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.

Wrap

Each moment might be a moment of revelation, but most are not. Epiphanies. The sense of things being hidden rather than revealed, as if they were presents with almost recognisable shapes, wrapped in enticing paper. But you can't quite recognise them, and you can't unwrap them - tantalising, out of reach.

The repetition of dates, months, seasons. Every year has its 30th of December, and every year it's dark at 4.30 and there's always a Christmas tree twinkling in a darkened room downstairs, when everyone is in other rooms.  The year is dying. Always at this time. So many other December 30ths underlay this one that it is hard to believe in its specific reality. It's a December 30th. But it's truly this December 30th. This one is a one-off, unique. This Christmas too, but Christmas is so overdetermined, it can never be just this Christmas. It comes with the massive pass the parcel weight of each year's wrapping paper - the music stops on December 25th, and you add another layer. 2011. So you can never remember what was inside the parcel, under all the paper - what Christmas was when it was new, unwrapped, naked.

Loose Ends

Picking up the year's loose ends and trying to tuck them in, or trace them back or trim them off. The fire is fierce and hot, and there are sensible jobs to be done as well as dreaming, reading, eating, walking. I take the pieces of paper out of my in-tray basket, one at a time, and consider them. There's nothing overdue or overlooked, and I can see where to put most of them away. Relief. Next the drawer that is my other in-tray!

Begin

Ooh err, suddenly I'm in the new look Blogger set-up. I may have tentatively clicked something, but I hadn't really contemplated such a big change. Yes, I am a creature of habit, fond of the familiar. Be still my racing heart, all is well...

Afternoon, just beginning to grow dark, though it has not been very light all day, mist and rain prevailing, warmer than recently, patches of snow and ice melting steadily in the downpour. The tops are no longer visible, a shroud of fog closing in just beyond the stand of poplars perhaps 100 yards away. A dog barks outside the post office, its voice deep, its tone agitated, fast, frequent barks of displeasure.

My intercostal muscles and diaphragm are tender from coughing. From time to time I misinterpret what I'm feeling as indigestion. This cold, or virus, or whatever it should properly be called, is a mean and moody shape-shifter, and is currently in the coughing and nose-blowing phase. I've run through nearly an entire box of balsam tissues enriched with soothing aloe vera. This phase also involves being awake from 3 or 4am. Tiring. I get up after a time, and make a fresh hot water bottle and a cup of camomile tea with honey, take them back to bed, read, and, if the cough will loosen its grip, eventually get some more sleep around 6 or 7. It's hard work, but I don't feel actually ill. I swear sometimes and grumble, and get exasperated when I knock my glass of water over, when reaching for the light. But I am not unhappy. No. Under the veil of this cold, I sense I am returning to myself, feel the stirrings of enormous energy and connection. I have a sense that at last, after a long time of feeling it was all over, I can begin (again). You wouldn't believe how many times I've written and rewritten the last two sentences. This is not easy to put into words...

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.