Blackbird

From the window I watch a blackbird drink from next door's pond, dip its bright orange beak into the water, then tilt its head back.

Beck

I stand between the beck and another small stream, its tributary, which comes cascading down to meet it. My ears fill with the sound of fast-moving water over stone.

Play

A small boy presents me with a red balloon, invites me in his own language, to play.

Steam

Steam from a condensing boiler blows out of the side of a house on the bend in the road, makes a swirling white cloud which I drive through.

Tent

Through the train window I see a man emerge from a tiny black tent pitched on a muddy patch of grass in the shadow of a tower block.

Hair

The hair fairy came with clippers and scissors and mirror, her own hair bleached blonde and standing up in a mild version of a Mohican. My hair in drifts on the red kitchen floor.

8.10

From up on the Heights Road I look down into the valley, see a string of tiny cars on the A646, their red tail lights like shiny beads.

Fog

The beam of the right headlight bends in the grey white fog. I see people standing at the top of the lane who are not there, who are in fact a signpost and a stone gatepost.

Blood

Last night I dreamed that Bruce Forsyth was, with some difficulty, taking a blood sample from the fourth toe on my left foot.

Squash

Butternut squash cut into sections, the pale luminous orange flesh, the creamy seeds in the middle caught in a mesh of slightly darker orange fibres.

Slap

The wind pushes me along, almost knocks me over. I stand still for a moment or as still as it allows. Turning down the lane, it is suddenly blowing full in my face, a cold wet slap, numbing my cheeks, making my eyes water.

7.16

Sudden loud birdsong, and I'm cold now as I stand on platform 2 and await news of my delayed train, imagining not going to Leeds at all today, the sky growing light.

Buckets

Rattling sound as of buckets of dried peas hurled at the window. I pull back the curtain to look, and hail is falling hard, whitening the road, covering the cars.

Silence

11.20 - the bell rings and suddenly there is absolute silence around the school. You feel it as an absence in your ears. For a minute everything stops, and it is as if everyone has left. 11.21 - the bell rings again and at once the school is filled with the rumbling from above and below and from all sides, of feet on floors, chairs hitting metal table legs, voices high and low.

Adjust

Astonished by the difference between his appearance and the way I had imagined him from his voice on the phone, I take a few moments to adjust and accept that voice and person belong together.

Ice

Underneath a patch of thick ice on the lane, thawing slowly at the edges, melt-water trickles downhill, makes dark shapes that wiggle through narrow spaces in the ice, like tadpoles in constant motion.

Frozen

The ground is frozen hard, all the muddy puddles now solid and rutted. The trees are startling white with hoar frost, and icicles longer and thicker than fingers hang in crannies alongside the river.

Glass

The brilliant morning sunlight is projecting the deep blue diamond of a stained glass window panel onto the wall, where it floats with its little yellow art nouveau tulip design.

Frost

Frost today, still white-edging blades of grass with tiny crystals in the early afternoon, thin ice on some of the dark puddles on the tops.

Rocket

In the sunshine I bend to pick rocket from the raised bed, nipping the leaves with my thumbnail, the peppery green smell rising. I hold the large bundle of collected leaves in my left hand.

Joyful

Forty women learn and sing a four part Shona song of welcome. Joyful, my tiredness melts as the whole room resonates.

Crawling

I find myself snarled up in rush-hour traffic, stop-start, looking at the red brake lights of the car in front, the moisture streaming down its body. I am curious, dispassionate.

Moon II

The moon is now full and bright, high up in a clear sky, and I crane my neck to see it on my right as I drive home up the hill this evening, reminding myself that, although beautiful, it isn't worth having an accident for.

New

My friends have had their kitchen redecorated in delicious shades of red and orange, and everything seems new to me. You didn't have this before did you? This is new isn't it? The table didn't used to be this way round did it? I ask, and then spot and enquire about a slim pine cupboard, whose narrow doors H opens to reveal shelves filled with jars of home-made jams and preserves.

Tree

In the car the pungent resinous smell of Norway spruce accompanies us as we drive to buy kindling, wool and a tarpaulin. In the back the dismembered Christmas tree, branches collected in a blue IKEA bag, the trunk a sad amputee, awaits delivery to the green waste skip at the tip.

Sky

The sky this morning is palest blue washed over with the pink of the rising sun - the result a delicate shade of violet behind the dark weave of bare trees.

Windbreak

Filling up the car's screen-wash, two litres mixed up in tall green plastic mineral water bottles. I tip the bottle carefully over the hole it goes in, and begin to pour, but the wind catches the narrow twisting column of water and begins to blow it anywhere but into the tank. L stands in the wind's path, and I can finish the job.

Feet

My feet are warm inside my socks, inside my new slippers. My heels and the balls of my feet make the strongest contact, through these layers, with the softness of carpet, the hardness of floorboards beneath - hot-spots of sensation.

Wind

We set out in wellies, hats, scarves, gloves and waterproofs, leaning forward as the wind crashes into us headlong. It is hard to keep moving forward, and hard to hear anything but its roar in our ears. My eyes water, blurring my vision.

Moon

I stand on the doorstep in the dark, looking up to the south where a bright half moon shines, haloed with a breath of palest yellow. An aeroplane climbing from the east leaves a grey vapour trail just above a very bright star.

Down

The rain is flowing down the road like a shallow river, over its tarmac bed. Arcs of spray shoot upwards beside the car. The water fans out and flows fish-scaled down the little lane. We roll down together.