It’s Sunday and, as usual, I’m up far too early.
The students are back in town and at 6am some of them were still making their way home. I don’t really notice them most of the time, they are just background clutter in my life, but this year I’ve noticed them more. It’s probably another stage in my decline towards senility.
At this point, in search of a wider vocabulary, I looked up leitmotif as it seemed a good word to use. Ten minutes later I found myself better informed, more confused and less likely ever to use the word.
My age-related confusion is, I think, destined to remain a theme. It’s easier to spell and doesn’t involve Wagner. However, I’m glad I thought of it, as I found the word leitwort. Any day that includes a new word is a good day, but not all good words are words that I will use. If I ever become Oxford Professor of Poetry I might slip it in, but apart from that I can’t see I’ll ever use it again.
Anyway, enough about that.
Today’s subject is sunrise. There was a nice one today, and I didn’t have my camera.
Taking the long way home from dropping Julia off I drove along the high ground to the north of Nottingham and looked down as the ground fell away.
In the darkness of the vally, amongst the mist, a few lights sparkled.
Above that, in the lower part of the sky, a narrow band of salmon pink formed a slightly understated sunrise. The sky above that moved from grey to blue and cloud formations were picked out in pink.
It sounds fairly bland when I describe it, but that’s the fault of the prose, not the sunrise. It was an exquisite moment that reminded me of so many things.
I thought of using my mobile phone to take a photograph but my phone camera is specially designed to remove the colour and beauty from any scene. (It truly is a product of the modern world).
That seemed a good subject for my Sunday morning post, so I came home and started writing.
