Bob Barks

It was a false dawn, the virus had not finished with me and now here I am in pyjamas with an intermittently functional voice, and a head heavy with cold. And yet and yet... this week I have felt the stirrings of a kind of ecstasy in being alive that I had, I think this is true, forgotten.

Bob, the dog next door, barks. There is mist over the tops, and a delicate dusting (I can think of no other word) of snow over the higher fields, like icing sugar on a cake, the green still entirely visible, its tone muted. Every now and then, a snowflake falls slowly past the window. They have the look of the seeds of willow herb in early autumn, floating and unhurried.

I am 'off sick', officially excused from all activity today. And L is on her way down to London for a retirement party at the school where she used to work. In a sense it's the retirement party she never had, the collapsed school where she ended her career unable to celebrate and honour her as she deserved. A travesty. So, I am alone, and enjoying the warm house, my pyjamas, lots of tea, and the freedom to return to bed for a spell later on if I feel like it.