Night
A zinc cold moon ice-burns a hole in the Prussian blue sky. Thin trails of high cloud galaxies equator the sphere of night north to south. I lean back like an IMAXer and am enveloped in total 3D outer space, the ground below my feet dissolving. A slight head tilt brings me back to earth where a hard frost is taking hold of the asphalt and the roofs of houses with half decent loft insulation. It rococo-patterns across car windshields as I welly boot up the hill to an aperture in the wall and pass through its stony portal into fields of iced mud and moonshine.
There is never silence here, whatever the hour. The motorway churns cars even in the small hours, even in Tier 3. But the visual silence is loud; flat planes – a greyscale paint by numbers. Grass, paths, walls, trees. Only the sky offers colour, pooling in deep, billowing aqua ranges. I could be peering into the fathomless sea. Eyes become accustomed and suddenly a tiny prick of light on the plane my feet belong to, like the first glimpse of the aluminium-foil-wrapped 20p piece mum used to hide in the Christmas pudding. Then another and another. The frosty ground plane is carbon copying the starry sky plane, match heads of crystal frost-lit by moonlight. The brief trippy sensation of walking through air is disturbed by a dark shape in the chalky moonlight to my right. A muntjac. We watch each other suspiciously until it skips away, crunching loudly over the hardening earth and boot-hole puddles.
I skirt the gun emplacement, hard human geometry here in the arc and circle world of night. Open to space, empty of people, it watches the sky like an observatory. Which I suppose it was. Just not one looking for stars. A rabbit breaks cover, making fast ground, also noisy for its size in the relative stillness. I stop at the halfway point, take in the lines of lights, the yellow dower house, pond, abstract darkness of woods and field trimmings, before retracing my steps. No hint of life on the way back. I have started thinking of Christmas cake and a glass of port, yuppie privileges on an unforgivingly chill winter’s night like this. Farewell long night moon, last full moon of the year. Back through the portal the greyscale night warms to the touch of LED Christmas lights, thaws and melts with the light from front room TVs and standard lamps. My feet are welly loud on the pavement again, having dropped down from space and back into the city.