Still

Here in West Lothian the previous week's winds and rain showers have gone leaving a cold, still atmosphere and a thickness evident in the clear and cloudy mixture of slow moving night time weather. Standing alone and listening in the garden hearing nearby trees creak, the rustle of the last of the leaves and the scampering sounds from hedges and borders as small creatures try to hide or forage. The cats miaow in the distance, tracking and scaring their fragile quarrie and then returning to deposit the half eaten remains like a prize or a piece of well done, hard worked homework.

I stare into the sky and see occasional stars whose names and positions I've never bothered to learn and never will. They seem to stay stuck in the heaven's blanket but then suddenly move by themselves in time to grey clouds drifting somewhere under the black and blue of this late hour. I let the stars navigate around me and ponder the old time sailors who read the sky like a map and saw a way home or back again, is there anybody left who could do that today?

On the ground slugs and bugs and creeping things wander in a stop go motion across the stones and slabs with no obvious purpose. Leaves and wind blown debris block their paths and they make silver spirals to avoid collisions or to leave a marker for some slower moving friend who cant keep up in the fast lane. If they are lazy and caught in a dawn raid then hungry, beady eyed birds will breakfast on them and their night will have been wasted. They move because that is what they do but their direction is always painfully circular and contemplative. I wish there was some profound lesson to learn in watching this but it's only a dumb sameness and a routine and crawl along the edge of darkness for a moment to survive in and then move on.

Proper night music isn't rock or acoustic or jazz or anything clever and quirky, it's the realm of growling Bing Crosby, slow Sinatra or the greatest male vocalist of all time, who could sing and create the mood of the deep purple and a fog catching the corner of your eye before the light's splinter hits - the late, great Matt Munro (who isn't pictured here because I'm going to watch Question Time or something and I only have a Bing photo handy).