I never want to go out into the dark. A tension gathers in my neck and in my back before I do so. It’s the pitch blackness, the wildness, the feral almost lawlessness of those early hours that get to my very soul. And yet. And yet. Once I am out there is something like joy in being exposed to the air, the wind, the possibility of some kind of renewal in the approach of the day. I don’t see it then, of course, certainly not in late December, but it is coming. I walked up and over the Buarth. The town’s rooftops stretched before me. And then it was down to the harbour and to the buffeting of the wind off the sea. The Perygyl was marvellous. The waves rolled and crashed beneath it and I felt alive. That’s what it does. The dark brings an aliveness, a perception that is lost during the daylight hours. I feel with my skin, my hair, my fingertips. I am alert as a mouse ever awake to its chance slaughter by a prowling cat or a swooping owl. Like the mouse I twitch with that aliveness. Is it worth it? That fear? Yes.
