The view from the uppermost windows is of a silver landscape, fields smoothed with a white sheet, and the tops of the trees touched with a shiny paintbrush. Its brighter than daylight. You could walk anywhere.
There is still something missing.
“Everybody else has gone
But you’re still here with me
All the world is sleeping by and by
Through the windowpane
The frosted light is streaming in
Full moon sailing high across the sky”
Let us sleep now…
7.30am The glare of lights in the layby. Three more weeks and a neatly packed wooden crate of items has been upended and they are spread across the room.
“For Emma For Ever Ago” is up there at the top of the favourite records of the year for me next to “Sun Giant” and “Ark 1″. This is the b-side to the recently released “For Emma” single and I can’t believe that he left it off the album because it fits in there perfectly. World weary and intimate and beautiful and feeling like a walk through a leafless forest with twigs and branches underfoot. I gather that Wisconsin is his home state. The album is so beautiful. Another of those great records that don’t give up their secrets immediately. Five or six listens at least to get there.
Still fully dark at 6am: 1st October 2008
First frost of the year: 6th October 2008. Windscreen scraping time.
The owls haven’t even started their dawn hooting at 6am these days but by about 6.20 they are making themselves heard. Rather than resent the first frost I really relish it. There is something entirely magical about the crunch of grass underfoot and the wisps of cream and pink flecking the sky in the east and gradually lightening the whole of the big sky which is visible out from the top of the hills. The view of the eastern plain at 7.50am on Monday on the way down through Pant Glas was just spectacular. A sea of pink mist with the trees and woods poking up out of it in layers going back and back to the horizon for 30 miles. It was one of those nothing gets better than this moments. Unfortunately we were on the way to the station so couldn’t stop and ten minutes later some of the magic had dissipated but the fact that such views are so fleeting make them even more precious.
