January

[Sweder]

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears, and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me that, when I waked,
I cried to dream again.

A thousand twangling instruments certainly hummed about mine ears as I cowered under the duvet in the half-light. Cowardly thoughts suggested an evening plod but I could not accept another 'refusal' so soon. Besides, I've scheduled one for tomorrow night when I hope to take in a football commentary.

Five miles gouged from the ravaged hills then. God was in his playpen this morning, throwing the Mother of all tantrums. Most of the run was spent leaning at a fifteen degree angle into the teeth of the maelstrom; to my left on the outward and to my right on the homeward. It was all I could do to stay upright, the arial assault conspiring with the loose topsoil to upend my battling form.

They're in ze bin though, and that's all that counts.

To the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-based promontory
Have I made shake and by the spurs pluck'd up
The pine and cedar.