Winter

 It's cold in England, even here down on the south coast where we don't get the worst of the weather. 

Thanks be to God, we've had days of cheerful sunshine interspersed with the grey drear, but we're in the middle of a few days of rain.

I'll tell you how wet it is here! Right opposite us — and bear in mind we live in a housing estate — there's a house with a tall evergreen tree at the back of it. You get a glimpse of it from our front room. Can you see what I mean in the picture? A tall, sparse, shaggy-looking tree, the same sort of shape as a redwood. But not that big. I don't know what it is.

Anyway, yesterday when we met up for our morning prayers, Tony (my husband) was sitting with his back to the window, telling me about some relevant and important thing, when what I took to be the top of that shaggy tree moved around a bit and I thought  . . . wait . . . no . . .  that's a bird! Is it — it's not a heron?

And then I thought, oh no, I was mistaken it's a seagull . . . no, it's  . . . 

Then it stretched out its long neck, and yes it was a heron, sitting right on the tippy-top of our neighbour's shaggy tree. And in no time at all seagulls were bombing it and pigeons watching it in horror, thinking it shouldn't be there. A heron. Not standing knee deep in a pond somewhere but sitting on top of a tree in the middle of a housing estate, no doubt looking for signs of Noah's Ark.

Yes. It's that wet.

Clarence, who by now owns the entire house and spends his nights snuggled up close to me, purring loudly whenever he surfaces from sleep, takes a very dim view of any ideas I might have of him going out in the garden at all, to exercise the various need of his constitution.

But spring will come, and summer; it always does. "While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease." And so it will be this year too.

Meanwhile every day I'm writing, writing, writing, and I hope very soon my story will be finished for you to read. It's about three-quarters complete.

I had the sense to get my heated blanket off my bed before Clarence curled up to sleep on it, so I've been able to put it on to keep me warm while I write. That helps a lot. 

It's too wet to go out most of the time, so every now and then I walk round and round the house like the Brontës walking round their dining room table because the weather on Haworth moor was so bad you wouldn't even think of venturing forth.