Thursday 25 April 2013

Recoil

3.10 pm: the quivering light and warmth cry out for touch, but your blurred, sweaty hands recoil in shock, touch nothing.

Wednesday 24 April 2013

Like new

12.00 noon: clusters of unfurling bright green leaves make patterns on an even brighter blue - the whole sky like a crisp, new printed cotton curtain.

Thursday 18 April 2013

Drunken

8 am: the wild wind advances, noisy and unguided, kicking over all loose objects in its drunken path.

Monday 15 April 2013

Flutter

this is the season
of big yellow skips - their blue
tarpaulins flutter

Friday 12 April 2013

Stretched

8.05 am: the forecast says cloudy with rain, hail, thunder, and snow in the north - time and tolerance stretched by too many weathers.

Wednesday 10 April 2013

Jamaican

12.50 pm: rice 'n peas and thick brown gungy stuff - Jamaican comfort food is sunshine in the belly on a cold day.

Tuesday 9 April 2013

Blurring

11.45 am: through the blurring drizzle, a frail young woman approaches, clutching a small baby to her breast - oh no, it's a large loaf of bread.

Friday 5 April 2013

Tense

2 pm: just a mile or two up the road is tense, crowded poverty. Same shops, same buses, people about the same daily business - and a very different atmosphere.

Thursday 4 April 2013

Hunched

1.05 pm: the fine, sleety snow is visible only in the hunched, hunted posture of each passer by.

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Fierce

2.30 pm: the wind is like a thousand tiny knives - not strong, but fierce and sharp and spiteful.

Tuesday 2 April 2013

Bellowing

12.20 pm: in the park full of resoundingly bare trees, a single shock of billowing, bellowing blossom.

Sunday 31 March 2013

Imposed

2 pm: an old-fashioned Sunday imposed but once a year; suburban streets are empty, almost silent, restless.

Friday 29 March 2013

Felt

11 am: the long-absent sunshine comes and goes; just a few minutes, seconds even, at a time - rarely has it felt more precious.

Thursday 28 March 2013

Warm

1 pm: the warm scent of white hyacinths, not quite snuffed out by chilled and stagnant air.

Wednesday 27 March 2013

Reel

9.50 am: there's a small man outside in the street with a very large wooden reel of cable hoisted on his shoulder - disconcertingly low tech!

Tuesday 26 March 2013

Aching

6.20 pm: lighter evenings and aching cold - these things don't go together; oh, unforgiving, out-of-kilter season!

Monday 25 March 2013

Perishing

3.30 pm: 'perishing cold', old people used to say when I was small; no surprise that the once-familiar phrase resurfaces today -   that's exactly how it feels.

Sunday 24 March 2013

Evoking

2 pm: when we call something eye-watering, it's often at least partly a metaphor, evoking emotional as much as physical sensation. Nothing metaphorical about today's cold.

Saturday 23 March 2013

Not

3.30 pm: snow like a child's toy 'snowstorm', fine and powdery. It looks so soft and gentle, but the wind chill and the interludes of icy sleet are not.

Friday 22 March 2013

Fallen

3.45 pm: the f has  allen o   the ca é - one piece missing and the rest becomes random and meaningless.

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Embedded

10.05 pm: the word 'embeddedness' embeds itself. Four shelving, rocky strata: in the chilly evening they reverberate.

Tuesday 19 March 2013

Morphed

3.40 pm: oh, the air, the light, so soft - so soft, you think the season's morphed - it's spring! But you know that soon, with a shiver, it will all shut down again. Until it doesn't.

Monday 18 March 2013

Plunged

2.20 pm: The room grows darker, then the keyboard disappears, then thunder, lightning, rain against the window: plunged into a dim, damp place.

Saturday 16 March 2013

Dodging

3.50 pm: a tantalising glimpse of fragile sunshine that brightens but barely warms; no sooner here than it's dodging clumps of cloud and preparing to dip behind the rooftops.

Friday 15 March 2013

Jangling

6.09 pm: jangling fiddles shake the radio; a car door slammed in the street shakes the window; the quietly grating sound of a yawn that becomes a sigh.

Thursday 14 March 2013

Flattened

2 pm: it's the season of shadows - look down and look around and there are all these flattened tree-prints stamped across the roads and footpaths, lawns and walls and doors.

Wednesday 13 March 2013

Falling

1 pm: that cold, spiky stuff is falling from the sky again, but the air has grown warmer, thick and muddy - weather that jabs and at the same time stifles.

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Quivering

11 am: outside the florist's shop the potted red and yellow polyanthus spread their frilly velvet skirts, quivering and shivering in the sunshine and the icy wind.

Monday 11 March 2013

Driven

6.20 am: the croaking of seagulls driven far inland by gales at sea; a heavy silence, then the muffled swish-swish-swish of a passing car.

Sunday 10 March 2013

Chilly

6 pm: something between hail and sleet taps insistently on the window; fingers of cold fumble their way inside, trace chilly patterns on the walls and ceiling of the darkening room.

Saturday 9 March 2013

Bobbing

11.20 am (Radio 3 CD Review): the Handel excerpt is a coracle filled with notes bobbing on the waves, and behind it another and another, happy as a line of swimming ducklings.

Friday 8 March 2013

Creep

3 pm: water pours off the edge of my umbrella; one shoulder, soaked, turns a darker shade of green and a dark, wet border creeps upwards from the hem of my coat, flaps heavily against my legs.

Thursday 7 March 2013

Raining

6 am: it's raining on the red car parked beside the street-lamp and the lamp illuminates the droplets trickling from the shiny roof and down the windows.