It’s freezing at night, a few degrees above during the day. More importantly perhaps, the asphalt has been damp, continuously, throughout the whole period. Crucially, I just haven't felt like it, whatever else was going on. Plus, the odd break in cloud cover has come at busy moments in, well, what can be called “Real,” life.

We are in Advent after all.

And the Solstice is close.

Maybe I will rejuvenate as the year turns.

Every day though, a couple of kilometres to school and back, watching the red flicker of my daughter's back light easing away down towards the junction where I hope and pray the traffic follows the rules made to protect her, and the lorry drivers remember their blind zones before shunting the steering wheel to the right, before depressing the pedal and pushing on into oblivion.... all while I travel a hundred metres behind with the other girl, who is really too small to trust a correctly observed transit through this admittedly well behaved main road intersection.

It will soon be Christmas Eve – Holy Evening – maybe I will get out that afternoon for the ride to quiet, maybe I will run into Bernd, as I have twice before on this day, he of the sixth place finish in the Tour of Germany, and the children in the secondary school down by the Volkspark, he of the insolent ease riding up the hills of Nikolskoe or bridging gaps that open in any bunch he happens to be part of, he of the convivial company as the winter shadows lengthen at mid-afternoon times and miasma seeps from the strewn snow on the forest sides. Maybe....

Berlin 2018