Hypatia Avenue

Every mile is two in winter. - George Herbert

This could explain why I'm feeling so very lethargic and lazy at the moment and all I really want to do is stay at home and rearrange my underwear drawer. It's with a rather unpleasant lurching sigh that I have to get myself out of bed these recent mornings. If only I could come to the office in a sleeping bag - I'm sure I would deal with all this much better.

Still, once I'm up and about and daylight has finally caught up with me, it's crisp and sharp and pretty out there and I've had a quite quiet week at work that hasn't spoilt it. I remember walking through Regents Park a few years ago at this time in the turn of the seasons, forcing myself to take another turn despite the inside of my nose threatening to fall out in icy blocks. I'm not sure why it was so important but I suspect I had just finished reading Wuthering Heights and was looking for some flat,open green and lonely spaces in which to mope and that was the closest I could find in central London. The way it felt, to be totally alone in the damp brown grounds with the wind and the silence is still with me today. I recommend a walk through a London park in the middle of winter to anyone (but be safe!) You only have to do it once and can dine out on it forever afterwards.

In other news: This is a response to the limecat. Citrus domestic animals seem to be all the rage at the moment.

Since my last burst of enthusiasm for getting out and about to see and do things, I haven't actually managed to get out and about to see and do things: I've been meeting friends who I haven't seen for a while and catching up over coffee and drinks, I've been falling asleep on my sofa wrapped up in a big blanket with Eastenders shouting out of the TV and I've been making lots of soup. (The pleasant Western type, not the scary Chinese type. No chickens' feet or seahorses or dried endangered fungi were harmed in the making of this broth.)

However, I did spend a Friday night basking in the wonderful music of the Regent Singers, a choir that Former Flatmate A has joined and heard for the first time Faure's Requiem sung in full. I felt extremely sophisticated and enlightened, spending my Friday night in a church hall relaxing to this delightful piece - it was soothing, uplifting, very moving. I could have been an emancipated female character from an E M Forster novel - I could do this more often...

On the subject of music, John Peel has died. I don't want to talk about it. What more can I say? We will miss him; he was important to so many of us. I hope, somehow, he knows that.

I'm off to my dance class tonight but in serious doubt about my enthusiasm for it. Small scary shouty Japanese teacher barking "one and two and one and two and no no no no! What is your problem? Again! Again!" and still not getting it right... ahh. The things I do for art.