Feeling very alone today. Not lonely, not forsaken, rather solitary. Perhaps because it’s a serene Sunday, a lightly snowing day, approaching mid-January after the social upheaval. The river is bland and empty. The fields are asleep beneath a duvet of white. The horizon disappears into the rim of misty trees. There is a pervasive quiet, a subdued atmosphere, predominantly white and grey with softened tinges of brindle.

There is no attempt to disturb the placidity or blur, neither from within nor from without. Though occasionally the knock of a tiny icy particle against the window, the lavish flavour is one of biddable disregard. The tranquillity overtakes the scene by the minute, tracking the descent of the late afternoon sun, mollifying life’s urgency. It is by my reckless admission an ideal portrait from one’s desk, late in the day, late in life, unperturbed by anything above or below, transfixing the simplicity and lack of identity into a model of persuasion. “How”, I ask, “might I have anticipated” when all began decades ago, “the welcome gloom and paralysis of a winter day?” The farmhouse in the distance frozen in the mix. There is no prospect of animation upon the rude blanket of Northern clime. Only my disadvantaged outlook evokes breath and movement in the windswept impression before me. Seeing it so clearly is like recovering acuity in one’s vision, gradually aided no doubt by the temperate simplicity of the components – harvested fields, hibernating vegetation, frozen glassy river, a sedated sky.

Having this moment to stop the world from spinning, to capture unhurriedly a glance at what we have, to see a cloud of snow drawn like a miniature storm upon a remnant cornfield, then to seize a hint of blue within the evaporating mist above making all things change their context and integrity – these delicate alterations precipitate untold recollections from the past and definition of the present. As the clouds on the horizon disassemble and faint colours of inspiration insinuate and overtake the boundless eternity above, the entire outlook changes.