This is a special announcement. Clocks have now gone back one hour. Please be aware that we will be moving from BST (British Sad Times) to GMT (Grim and Miserable Times)

Goodbye sunshine, hello Seasonal Affective Disorder.

After you've searched far and wide for happiness, imagine for a moment that happiness comes looking for you.
Will you let it in? Or leave it waiting at the door?

Belfast

In a land with forty shades of green
a stream
gently flows, charting an uncertain path
to an unknown destination.

Leaves, autumn's snow, drop
unrushed, into the shallow end
while in the bend,
bubbles pause
to speak in hushed tones.

In the distance, H&W cranes
watch over a city,
while a mother,
getting ever smaller,
but just as constant, no less stoic,
waves in a rear-view mirror.

Somewhere, in a warm corner
of the memory,
there is laughter.

In the air,
thoughts unravel,
while below, a patchwork of fields
stretch out
like a grandmother's quilt,
well-worn,  familiar,
quietly falling apart.

It is only the body that travels, never the heart.

Greetings

While most other life forms in this part of the world are preparing to go into hibernation, I am making my first tentative attempts to emerge out of mine. Until, of course, the clocks go back (which is in roughly two weeks) and whatever little resolve I have will then freeze under an avalanche of snowflakes and thermal underwear. But enough. Before this little island is taken over again, Narnia-like, by a seemingly perpetual winter, let me try and get some words in.

So, where to begin? 

In the last three months, a number of significant events have taken place in my life. I realise that some (if not most) of these will be of little interest to anyone but me, but here is a shortlist anyway (in somewhat random order of significance- in keeping with the beautifully upside-down-inside-out nature of my present condition). Now, on with it- mild frostbite is already setting in.

I married an amazing woman.
I flew for 14 hours non-stop and didn't throw up once. I repeat- I didn't throw up once.
I learned how to tie a reef knot.
I laughed. Loudly. Several times.
I woke up in one continent and went to sleep in another.
I met people who'd last seen me when I was still in diapers and talked funny.
I sang 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' in public with my wife and sister.
My uncle passed away two weeks before he was due to travel to the wedding.
My grandmother's leg prevented her from making the final leg of the journey to the wedding. (the awkward pun is a defense mechanism)
on more than one occasion I experienced, as Colin Firth famously described, 'stirrings somewhere in the upper abdominals which were threatening to form themselves into dance moves'
I carried a baby (not mine) through airport security.
I traveled in an official Government of India car.
I met Bruce Lee. He was moonlighting as a waiter in an Italian restaurant in China.
I married an amazing woman.

That is all for now. I shall keep you posted on the weather front.