Holly

We walked down the frozen field, the sky birthday blue, to a holly bush near a stile, sheep gathering on the ridge almost yellow in the angled light. Each with a pair of secateurs, we cut sprigs of holly heavy with red berries in great clusters, filled our two supermarket bags. Glad, we walked up the next field, singing deck the halls and talking about being jolly, jollity, jollification...

And on the way back over the cobbles near Mitchell Brothers Mill, having taken L's word that it really wasn't slippery, my feet suddenly slid away from under me, and somehow, through sheer instinct and the miracle of semicircular canals, and a measure of luck, I managed to stay upright, walking on laughing, my legs shaking, my stomach newly turned.

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.

Sleep, Tom, Signs

My throat hurt indescribably for less than 24 hours, then I slept about 15 out of the next 24. Now a bit snuffly, a bit tired, but sort of ok. I liked having permission to spend a lot of time in bed, and let go some of the activity of the week. This on the back of a challenging visit to my mother's.

On the way home on the train, in ecstasy listening to Tom Waits' Real Gone on the MP3

I'm gonna take the sins of my father

I'm gonna take the sins of my mother

I'm gonna take the sins of my brother

down to the pond

I'm gonna wash them...

til the water runs clear

Driving home in the near dark today, a red temporary traffic light shines out, above a red sign with white lettering saying when red light shows wait here, and one of those white arrows on a blue background to tell you to go round the obstacle not plough straight into it. Reflecting the red of the traffic light. The wet road, the stillness of stopping after hurtling along, and these traffic signs shining out their meanings to whoever happens to be there to see them. Something about that blue and that red that excite me today exactly as they did as a child being driven at night, or on winter's afternoons.

Who Needs TV?

The wood burner ticks intermittently as it heats up, and now begins to cool again, as I let it go for the night. I am learning its voice, its needs, its ways. I stare for long minutes into the silvered glow of the consuming logs, breaking down into cuboid glowing chunks of fire red fire orange. Something almost tactile in the pleasure of looking, alongside the frightening knowledge of the harm touching would do. Flames lick upwards.

Outside snow.

Uneasing

I learned of yet another death today - a woman I knew from the Sacred Song group I go to once a month, died of cancer in November. I hadn't known. We sang and remembered her gently. She leaves a stroke-affected wheelchair-bound husband. What with the old school friend's brother, two friends' fathers, one friend's mother, a colleague's husband and a friend's grandchild (a late miscarriage), this feels like the greatest concentration of deaths in one short period I can ever remember, albeit none of them affecting me immediately. Uneasing, and I dreamed the school friend's brother was murdered and last night that bears came in and were trying to maul L, until someone shot one of them dead, a scarlet hole in its furry breast.

Ugly

There's so much more, there's so much more, there's really so much more.

Wild west wind blowing down the stony ear of the chimney and no-one can relax

and no-one can spell no-one, and the fire is burning hot hot hot

(the Stovax stove pipe thermometer said so). So much more.

Chocolate advent calendar and a newly converted attic room

and my friend is home from seeing her father out of this world,

her cat is tracking her closely to ensure she doesn't leave again.

When can I retire, oh maybe never maybe not ever, maybe just die.

A little power monitor tells me how much electricity we are swallowing

up, and my oh my how the year flies to its end, how it dies how it leaves.

A boy I knew, not now a boy, a man in his fifties is dead dead dead

and what I remember about him is he was my beautiful friend's boyfriend,

he was a mechanic, he had eyes like the sea and waves in his hair,

and he drove a Citroen Diane, yellow, known as the flying banana

goodbye S, rest in peace. I dreamed you were murdered, I hope not so.

Death pressing its ugly face up at the window this month, last month

and Christmas coming.

World AIDS Day

Not usually a campaigning blog, but hey, there are no rules. Today is World AIDS Day and if, like me, you were under the misapprehension that AIDS is all under control now, or there is no longer a stigma attached to being HIV+ please visit the website and raise your awareness.