The flow

Air by Adriaen Collaert 1560-1619

Is there anything for it but going with the flow? I have been making a beautiful dress of peacock feathers for my daughter. It hangs like silk, it shines and the sleeves billow. The material's a nightmare to sew but it's taken a lot of my time. 

I'm not short of time right now. Like most of us. But all of us are facing another month of reminders that we can't take time for granted. 

Sewing keeps me busy, keeps me from brooding and in between rain yesterday I got out on the racecourse for a walk. The sun was blinding, the wind beating in from the east, spray crashing over the marina wall. 

I walked to the pier but had missed the starlings. My foot started to hurt and I sat on a bench looking towards Shoreham as lights came on, the sun gone. 

The list on my desk includes putting up the winter curtains. I've pulled up the remaining tomato plants in the polytunnel, filled a bag with green fruit, a bag of ripe and ripening. A child in a witches hat ran down the path past the allotment. I thought it was Monday, but it's still Sunday. There are already fireworks at night. 

In the room where I sew I listen to a small clock and wind in the trees at the border of the cemetery. It's somehow reassuring, the metronome of the second hand with the wild rushing of wind in the remaining leaves. The sounds of the back garden, the tall sycamores and linden trees, always remind me of the opening line of Ted Hughes' poem Wind, "This house has been out at sea all night."