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| 11th January 2019 |
I'm posting a picture of squashed berries, not to be pessimistic but because I suspect you'll find fewer pictures of squashed berries on the internet than you will of whole ones. Being vaguely reflective, it's brilliant how cheerful red berries remain even when they are squashed on a rainy pavement.
I took this photograph on my way home from hospital. I spent ages photographing the tree they fell from and its surrounds but I'll just put this here as a way to say Happy New Year. We may already be a twelfth of the way through 2019 but it's never too late for good wishes!
This the kind of picture I usually reserve for my other blog (Message in a Milk Bottle). There's more in it than at first seems. I think the stalk of the berries may be lying on part of a sycamore wing and there's either a tiny bit of green lichen to the top left of the lower berry or it's the beginning of a new plant. There's a matchstick and, of course, the shine of rain on the paving stone.
Here in hospital, I find it harder to rejoice in the random. Very little here is random. It's beautifully clean and stunningly well ordered and efficient beyond anything I could have expected or even imagined . . . Yes, in hospital, for although I took this photo on my way home, I was only there for a few days before chemo started again. This time stronger than before. The first lot had zapped most of the Leukaemia but some still lurked in a mutant form. I'm back in exactly the same room. It's very comfortable but the view is of part of the same building, hence finding squashed berries enormously beautiful and exciting. They are not grey!
