We had our work Christmas party last night, which was seriously fun. They’d booked out a huge restaurant and there was champagne and a buffet and dessert and coffee and dancing and games… And a cash bonus inside our Christmas cards which made us all smile! There was a band who sang lots of songs [...]
Archive for the ‘light’ Category
Winter light
Posted in Christmas, light, norway on Sunday, December 13, 2009 | 1 Comment »
How’s that for a library? All glass and pillars and light. Here it is front on.
Swoon. Inside, the desks all have individual lamps, transparent lily-pad green. And there’s a coffee shop; you can sit and look out at the skeletons of trees.
Here is the train I caught back to the city from the university. It [...]
Twilight
Posted in halden, light, norway on Sunday, November 22, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Twilight seems to happen a lot around here right now. It would be a good town for vampires. It’s completely dark by four, and when I drive to work at eight, they sky is still only thinking about waking up. I’ve hardly seen the sun in a month. One morning I watched it rise from [...]
Cold fire
Posted in fire, halden, light, norway, seasons, trees on Sunday, November 8, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Last Friday, on a rare blue day, I walked across the bridge, through the town, and into the park.
This autumn is so nearly over.
But one tree was incandescent.
Its branches were like fiery rapids,
like all the warmth one could ever need.
Postcards from the sky
Posted in America, light, lovie, paragliding on Saturday, November 7, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I wasn’t there this year, but I haven’t forgotten
how, in the right wind, you soar up the slope
to join the jelly beans in the sky.
The launch site is a green and distant memory, mere patchwork
and the snowy mountains are all yours.
Afterward,
your feet on the ground as your wing falls slack,
you’ll never forget
the staircase of air
the [...]
Whales and worlds
Posted in America, Australia, England, art, family, friends, ice, leeds, light, norway, paragliding on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Today the light was soft. Sunlight hazed through billowy clouds, gilding the edges of the harvested fields, getting caught in the golden trees that have already started losing their hair. English weather really. Most mornings, frost glitters on everything, and once the mist clears, the sky is blue as ice.
Quite a lot has happened in [...]
bleh
Posted in babbies, language, light, norway, work, writing on Sunday, September 6, 2009 | 6 Comments »
I caught a cold from the babbies which is making me very grumpy. The same kind of grumpy I felt last time I flew to Australia and I was exhausted and I noticed that the people at the back of the plane had four seats to themselves and could lie down but I had no [...]
Clouds and mountains
Posted in family, light, lovie, norway, snuggle-car, stone on Wednesday, August 26, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Last weekend we drove north.
We had many spectacular picnics.
I love the colours of the lichen and the clouds.
In the evening, the river spun moonlight.
And all in all, it was magical.
Today was the first day of summer, for sure. The meandering flocks of cumulus, which can turn sunshine into torrential showers and back again in the space of five minutes, were nowhere to be seen. Only the slightest wisps of white feathered the blue blue sky, so high they had nothing to say to us, [...]
I walk the long way back to the train station. The street is wide and the Victorian shopfronts glow faintly bronze in the fading light. The sky is opaline, scalloped, pink and blue. Two aeroplanes pencil bright orange trails beside the crisp white rind of the moon. My belly is just slightly too full of [...]