Tuesday

Sunrise: 7:52am

The weather is furious, hurling rain at windows and roaring into the sky. The whole house shakes with it, dreams are shaped by it, windows rattle and I can’t wait for it to end.

On the station platform I join the rest of the commuters huddled into coats and puffer jackets. We all face the same direction and brace ourselves against it. It’s dark, almost an hour until sunrise. The information board lists all the closed tube lines like a rebuke: why didn’t you leave earlier? What will you do now? Joke’s on them. We all know I’ll get the bus.

From the train, orange rectangles hover in the dark as curtains open on the new day. At London Bridge I’m 42nd in a moving queue which spans the station front. I take a seat upstairs as the bus moves off, and stops abruptly at the lights. Tis the season! The whole bus shimmers red, as the light hits the condensation covering the windows. No one has wiped a hole to look out and we’re wrapped in a glowing red cocoon.

Wednesday

Sunrise: 7:53am

A bright moon casts the same white light as these LED streetlights and the birds are singing for the sun. It feels like forever since I walked to the wood, less like a habit now and more like eccentricity or extravagance. In gardens and porches Christmas lights fight a stylistic battle: warm orange VS icy white. These days I favour icy white – winter isn’t what it was and I miss walking outside in thick frost or snow. Perhaps it’s coming?

In the wood there’s a throaty song thrush. I hold my phone up for longer than necessary because I can’t believe this is what a song thrush sounds like. The app confirms it but I assumed it would sound sweeter. It sounds like a bird with a cold.

More trees have fallen since I was here last. Roots weakened by the rain and trunks finally felled by the winds. It’s a big change, actually. So much open sky. I squelch along the path between the fields and two panicking pheasants struggle skywards. In the hedgerows the ivy is thick with berries.

On the way out of the wood there’s a dog walker I haven’t seen in ages. “Morning! It’s not raining!…Digbyyyyyyy!” Digby the dog makes a run for it.

Above the trees a flock of birds floats on the breeze. It takes a while to realise they’re seagulls – we’re 50 miles from the coast. I look for Jonathan, but if he’s there, he’s travelling alone together.

Back on the street the Christmas lights are off and the moon sees me home.

Other things

• Busy few weeks – worked late / worked through my day off
• The first crocus bulb has popped up. Other spring bulbs are popping up too, but the crocus is easiest to identify.
• Tom Whitwell has published his52 things he learned in 2025.
• From elsewhere I learned about thecool S. I can’t stop thinking about it, actually. Aside from anything else, it’s called the cool S. I mean, c’mon. No one knows where it came from,apparently.
• This articleabout blogging is nice. It has shades of this article abouta blog post being a complex search query.
• I found the link about blogging after reading this, on the same site:my website is a shifting house next to a river of knowledge. what could yours be?
• Dan’spost about Dithering (in the sense of shading) was super interesting, especially for me, an occasional print designer and pixel illustrator.
• Technically speaking, I’ve got next week off.