THE ingredients for a Christmas walk are simple: sparkling weather and good company. However, as I leave Cambridge, it looks as if I’ll get neither: I’m alone and there’s a fog so dense I worry about the wisdom of venturing out at all. It’s freezing all right, but so murky I can hardly see a thing.
As I arrive at my destination, however, the golden orb of the sun appears to my left and the fog, miraculously, lifts to reveal a glittering morning, glints of light sharpening every seedhead and making every blade of glass a knife, all bathed in amber light. Within minutes, it goes again, which proves to be the pattern: dense fog one minute, shafts of light the next. It’s actually not a bad way to experience a new landscape or to lift the Christmas spirit.
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