Friday

The honour crimes campaigner Jasvinder Sanghera has just been talking on Desert Island Discs about her life and her relationship with/estrangement from her family.  Extraordinary and moving, and I was caught up in her story of how fear and inflexibility can close hearts and what grace and forgiveness entail. Both, in their way, equally terrifying. She chose a couple of memorable tracks, too.  Losing My Religion by  REM and Moonshadow by Cat Stevens.  Blasts from the past.

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A chill wind still blows from the east, cutting through however many layers of clothing one happens to be wearing when venturing outside.  The birds seek shelter in the evergreen bush in the garden, only emerging for food when they must. Soup simmers in the stockpot in the kitchen and I have been comfortable in the armchair listening to the radio and admiring this week's daffodils in their vase.  After emotional storms yesterday, anxiety has retreated to low-tide level.  But it is lapping away on the horizon, too distant for me to hear this morning but I know it is there.  Ebb and flow. 

Survival

Running down. Tired. Days till I leave work. Days till Christmas. The cat's special diet for failing kidneys is out of stock till the New Year. The vet and I are working out what to feed him till then. It's OK. We'll manage.

This winter is desperate. No snow but a insistent , threatening cold that we rarely experienced in the city. Heavy frost. Ice that doesn't melt. A sense that darkness and death are not too far away. If the gas and electricity as well as the cat food supplies failed, for example. I live in a modern-ish house with no fireplace. Build a fire in the garden with newspaper and branches foraged from nearby fields and woods. Dismantle the washing machine. No use for it without electricity. We walk a narrow line in the developed world.

The inner drums make excellent braziers. I know someone who has several.