January

Conscience is a harsh master.

The meagre months lay low all memory of warmth and I gather windfall crab apples from the frozen ground. Each day the red dawn fills our icebound world with a godlike presence.

It takes me longer to gather up these words. Now is our fifth year. Unable to save the first few new eggs from the ingress of rats, I relent and buy first six then twelve, then the week after that another dozen. Drawing no more than one single cup of tea from Thorne through all these dark days before Imbolc, I pay for Delamere. Perhaps next winter we’ll do as they do and light our sheltered housing with false dawns.

Day starts and ends on the floor before the Rayburn. The wood supply in the shelter ebbs and must be refilled. But it isn’t long now – in the high gleam of sun when it comes, you can feel the turning of the world. Between the decaying apples come tips of daffodils.

I have been thinking of the bond of home.