(sing for the coming of the longest night)

I got up before 10am today, something which I have not done in days and days, and went out to brunch with a friend at a place by the Serpentine. I walked back from Knightsbridge to Covent Garden, through freezing, diamond-brilliant cold, under a cloudless sky.

And you know, it turns out London is a beautiful, ancient city. I went through three of the royal parks - allodial land; held without tenure, without mark, for eight centuries - and along past Hatchards, where a hundred people were queueing up to get their books signed by Tim Peake; and through Piccadilly Circus, which is currently hosting an exhibition in praise of Frank Pick, a shy, unassuming lawyer who lived a shy unassuming life at the start of the last century; who believed that as the London Underground belonged to the city, and all the millions of people who used it, every aspect of it should be a work of public art. I bought a book and a cup of coffee and I did some work in a cafe like the ghastly cliché of a writer I am, and I saw the sun begin to set over Hampstead Heath with the skyline glittering behind.

And though tha sinn anns an dùbhlachd, and it is so very dark - not forever. Nothing lasts forever, except this place that we live in.