It’s 3.30pm and drizzling, which is exactly where we were around this time yesterday. Had to get the boys out for a run around though so we took our binocs and a football and our rain jackets and strode up to the Lake District formerly known as Wanstead Flats.
Bumping into a friend and their dog was a good distraction, a 2 metre distanced side-by-side stroll across the soggy landscape, gulls at every turn. We all felt happier for it but by 4.30pm were also ready to go home and dry off. And then it happened… the most spectacular sunset, all apricot clouds and liquid gold. It was 4.53pm today; it will be 7.32pm by the end of March after the clocks also change.
My eyesight is so bad at the moment it wasn’t too much of a stretch to reimagine silhouetted urban rooftops into desert island palm trees and transport myself to the tropics for a moment. I now have one eye on the sky wondering if such a vision will happen two days in a row – a mini-break to the tropics as it were.
Having just emerged from a brief foraging and flower arranging tour of the Portuguese countryside courtesy of Chelsea Fuss and her new book Field, Flower, Vase (have just written a book review for the March issues of Gardens Illustrated) and am nightly transported to a Californian commune in the 1970s via T.C. Boyle’s Drop City (2003; bit late to the party), I’m not doing too bad on the virtual holidays.
Reading and writing, I have to say, along with trusted friends and flowers are my greatest therapy right now. And cuddles from the kids that always feel like sunsets no matter how stormy or grey our day. Holding onto those.