Without a sound

Less than seven hours to the new year. Out here, the moment will pass quietly. From one minute to the next is no great deal. Shutters closed, no one on the streets, no fireworks to chase away evil spirits, no display of plenty, no churchbells, no television.
Just us, slipping into 2009.

Basic scheme

Roads round the tile works are thick with red clay these days. Designer mud.
Fields green, sky blue, mud red. Very basic colour scheme.
Hard to beat.

When

No time most of the time, at the same time anytime has been no time for a long time and just for one time I would like all the time.

Car sucks

Every other day I am in the car, three gear changes and I am out of the village. It's a small village, one road straight through, one parallel in back and three side roads to the left. That's it. I take the last one, a back road to the next village, and within a minute I am out among the fields and woods. Narrow tarmac roads crawl up and down easy hills, wind around farms. I gun the engine and shift up, push the car through a long curve, driving. The road tips down and wraps around an old shed, cows looking on with little interest - I am a thing moving through their world of grass and endless outside. A buzard sails overhead. And suddenly I realize that this is why I am going to the next village. The car hugs the blacktop, sucks it.

Useless

Send in a story and wait for response. Reaction. Opinion. Verdict. Is it good or bad? Or so-so? Or what is it?
Whatever it is, it is always a wait, a time in nowhere, not even in between, because it isn't in between anything. In waiting all borders disappear. Anything can happen. It is a time of endless possibilities. That is why it is so useless.

Fingers

Laid five cord of wood in the garage. Chances are I won't be able to write for next few days. My fingers feel like they are going to need prolonged recovery.
Wait till I start chopping.

Walls

In back of the house the garden is enclosed by walls. Old French walls. All natural stone. Two meters high. In places overgrown with ivy, in other places cleared of vegetation. In some places falling apart. But they are there, high and silent and long. One day they may collapse, but until that day they aren't going anywhere. They have been there for more than a hunderd and sixty years, doing what they are supposed to do: being walls. Wonderful walls. They hold back time.

Living with a leak

I leak. I didn't used to, but since this thing has been removed - actually it was a thing in a thing, but to get rid of the first thing they had to take the whole second thing out - I suffer a leak. Not all the time, but almost every day. Sometimes I will have a leakless day, and when I do I immediately forget to take the required precautions: walk slowly, take small steps, don't run, don't jump, don't laugh too loud, don't make sudden moves, don't lift heavy things and sit down before coughing, sneezing or blowing my nose. And when I forget ... well, no need to repeat myself. There are other precautions, but this is enough to give a general idea of how leaking tends to affect my life. It puts a new perspective on taking it easy.