This evening as I was cooking dinner I suddenly realised that something felt different, deep, affecting... what was it? Then I knew. Silence - total silence. The wind had stopped. We have had wind continuously for many days now, sometimes a gale, sometimes just whining in the eaves, but always there, aggitating. Sometimes it came laden with sharp rain, once for more than half an hour a torrent of hail until the ground looked as though we had had a snowfall. Overhead the clouds have raced along. Occasionally, very brief interludes of sunshine have broken through only to be gobbled up within less than an hour by further banks of dark, laden clouds piling in from the west.
When one is alone, one is more conscious of these things. The amount of space that is made free in the mind when social life ceases is huge. In fact, I am not completely cut off. There is the internet, though I do not use it a lot at the moment. Occasionally people visit, sometimes bearing gifts of eggs or cake. Mostly, though, it is just Tara the cat and myself. We know each other's habits quite well now.
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