The sky today is a flat velvetty grey, a uniform blanket of mournfulness with scarcely a shard of white or blue difference. Having decided (for the nonce I am certain) that Mozart, Chopin and Gershwin are predictable and therefore unattractively repetitive, I am for the moment uplifted and diverted instead by Vangelis, Alexis Ffrench and Ennio Morricone. The diverse entertainment has easily trumped listening to the news about shooting, endless political rebuttals and perilous economic prediction. There is an uncommonly large flock of Canada geese floating upon the river. Comically they maintain a vague resemblance of a V-shape even on the water. In spite of – or perhaps because of – their seemingly purposeless congregation, they appear to be on the verge of departure. Things everywhere echo preparation for retirement or evaporation: late crop harvesting in the Village of Blakeney, a stored travel trailer in the backyard of a rural residence along the Panmure Road, the late dawn and the early sunset.
