A different light from a different source of reflection seeps in through the dark curtains. I look out and it has snowed in my sleep. The black back lane cuts through it so the covering is not deep.

I go downstairs and Sam leaps onto the table. I open the curtains and we are both startled as the heavy heads of horses stare back at us from over the hedge. The snow has brushed and settled on each green and shadowed surface of the garden

My footsteps cross the lawn...

Only time for a quick note this morning. Below freezing when I woke, but sun blazing down now on the frost-thick lawn.

From A Book of the Winter:

The Courts with feather litter of the cold are filled
And the dead woods hear no hunting horn.

Sacheverell Sitwell, Doctor Donne and Gargantua..

I stand in the staff car park waiting for a lift as sleet begins to fall through the yellow lights. I reflect I’m more Sisyphus than Odysseus. Thirty years as a nurse, thirty years I can look back on, having done no harm, having kept these groups of vulnerable people safe. Two years to go and then retirement. I’m formulating phrases for my next appraisal; I’ll try: “I’m struggling with the pace of change...” What I mean is I have to spend too much time sitting at a computer logging notes, care...

For a moment the moon is a gold coin above the feathery tips of the conifers, then a grey smear spreads over the sky and it ghosts away. I check the thermometer outside and it’s just a degree above freezing. The stone birdbath is solid ice; I boil water to free it and clean it. A holly leaf pricks my thumb as I pull it out of the ice and litter. I fill it with fresh water. If it freezes again tonight I’ll remove it in the morning to set its disc of ice in the dark hawthorn hedge like a window....

Trees radiant in the low light, oak and beech. Dark stone walls against green upswept fells. In a flash we pass a road sign that points down a lane that says “Briggflatts”. I sit in the car wondering.

We arrive in Sedbergh. Westwood Books is a great barn of a bookshop full of treasures. I get nice collections by Chesterton and Belloc but the real prize is an anthology called “A Book of the Winter” compiled by Edith Sitwell. It’s a first edition published by Macmillan in 1950....