A Sad Omission.

People who’ve been reading these jottings for several years might remember the many posts I made consequent on the night walks I used to take between October and March. Some were humorous, some spooky, and some simply observational. I remember commenting several times on the various displays of Christmas lights which people had installed around their houses at this time of year because the one seasonal pleasure I still relate to is the delight of seeing coloured lights shining in the darkness.

I haven’t taken a night walk since before the operation nearly five years ago, but tonight I did. I took the same old route and delighted in more or less the same coloured light shows, with one exception. There was one missing.

One of the houses in Mill Lane always used to have a cascade of blue pulsating lights wound in corkscrew fashion from top to bottom of a tall fir tree down by the gate. I always thought it the best of them. It was stylish yet unpretentious, and far outweighed the more ostentatious arrangements elsewhere. It was especially effective in misty conditions, and was the only one I would stop and gaze at admiringly. There was even something vaguely pagan about it, though unintentionally I’ve no doubt. It isn’t there this year, and that’s a shame.