Sunday 3 December 2023
It was one of those chilly and empty afternoons
I was reminded of this quote while sitting here on one of those chilly and empty afternoons. Not empty inside the house, we've been busy, but a chilly grey dusk appears to have arrived early. Maybe it’s about time to make the coffee.
IT was one of those chilly and empty afternoons in early winter, when the daylight is silver rather than gold and pewter rather than silver. If it was dreary in a hundred bleak offices and yawning drawing-rooms, it was drearier still along the edges of the flat Essex coast, where the monotony was the more inhuman for being broken at very long intervals by a lamp-post that looked less civilized than a tree, or a tree that looked more ugly than a lamp-post.
A light fall of snow had half-melted into a few strips, also looking leaden rather than silver, when it had been fixed again by the seal of frost; no fresh snow had fallen, but a ribbon of the old snow ran along the very margin of the coast, so as to parallel the pale ribbon of the foam. The line of the sea looked frozen in the very vividness of its violet-blue, like the vein of a frozen finger. For miles and miles, forward and back, there was no breathing soul, save two pedestrians, walking at a brisk pace, though one had much longer legs and took much longer strides than the other.
G. K. Chesterton - The Wisdom Of Father Brown (1914)
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4 comments:
That's fine writing by Chesterton. This time of year often has a peculiar sense of emptiness. I see people trying to escape it through bright lights and alcohol and the activity of amusement arcades. Much easier to drown it out rather than experience it. Sometimes it feels like the emptiness of despair, sometimes of expectation. Both are hard to bear.
Sam - yes there often is a peculiar sense of emptiness, especially on grey afternoons. Another form of escape is the supermarket or the shopping centre. Escape is probably easier now than it was in Chesterton's day.
So long as you are dressed for it, and so long as a warm howf awaits, it is fine. There will always be some wildlife. A flash of a robin, a wren, pheasant, other birds.
Just glory in life.
Doonhamer - that's what we did earlier while the snow was still fresh, togged up and walked out for a coffee, but this afternoon it was grey, wet and misty. Atmospheric but best viewed from inside.
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