New dawn, new day

While embracing life and all it offers means the world to me, every evening I reach a point where I simply long to be allowed to rest. My urgent demand is for the big bed to be put down in the kitchen so that, even if Newman is too asleep to move next door and unready to turn in, I can contemplate the day’s doings as I drift into sleep.  Perhaps it is the time of year, but I feel more than usually touched by things just now. Is it any wonder when you think about the week of contrasts I have shared: the gentle tearfulness of Durufle’s Requiem; memories of a Black Country town which, forty years ago, changed a perspective on life forever; Britten’s 2nd String Quartet, which leaves one with so many unanswered questions; the inexpressible excitement of a Michigan home match; the incomprehensibility of yet another little soul abandoned to his fate in an act of cruelty which doesn’t make any sense to someone who has known nothing but love; a cherry cake, wonderfully fragrant, newly taken from the range; the kitchen floor washed carefully, as I moved helpfully about; the warmth exuded by the sun-drenched score of Lawrence of Arabia – I have watched, listened and learned but, most usefully, I have clung close while others sustained these impressions. For this is what I do.  I have felt the emotions nestling in my fur.  I am very full of words this week.  Yet it is pictures that haunt us. There was a scowling man, swathed in ammunition – what could possibly be in his heart?  A white lion clutching a meal of chicken-filled pumpkin; the disgraced Rasputin, a tiger who attacked and killed his keeper; the magnificent stallion, cursed by gypsies, a white giant throwing an industrial backdrop into relief, shot by his terrifying master.  Yet this morning the sun was warm on our backs, the sea calm and the tide low and so it is natural to revive one’s spirits, find the strength to endure and soon give thanks for the lore we live by.