Little to be said

In a quiet house, yesterday morning, I was in a reflective mood, watching out of the dining-room bay, towards a sunny sky. The brightness on the, less than clean, windows made me invisible to a goldfinch that alighted on the slenderest of stalks. The bobbing bird, on its twitchy stem, jerked its head about, watching for threats while it scanned for food; each movement mirrored in the stem.

The finch was in its gold and red finery, I was on the cusp of changing into my dullest. The suit I'd wanted in charcoal that only came in dark navy; my saddest shoes.

The bird flicked wings to a dry iris head, finding it empty, onward to verbena. I took the stairs to find the suit hung in covers. I slipped it out and two black snakes of cloth slithered, dropping supine on bed and floor. I chose the finest thread count for my neck.

My only formal shoes have seen as many funeral services as I. They cling to vestiges of mud from many a diocese; I dust each with a sock.

Hunting in the gale

On my childish route to school I find an unrestricted parking spot and leave my car, with a coat in the boot. I know I'm ill-clad for the weather, perhaps on purpose. I need to feel something, even if just cold.

Ranks of late twentieth century estate houses face the street that in my infancy was fringed with low prefabs. Bricks stacked for profit supplant homes built in hope. Only the topology of the roads and the constant presence of an electricity sub-station holding a junction are truly familiar, until I see a running culvert that dives through curved steel bars under the road - dangerous, come away.

School used to be right, past the memory of the corner garage, but I go straight on, into the breeze. Commercial property gives way here to retirement flats, petite stacked homes with forgotten balconies, clinging on, as close to the sea as is safe. In front, land falls away and I see the grey-green sea advancing in scribbled lines under a slate sky. The wind makes its presence felt, and I regret now, the coat, but only briefly.

A curving, sloping asphalt track leads down, revealing water crashing on groynes and I realise I have miscalculated. At half tide I anticipated a walk along the top of a beach, between the rotting foundations of a tumbled clay slope and a sometimes sandy tide line. Breakers are rolling in, touching the clay all along the strand. A knot of people are skipping from island to island on their way towards me and a lone dog walker is walking through the shallow wash in tall boots. I make a step from shingle to sand to mark the beach and, to let it mark me. Another dozen steps sideways widen the view and I face the incoming sea, the buffeting wind and watch, and watch, until the dog walker passes, smiles and starts the climb towards her car park.

Something has broken through, something has been touched. I leave the curious dog enough time to pass and follow it, back up to the top, where gulls and corvids alike hang or swoop with the rising currents.

Plainly

I drove out, in shadow, on a flat plain roofed by grey stratus. The visual flow recalled an X-wing fighter game from a hundred years before; its parallel walls flashing past in glorious wire-frame. Ahead, where the Death Star vent waited - pregnant - the furnace of the sun glowed orange and gold through gaps in gathering cumulus, hung over the distant Solent.

Early winter picture

Two dozen jackdaws sit in my neighbour's ash. They "chack, chack" to each other and, every few minutes, a few leave and are replaced. Four arrive, two leave, three arrive, six leave. They dot the ends of branches now clear of leaves. The three pinnacle twigs have a starling each.

Across the blue marbling of the sky, goldfinches dance. Their characteristic passage, half falling, half flying and "chit, chit" calls to the bobbing rhythm give them away.

The sun is lighting only reds. In the cornus stems, the deep peaches of a few clinging apple leaves, the rubies of holly fruits. The rest is muted with the shaken blackboard rubber frost.