Focus

Just as their falling passed them in and out of human focus, so the falling of leaves has finished for another year, and nature's gaze is fixed elsewhere. It's December again: duffle coat comes out of the substandard, Wendy house-resembling wardrobe; scarf whose existence had been forgotten is rediscovered; romantic expectations of what winter should be are disappointed anew, even when their perennial promise was imminent once more.

Nearly four years ago, I spent new year doing something for the first time. I'd been invited to my best friend's (then) girlfriend's, mentally unstable, partially dysfunctional, family's party. The roads were solid with partially thawed and refrozen snow, which made for dangerous driving conditions, though S. saw nothing wrong with driving down single-track roads at thirty miles an hour.

We were all dressed up in smart clothes. In retrospect, I realise it's perhaps slightly unusual for families to dress up for meals when they have no special company and are not venturing outside their front door. In fact, the only analogy I can think of is the Simpsons episode where Marge is expecting Homer to die from consumption of a poisoned fish within twenty-four hours. It is probably a good job I didn't think of that then.

We ate salmon, and L. told her parents that I can play the piano. What a shame we got rid of the piano last month, her dad remarked, it's so nice to have a sing-song round the piano. Good fucking job you got rid of it, I thought, I can't really play at all, you bloody bastard. We played childish party games which were made partially exciting by the substantial injection of alcohol. I won the names-on-heads game because I had been given Cliff Thorburn, famous eighties Canadian snooker player. Suckers. I can't really play the piano.

I slept on the sofa, in front of the fire, with the dog (counter-intuitively called Badger), and looked out over the frozen fields, occasionally stirring as the sun rose, and the fire burned out. In fact, by the time I got up, it was absolutely fucking freezing. And there is the link.

Summary: it's been fucking cold here recently.