to the pond and head under his wing. 

It has been too long since I came to the dene, but the signs of the season are much as always, re-assuring me that some things don’t change. I am trying to re-set myself. After months lacking motivation, staying out of the world and not paying attention, I hope this walk will stir something in me, re-awaken the creative spirit. It is a quiet start, but an intentional one. In the coming days, I will watch the crocuses unfurl their tiny splendours, listen to a robin sing his heart out in a tree of catkins and spot my first ever redwing. The earth is awakening and so am I.

Melting

On the hottest day of the year, I take a morning walk through the forest. The chalk and gravel path is dusty and speaks of sun and heat to come. I wander a curved path through the meadow, bristling with the dark heads of old thistles and pale grasses. Most of the flowers are gone and it is the webs that offer adornment. Particularly at this time of the morning, when the sun is still on its golden climb and there is moisture left in the ground. Orbs as big as dinner plates and close knit triangles, like hammocks on the grass. When you notice one, you see them all.

I cross the bridge over a trickling stream. There is nobody else in the forest. I am accompanied by the soft songs of birds, the gentle buzz of bee and fly, the silent dance of butterflies across dappled light. Through plantations of conifers brooding over the path. Past familiar landmarks, like the gate that leads nowhere and the valley strung with telegraph poles and wires. Delicate heather is in flower, and I find a blooming of fungi, despite the dry conditions. A huge area of forest has been cleared, opening a shattered vista that is being colonised by new growth and more webs. I cross the stream again, past a rowan flaming with berries, back to the meadow. I’m tired and hot already. Back in the cabin, we close the heavy curtains and retreat indoors.

It is early September. We had hoped for autumn. Days cool for walking, nights chill enough to light the log burner. When we heard the forecasts, we assumed there would be a few hot days at the beginning of the week, before the season felt more like it should. But the heat hasn’t broken. Despite the shade of the forest, it has been too hot to walk. Winston manages a short wander before he is panting and wobbly. We stay close to the cabin, embraced by oak, pine, birch and ash. Ivy hugs the trunks of the trees. Pine needles flutter onto the deck. We’re visited by mobs of blue, great and coal tits, a shy and ragged robin, a few chaffinches, blackbirds and a nuthatch. A treecreeper spirals up and down the trees and a woodpecker taps softly on a nearby trunk. For the first time, I hear the mew of a buzzard. It reminds me of a score of movies in which a hawk’s cry is a symbol of the unforgiving desert. I watch as a pair glide over the canopy. It seems appropriate.

A grey squirrel is like a noisy delinquent: rustling foliage, cracking seeds, dropping things onto the metal roof. He feasts on acorns and blackberries, topped up by bird food he munches while defiantly watching us. This may or may not be Steve, rescued as a baby by the site manager and named before they knew he was a she. S/he seems content to spend the day leaping between the small cluster of trees that surround us. For an hour or so in the early afternoon, we cross to the site café to have a drink in air-conditioned comfort and watch a plethora of red admirals drink from the buddleia outside. As the sun sinks, the swallows and swifts appear, high up above the trees, dancing across the sky after the midges.

That night lightning darts across the sky. There is no thunder. No rain. Just the light. Flashes faint and bright, silhouetting the trees, as though a silent piece of music is being conducted across the sky. It is the following night when bass and percussion arrive. Rain batters the leaves, like the fall and rise of applause. Thunder booms and grumbles. For hours, we’re mesmerised by the storm. It is a gloriously rowdy end to the heatwave.

We leave the forest before dawn. The paths are muddy and the landscape infused with fog. The woods appear sickly green in the headlights. A toad crawls across the road like an alien. As we leave the trees behind, the fields are spectral with mist. A sliver of moon and Venus are bright in a pastel sky. In my pocket is an acorn, a gift left on the deck by Steve or perhaps the tree itself, a reminder that the dark half of the year has arrived, but that it holds the promise of growth within it. On this enchanted morning I can believe in the possibility of autumn and all it will bring.

Soaked

After weeks of storm warnings that came to nothing, a good old-fashioned thunderstorm arrives. Gentle at first, the thunder builds to a loud grumble that doesn’t stop. It booms and bangs, cracks and rumbles. Rain pours, rattling against the windows, stotting off the pavements. The road is replaced by a river, drops of water bouncing off its surface like miniature silver spinning tops. Lightning comes in constant flashes. There is no gap between lightning and thunder that might hint at how long the storm will last. Everything is happening at once. Until suddenly it ends. I take Winston for his walk in a dripping world, but as we return, the rain is starting again and the sky moans once more.

A couple of days later, the storm is long gone, though the wind blows and the sky still stirs with moody clouds. The rain is distant, visible in dark stripes out at sea beyond the wind turbines. There is a clarity in the light that brings out the colours. The sea is blue and green and grey. The sky is a thick stripe of blue topped by blue grey swirls of clouds. It feels like there could be a storm, but it stays out at sea.

In the car park, starlings gather. The adults look at their best, with glossy, multi-coloured feathers and bright points of white. They look for titbits, swarming around cars, hopping onto the grass, or finding a random spot from which to observe us. The clifftops are crisp and straw-coloured, dried grasses woven with brighter patches of ragwort and lady’s bedstraw. Willowherb, cornflowers and knapweed offer accents of purple.

A reef stretches out from the headland, like a zig zag path to a red ship out at sea. The ship is bathed by the sun, as though surrounded by a circle of warm light. Then, the sunlight disappears and it is lost in streaks of rain on the horizon. It is low tide. Scores of seaweed-clad rocks are unveiled. A line of people walk across the causeway to the lighthouse. Children shout and run on the small beach. We walk down to the sand but it’s too hot for Winston to run around. Instead, we sit on one of the memorial benches that snake along the cliff top. Two starlings instantly appear. My wife gives them snacks, while Winston has a few treats of his own.

July has brought extreme heat and wildfires in Europe and elsewhere. It may prove to be the hottest on record. These extreme summers are already becoming the norm. But the jet stream has been keeping that unbearable heat away from us. Our July has been one of our wettest and I’m grateful for that. The month ends with a glowering sky, a day of rain and the promise of more to come.

Abundance

On a Sunday morning during a bank holiday weekend, the cemetery hums with life. There are no funerals today. The crematorium is locked and empty. Few people attend to graves. The atmosphere is light-hearted. Though the sky is grey, a warm breeze tickles my skin. Dogs frolic, families walk and ride bikes.

Cow parsley adds to the light atmosphere: an effervescent cloud of delicate white, accented by bluebells. Here and there buttercups offer a scattering of vibrant yellow, campion an accent of magenta. Graceful cuckoo flowers almost fade into the background. The horse chestnuts still bear cones of flowers and elder are just beginning to bloom, but it is the hawthorn that is heavy with blossom. An angel bears a fading bouquet, face shrouded with spiders’ webs.

The birds are busy with hidden tasks. I hear the blackbirds’ loud song and the cackle of crows. A crow swoops out of the trees and perches on top of a grave. A few wood pigeons quietly forage. A blackbird bursts out of the bushes with an alarm call. Eventually the sun comes out and the tiny creatures appear: a bumblebee drowses around a grave and flies polka-dot the air before me.

Later in the month, I wander the country park and the wagonway. Ox-eye daisies sway in the hedgerows and yellow flag are golden-tipped spears among the pond reeds. Buttercups and viper’s bugloss pepper the gravelly heathland. Winged creatures are a-flight. A small white butterfly settles on a sun-bathed leaf. Insects with gossamer wings dance over the pond. Damselflies are everywhere, the males electric blue darts. I peer into the reeds, trying to capture one on film, until a grumpy moorhen complains. There are probably chicks among the reeds, so I back off.

The wagonway is a vein of green. Lush foliage hasn’t yet produced blossom, except for the shock of the hawthorns. The butterburr flowers are long gone, making way for a primeval leaf-scape of huge, tough leaves. Nettles and brambles tangle in the undergrowth. Tadpoles gather in a pond that is little more than a puddle. I find a long stretch of strawberry plants in the middle of the path, all in flower, a bountiful larder for later in the summer.

The gabion baskets near the river, shoring up the embankment, burst with pink valerian, red poppies, blue viper’s bugloss and more. In the park, the wildflower meadow has exploded. The area is waist high and vibrant with flowers in red, white and blue. Nearby, a wall of ladybirds shed their orange and black larval skin.

But the landscape wilts in the face of a heatwave and a lack of rain. The weather is hotter than normal and uncomfortably humid. We wait for storms that don’t come. When they do, thunder only grumbles in the distance, but the rain gushes in heavy showers that feel like blessings. The summer solstice arrives amid all this abundance, a celebration of the sun as it’s power begins to subside. There is usually a point near midsummer, when I feel the faintest hint of autumn in the air. Perhaps it is a reaction to the now-diminishing light, perhaps something else, but it always gives me a leap of excitement, before I realise that the bulk of the summer is still to come. There is more abundance to be enjoyed. Whites and yellows will give way to purples, thistledown will cloud the air, foliage will become straggly and overblown as nature’s kaleidoscope continues.

Travelling

As we leave civilisation behind and move onto small winding roads, pools of white shimmer and multiply. It is early March and it is our first trip since the pandemic, more than three years since we packed up the car and left for elsewhere. Rain hits the windscreen in fat blotches, blurring the way ahead. We pass through lanes of green and brown: muddy edges and meandering curves, trickling burns and pasture. And everywhere the white of snowdrops; tufts and clumps and rivers of them, luminous against the sepia and grey background. I have never seen so many.

We stay in an old Gamekeeper’s cottage on the edge of a tiny hamlet. It is golden stone and sash windows, flagstone floors and chintz, vintage furniture and latched wooden doors. It is the crackle of coal and logs shifting in a stone fireplace. Lanes edged in copper beech. Dry stone walls cushioned by moss. Damp, muddy tracks and fallen pine needles. The muffled boom of artillery from the military ranges nearby. It is too dark that first night. I fear not being able to see anything around me so I leave a porch light on to relieve the darkness. But in the early hours I’m woken by a strange noise. The darkness is thick, with no friendly light to re-assure me. I get up, confused, using my phone for illumination, trying light switches. I can only conclude that it’s a power cut, but it seems somehow sinister on this our first night. I sleep fitfully.

The hill broods over the landscape. Flat-topped with a bite taken out of one side, it dominates the southern horizon. It is visible from every viewpoint. Sometimes it becomes lost in mist and cloud, but it is still there, ready to re-emerge, a dark shadow in the distance. Clad in heather and pines, mostly it is an ebony silhouette, sometimes a patchwork of mauve and green. This is a magic hill, a place of bronze age burial tombs, cairns and rock carvings; a home to fey folk and dwarves who lure unwary travellers to their death. We have approached its flanks before, seeking cup and ring marked boulders and the impression of ancient hill forts.

We fill up the empty bird feeders in the garden and the songbirds come. Robin, blackbird, chaffinch, goldfinch, tits. They flutter between the beech hedge and a rhododendron and empty the feeders in a few short hours. Copper beech leaves twirl and helicopter in the wind. A pair of thrushes scuttle in the leaf litter. Every evening, rooks fly over towards nearby rookeries, raucously calling. Every morning, they pass again at the start of their day. At dawn the sun glows above the hills. At night Orion shimmers in the darkness.

There are many paths to explore. We skirt the edge of a ploughed field, wander lanes between farm buildings and pasture. A small copse of pines leads us past a lake of snowdrops and a pink child’s dressing table discarded among the roots of a tree. We wander a grassed path bouncy with disuse. Sheep chuckle in the fields. Sometimes the wind follows us, rising to a roar that makes me think something is coming. We have struggled to settle here. Despite the welcoming cottage and quiet paths. Despite the pleasing landscape and the fluttering birds. We are glad to go at the end of the week and that makes me wonder if we will ever leave home again. On the way back, a hawk perched on the ground seems to look right at me and the rain starts to fall once more.

Two months later and white has retreated from the ground. We travel down the motorway for Winston’s hydrotherapy and yellow has taken over. Cowslips and primrose, as numerous as the snowdrops were, a few clumps of daffodil and shrubs of gorse. White has moved to the trees, trailing blossom.

Rolling

It is the last day of March, but it might just as easily be April Fool’s Day.  We leave the house in weather that is sunny and dry.  A five minute Metro ride later and the sky has darkened, gushing hail and snow.  It’s a short dash to the beach, where we take refuge under the canopy of the old watch house at the top of the cliffs.  Built in the 1800s for the life brigade to watch out for vessels in distress, it is an eccentric stone building with a clocktower and a tiled roof that curves downwards like a heavy brow.  We sit on an old bench, gazing out over a wild seascape as the life brigade volunteers would once have done.

A heavy black cloud above the horizon compresses the land.  The RNLI flag snaps and flutters in the wind.  A veil of sleet billows across the sand.  The sea is a dark grey doily edged in boiling white.  Waves spill onto the sand between the piers as the tide advances.  The beach is glassy wet and pimpled with worm casts.  Gulls gather at the edge of the tide.

A pair of women in wetsuits and bright swimming caps brave the water.  They whoop and yell.  The beach isn’t passable now, the tide has come in as far as the caves, cutting the sand in two.  Waves wash over the piers leaving foamy puddles.  Beyond, at Tynemouth, the waves leap the defences and form white clouds above the water.

We walk the steep bank down to the bay.  Sometimes the hail and sleet return, sometimes the wind whips the sand into a frenzy.  But I throw the ball for Winston and he retrieves it, oblivious to the storm.  We’re alone on the sand.  There is just us and those hollering women in the water, shouting with abandon.  We are in a cold, windswept and exhilarating bubble.

As we walk back up the bank, the women return to land.  They wrap themselves in towels and drink from flasks.  We share a smile as I walk past.  I had come to the sea expecting comfort and contemplation, but instead I got motion and energy, something I probably needed much more.

A month later I return to the sea.  The sky is pale blue and jostling with fluffy cloud.  An indigo stripe marks the horizon.  Large, slow waves roll in like a lullaby.  Sunlight catches the offshore turbines and the lighthouse.  The lifeboat chugs towards the river, funnelling water behind it.  A long dredger is moored down the coast. 

Today we are with a friend on her first break since the pandemic began.  We treat her to fish and chips and play two pence games in the amusements.  Before and after, we walk along the promenade, mesmerised by the incoming tide, listening to its song as it washes away any vestige of pandemic fear.  Today I had expected nothing from the sea but beauty, but instead it restores us, bringing renewal just in time for spring.

Broken

The first delicate greenery has appeared. Hawthorn leaves unfurl on slender branches. Fresh nettles and cow parsley push through the soil. Winston enjoys eating the surfeit of young cleavers. The ivy looks ragged and the majority of branches are still bare, but change is afoot.

We haven’t been to the dene since before the last few storms and we walk into a broken landscape. The fallen tree at the edge of the bowling green is still there, taped and coned off. But this is only the beginning. The already-damaged rowan near the entrance is a blasted trunk. A sycamore lies prone behind it, broken off at the base. A smaller tree lies to one side.

I notice that my favourite tree is in full blossom, but it doesn’t look quite right. When we get closer, I see that it too is broken. I’m devastated by the loss. It is the first tree to flower in the spring, with long tumbling blossoms trailing the ground. Another mature tree lies fallen near by, its limbs crusted in lichen. The wind has torn through the upper dene and left devastation behind it.

We walk under the bridge. Beyond, the dene is calm. The burn slowly trickles. I see occasional movement as small fish dart below the surface. A wood pigeon sits in a blackthorn tree, feeding on the buds. Daffodil shoots have appeared as usual beneath the two birches on the edge of the stream. A swathe of purple crocuses bloom in their spot at the end of the linden avenue. There are violets in the hedgerows and the daffodils by the pond are already in flower. Blackthorns are in blossom.

The pond is quiet. Two male mallards swim lethargically. A gull keeps pace with a mallard. A pair of crows forage at the edge. I can hear tits and a robin high up in the trees. But one of the weeping willows that fringe the pond is weeping a little too much. A break high up makes it lean closer to the water.

The trees aren’t the only things going into this spring a little more broken than they were two years ago. I struggle with a persistent low mood that I can’t shake off. Motivating myself to walk further than the park at the end of the road is hard. I tire of a routine that is little more than work and home and back again. And yet bad news stories of war, soaring prices and poverty remind me how lucky I am.

Spring equinox is tricky. We’re propelled forward, from darkness into light, from lack into plenty, trying to find our balance while losing an hour on the way. I always forget how unsettling this turning can be. The equinox brings bees and celandine. It brings gentle mists and grass shimmering with diamonds of melted frost. Seagulls canoodling on chimneys and great tits fluting their call in the canopy. A mini-forest of saplings planted in the park. It brings light, tickling my eyes as I lie in bed, calling me to get up and enjoy the day. I follow its call.

The end of winter

Starlings seep and hiss from the chimneys. The sun is blinding, low in a blue sky, clouds just a white tinge at the horizon. We haven’t had rain for a while so the fallen leaves crisp as we walk. They are mostly a uniform dark brown now, clumping together in a soggy pulp in damp weather. Tree skeletons and holly leaves catch the sun. Cow parsley leaves push through the mulch. In the short cut that leads to the dene, a tree has been doctored, a cut branch now in logs beneath it. Rubbish has been cleared from around its base and the umbrella that has been there for years, filling up with leaves or snow through the seasons, is gone.

It is almost Candlemas. Another turn in the year, when the first fragile signs of spring appear. Usually I’m ready for the change, but this year winter has barely graced us with her presence. The old crone of the season has wrapped her furs around herself and decided to stay underground, occasionally sending out a few fingers of frost just to remind us she exists. I have hardly worn the warm coat I bought for the season. The frosts have been few and far between. Bulbs began sprouting in December and the birds have been calling loudly. Experts say we may have to say goodbye to winter as the climate warms, and the changing winter is already affecting wildlife.

A robin sings a delicate song. Blue tits chitter and flit between the trees. Two magpies clash over an old nest. A tree has fallen at the side of the bowling green. It is balanced on the fence, roots in the air and branches reaching for the green. The disarray of winter remains: shrivelled berries, ragged leaves, a handful of stinking Iris seeds in their pods. Somehow I had expected more signs of spring, given the lack of winter, but the spring flowers remain firmly beneath the soil and the trees are still naked.

The reeds are spun gold. Skinny fingers of willow drape the pond. It is full of activity. A flock of black-headed gulls roams between water and grass. Mobs of mallard drakes gather around the hens. A moorhen chases another, channelling water across the pond. The air is full of the gentle quacking of the ducks and the low cries of the gulls. People and dogs wander the paths and feed the birds. This is not a winter’s day as we know it.

A few days after Candlemas, winter pays a visit. The old crone whips up a storm of freezing wind, rain and sleet. But it all seems too little too late. In just a few days, signs of spring have appeared. A single pink cyclamen flower brightens the rubble of a wall collapsed by Storm Arwen. Crocuses sprout like small cups of honey and I see my first daffodil. I can’t be sad that spring has arrived, but I am sad for the season lost.

By late February there have been five named storms. Some unlucky areas suffer flooding and power cuts, a few have snow, but there is no retreat from spring. We walk through the cemetery at the tail end of Storm Franklin, the wind a soft roar through the trees. The grounds are full of windfallen trees, large and small. Chaffinches hop among grounded branches. Magpies squabble high up in those still standing. But mostly the birds offer a muted soundscape, as though cowed by the wind.

The light swings between sunshine and gloom. Rain is in the air; later it will rain all night. I hunt for hibernating ladybirds. Since Bug Woman wrote that they like to huddle on grave stones I have looked for them. I’m delighted to find some harlequins huddled in a crease of stone and orange ladybirds tucked into weathered letters.

But here, spring means snowdrops. Enclosed by graves, blanketing the ground under the trees, sprouting in small clumps and shimmering rivers. There are a few purple and yellow crocuses, but they can’t compete with the sheer volume of snowdrops. Luminous and almost transparent when the sun catches them, they are like pools of light. A stone angel boasts a bouquet, but snowdrops quietly adorn the home-made cross left for ‘Joe’. There is no doubt here that spring has arrived. There will be more storms to come. And more uncertainty. We wake the next morning to war in Europe and wonder, yet again, what the future will bring. All we can be certain of is that winter has ended and spring will always come.

Disrupting

As twilight comes, the street lamp across the street begins to sway back and forth. The trees begin to dance. A storm of leaves and dust are swept up into the air, swirling past my first floor office window, occasionally slapping the glass. Biting sleet accompanies me on the walk home. Storm Arwen has brought a rare ‘red’ weather warning, advising of potential loss of life due to flying debris. We are told to stay away from the coast and not to travel if we can avoid it. All night the wind roars. There are occasional bangs and crashes. But we are lucky, with no more than a few overturned things in the yard. A buddleia has swept out of a neighbour’s yard into the lane. A yard wall has collapsed across the road. In the park, a tree sized bough of the poplar has sheared off and now balances in the canopy. Pavements are heaped with golden leaves, twigs and red berries, like seasonal offerings. That afternoon, wind is replaced by snow – the first of the winter – a light dusting that soon turns to ice.

In these dark days of winter, routine lies heavily on my shoulders. I struggle out of bed in darkness to the daily routines of washing, dressing, breakfast. It is just getting light when I take Winston for his walk and on our return I go to the library, where the daily routines of work begin. The storm is a welcome distraction for me, after the third warmest autumn on record and settled weather, but not for those deprived of power for weeks to come. Now the landscape is damp. Soggy leaves. Twigs and branches vivid with lichen. The damp accentuates the colours: vibrant greens of ivies and ferns, rich browns of leaves and bark. The trees are suddenly leafless, but a party of wood pigeons has found something to feed on, on an evergreen across the railway tracks. Hidden sparrows chirp in the privet, starlings call from the trees above.

Mid month there is another break to routine. l have a meeting at headquarters which means a sunrise visit to the country park across the road. By the time I arrive, the sky has already blushed orange and subsided to a subtle blue. The sun is a molten semi-circle, just peeping over the horizon. The landscape is dull and water-logged. Clumps of drooping brown grass, mud stippled with paw prints, spongy patches of moss. A few stubborn leaves cling to bare stems. I hear a plaintive seep now and again, but the birds are well hidden, until a trio of goldfinches flutter overhead.

Gorse leads me up to the sundial, spiky green stems that give no hint of their luminosity in other seasons. I have to shield my eyes when I reach the top of the hill. The sun is almost a complete circle now, breathing fire. There is a hint of orange to the gnomon, the shadow of a bench crossing it. The sundial has been painted and cleaned. It will be part of a new memorial to those lost to the pandemic, linking art works at the four compass points along what were once waggon ways crossing the borough.

I hear robins singing. To north and west, the distant hills are layered with mist. The sun begins to catch the landscape, turning sea and clouds to pastels. The ferry is on its way into port from Amsterdam and the sun lights it pale orange. A metro crossing the fields reflects copper. There is now a dividing line in the park. Below it, the trees remain a dull brown, but above it, they glow bronze.

I walk down to the pond, past wild carrot nests and alders studded with cones. Guelder rose berries and rosehips gleam at the edge of the water. Mallards, moorhens and a tufted duck float on a pond that reflects the sunrise reflected from the surrounding buildings.

Later that day, there is unanticipated news. My story ‘The Muse’ has been published by Toasted Cheese Literary Magazine. Inspired by stories of foundlings, it is a story about identity, that you can read HERE. I also get some more great feedback from an assessment of my novel. In these last days of December, my routine is being disrupted in the best of ways. There will be many more dark, dispiriting days before spring but I hope for a touch of the unexpected to spur me through them.