…it was not the sort of time by which others reckoned. It was ruminative, attentive to change, to those alterations in the light, to tiny inconsequential happenings and accidents: that dead pigeon, a mess of dirty feathers, lying in the gutter, the warmer wind, a familiar shop being refurbished by its new owner, the smell of coffee from the open door of a cafe. I often wished that I could do something with these impressions, that I were a writer of some sort and could form them into a pattern, though there was no narrative thread that I could invent.
