When I saw that it had resolved into shape and color, that the focus had gone but for the tiniest sliver, I guessed that this one would be what I loved best of the things I caught and brought home.

Bright and early this morning, most of us set off for Lyme Regis, which you may know from Persuasion and/or The French Lieutenant's Woman and/or that time you drove a carload of twenty-year-old students there in 1996. Some of us arrived a little later than others. But all of us arrived to this weather, of all possible weathers.

After finally remembering to take a group picture, even if it only had 10 of my 14 in it, I happened upon a way that I could get most of us and me in the picture--so there we are and those of you keeping score at home know which one I am:

I had high hopes of finding fossils of my own on the beach, but, as has often been the case this year, travelling with this many people made it difficult for me to get myself zeroed in the way I know I would need to be in order to have a chance at finding any ammonites. But I will try again next weekend. In the meantime, I caught some views, including my favorite seabird, the cormorant:

some excellent sunset-stained seaweed:

the Cobb at late light:

and of course, the sea its inimitable self:

It seemed to me that if the rosehips on my way into town looked this good at midday, Exmouth would look even better at sunset, so after lunch I bought an extra ticket. Coming back from Exeter, I showed my pass and my ticket: I'm continuing, going farther south.

I got there just in time.

I fully intend to say more about the trip. For now, it simply seemed churlish to keep the pictures to myself.

It's been coming for awhile: this space has started to feel a little more workaday than I've wanted it to--and that's been feeling particularly ironic given that I generally do not get work done here every day. So: new year, new template. Vestiges of the old template are still peeking out here and there, and I can't for the life of me figure out why Squarespace insists that all links, no matter where they are, must be formatted with the same font.

It was a whizz-bang whirlwind of a winter break, to be sure. The day after I last posted, I left for London without incident, schlepping two suitcases heavy with holiday gifts and meditation materials (zafu, robe, bowls) for the Rohatsu sesshin that took me into the new year. Over the past two years, I have migrated to blue luggage. None of it matches. But all of it is blue.

I had one day in London, which I had planned to spend mostly at the London Library, my heaven on earth, but ended up spending mostly seeing a marvellous exhibit of Dickens and London at the Museum of London, doing errands and getting yet more holiday gifts, then having dinner with a student who also happened to be in the city (on her way back from Paris, as one sometimes finds oneself), then seeing a play. Then sleeping as much as I could, which was, as always the night before I travel, not nearly enough.

Twenty hours of door-to-door travel saw me from St. Pancras International rail station to London Gatwick Airport to Charlotte-Douglas International Airport to Indianapolis International Airport to the Hertz counter to my parents' house in southern Indiana. And saw me through a novel, as well--precisely the right kind of read for the plane: a somewhat salacious (and somewhat nastily so) depiction of the town where I'm spending the year, exactly what I would not have wanted to be reading *in* the town where I'm spending the year, and a book I felt no compunction about leaving behind with others in the US.

I apparently decided to test my own stamina pretty hard throughout the vacation, and it was almost uniformly excellent. The tears shed were minimal and enlightening. Even the fatigue was manageable. I had nowhere near enough time with anyone, excepting myself. But I saw many people I needed to see. And my five days at the monastery were strenuous in precisely the way I needed them to be, right down to work assignments: I shoveled and wheeled around and dumped horse manure for three days, and then I transcribed and proofread for two. I served food during ceremonial breakfasts and lunches all five days, totalling up ten meals during which I did not spill hot porridge or cold salad on anyone. Nor did I trip myself (very much) with my own robe.

When the bell sounded to tell us it was the new year, I was in this space, pretty much as far away from where I stood to take this picture (the next day) as could be. And my beloved former student from Cleveland (I don't have a good nickname for her--perhaps, now, just beloved fellow teacher) was in this space, too, having stopped in If you look carefully, you can see the blank zabuton (at the far end of the third row to the right of the altar) where my zafu (with me on it) sat all week.

And then there was one short and sweet stay in Manhattan, where I had a view both of the Empire State Building and of Macy's from my hotel room window. There was just enough time to check in with my beloved Brooklynite and her family, to exchange gifts and read a few books with her not-so-small-anymore son, to have a lovely dinner, to play some Star Wars MadLibs, to chortle over Hark! A Vagrant. The things that matter.

(It took me a lot longer to notice Macy's than the Empire State, probably because the desk clerk who checked me in only told me about half the view from my room and I was firing on fewer than half my cylinders [cf. next paragraph].)

And then, barely twenty-four hours into the new year, I was back on a plane, bound for London. A few days in the metropolis sorted out my jetlag (which had been compounded by the craziness of the last day of the Rohatsu sesshin, during which I was up for twenty-three hours straight: crazy Zen festivities! mad middle-of-the-night dishwashing and glass-packing! the impossibility of either going to bed or sleeping through the night after a week of getting up at 3:55 a.m.!).

And then, yet another train ride.

And now I am here.

8:52 a.m.

9:35 a.m.

12:58 p.m.

3:04 p.m.

3:10 p.m.

3:22 p.m.

3:26 p.m.

Some holiday presents arrived at the house while that rainbow was at its brightest. I asked the man who brought me the package, "Have you seen the terrific rainbow out over the Clyst?" He said, "Ah, yeah, there've been rainbows all over the place today."

Have I mentioned that I'm leaving town tomorrow, and that my destinations include the arms of many loved ones and then the monastery? I feel too excited to sleep. It is so very much the eve of the eve of the solstice.

This morning when I got up, Weather Underground (still my preferred weather site, despite that dippy rainbow they've used as their logo since at least the late 90s) warned me that the world was maybe about to end. Then, there were extra warnings that seemingly half the cities in the kingdom were going to be affected. (Upon second glance, I saw that it wasn't actually half the cities; it was just that "United Kingdom" was indicated for all of them.)

Since, by the time I saw these predictions, I had already watched permutation after permutation of bright sun + dark clouds + pouring rain + heavy wind + hidden sun + no rain, I played along and spent much of the day timing my outside time to coincide with periods when fast-moving clouds disburthening themselves were doing their work elsewhere. I still haven't seen snow here, and that's just fine with me. And my knee-high British wellies are arriving in tomorrow's post; these days, it turns out I'll need them just to get from my house to the main road without falling down in the muddy lane. I have a feeling I'm about to crawl into them and stay there until at least March. Puddles, mudslicks, tidal muck, and beaches, beware.

At about noon on Saturday, I boarded the train in Topsham, travelled as far as Exeter, changed and waited on a strangely quiet platform for the train to Plymouth, and journeyed westward. Probably five minutes into the westbound trip from Exeter, trains run along the western edge of the river and estuary that are my village's western border. I look across and see my village, laid out along the farther shore, and I watch the water (and the tidal mud) as we go south down the side of the estuary. And then the train turns westward again and, in its curve, brings us alongside the sea itself. Yesterday, even though some of my fellow passengers in the Quiet Carriage seemed not to be paying much attention to the directives implicit and also explicit in that carriage's existence, the scenery outside of the train couldn't have been much more serene. There was the rock arch west of Dawlish, the one a flatmate and I once tried to hike our way to, having no idea what we were doing, when I was a student at Exeter almost half my life ago. There were the ships nearing or leaving various south coast ports. There was the sea itself, rolling in slow, low waves.

I saw a play in Plymouth, and to my delight, when the play was over there was still visible light in the sky. (It was 4:20; the sun was down, but at least dusk still lingered.)

The pedestrian area that runs through much of the city centre in Plymouth has become a winter carnival, and one ride in particular grabbed at my gut. This one was called the Freak Out, but in my inner life, it was Giant Dutch Shoes.

When I was eight, my family, having moved to southern Indiana only the winter before, went to the first county fair I could remember. There were fair rides everywhere. One of them looked particularly exciting to me: the one we call the Dutch Shoes. I don't know whether it's actually called the Dutch Shoes. Searching for a carnival ride so named yields me nothing, and this is about as close an image as I can find for you.

And here's an image of what my memory of actually going on that ride felt like. My father obligingly went with me. (In writing this up, I'm realizing that I need my mother's memory too: what was the amusement park we used to go to in Buffalo? the one that may have been semi-permanent? and had a ride that had red cars and was maybe an alpine track? That ride was my speed.) And things were okay on the first couple of swings--as we, strapped into our little blue metal bullets, swung more or less gently back and forth. But, as is the way with this particular ride, we swiftly began to swing up higher and higher, until we swung all the way up and were upside down.

I don't remember exactly what point it was when I began screaming at the tops of my lungs, screaming and shrieking for it to be over. We went around and around and around, over and over and over, probably going forwards sometimes and then backwards for awhile. It was horrific, all the way around. I'm surprised that my father retained any of his hearing after having been trapped in that metal pod with a shrieking eight year old for the five minutes or so the ride probably lasted.

When my family came to England to visit during my Cambridge year, at Christmastime in 2007, we spent a couple of days wandering around London and one day happened upon the winter funfair happening in Leicester Square. They had Dutch Shoes. "You couldn't pay me to go on those again," I said, before hastily revising that claim: you could in fact pay me to go on those again. But it would have to be a hefty sum of money. It seems to me that they also had one of those horrifying rides where you are taken to the top of a giant pole and suspended there for a little while--and then dropped at terrifying speed back to the ground. Similarly: for a hefty sum of money, I could probably be bolted into a ride like that for a few minutes.

Plymouth's Giant Dutch Shoes seemed to be moving on at least two axes (and weren't shoes, either, but whatever)--though now that I look again at these pictures I realize that I might have been seeing that extra axis of motion because the whole spectacle freaked me out. Which was appropriate, given the ride's name. I was glad to be on the ground, where the beauty was, rather than up in the air with the horror.

Both of these things--the seaside and the funfair, the beauty and the horror, the natural and the gaudy--are England, and are my time here. Sometimes the oscillations are almost too much.

Thirty seconds later:

I made a quick trip down the line to Exmouth--where I should go more often, for all kinds of reasons, the sea chief amongst them--and encountered a young gull. Usually, I hear a young gull before I see it. This was no exception.

And by 3:40, the sun was lowering. One good thing about our crazy early sunsets is the excellent light we have all day long--and particularly at either end of the day.