Category: december
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27 December 2025
Radio edit this week. If you like books, these are good places for books in the UK. Slightly Foxed, beautifully produced books – reprints of old novels or biographies which are worth the reprinting. Rough Trade Books – from the Rough Trade records people, this is an interesting independent publisher. Plus Craig Oldham is the…
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15 – 24 December 2025
Radio edit this week. Thursday, 18 December Sunrise is past 8am. There’s always talk about scrapping daylight saving, but if we did, which way would we go? This survey from 2019 found that “the majority of Britons (59%) would opt to remain permanently on summer time, sacrificing light in the morning in the winter for…
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8 – 12 December 2025
Tuesday Sunrise: 7:52am The weather is furious, hurling rain at windows and roaring into the sky. The whole house shakes with it, dreams are shaped by it, windows rattle and I can’t wait for it to end. On the station platform I join the rest of the commuters huddled into coats and puffer jackets. We…
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30 December 2024 – 3 January 2025
Wednesday 1 January 2025 Things I know from keeping notes. In January, the sound of woodpeckers will echo around the leafless wood. The park will freeze and there’ll be a crunchy frost with bright blue shadows. As the sun rises, contrails will glow pink in the sky and linger like frozen shooting stars. There will…
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23 – 28 December 2024
Dream that A & B are putting the kids up for adoption. C & D were back in the old house. C showed us the white porcelain figures she was forced to paint as a child and as she talked she faded to a translucent blue, but then came back to normal. For more than…
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16 – 20 December 2024
Monday She asks, “Are you from the Football Association?” and I think, “Wow, the FA must’ve really let themselves go”. When she approached I’d just picked up a litre bottle of lemonade with the litter picker and prized it open with my fingers. As it was half-full and heavy I was tipping it out, watching…
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9 – 13 December 2024
Monday Trees are down in the wood. Huge beasts felled by the the storm. The sun won’t rise till 7:53am but even in the semi-darkness you can tell there’s too much space here. You can feel it. The ground is deep red slush: wet earth and autumn leaves. Blackbirds chik-chik-chik in the gloom. The path…
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2 – 6 December 2024
Storm Darragh is currently raging across the U.K. More than 170,000 homes are without power. In the south east the wind whips through every crack and hurls rain at every wall and window, but we’re protected from the worst of it and thankful. This has been the second of two weeks off. When I started…
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25 November – 1 December 2024
“Why did you move that stick?” I think about it but don’t say it. I’m not trying to start an argument. The stick is lying across a pot of bulbs I planted yesterday. It should be upright, like the rest. It’s there to deter the… Oh, ffs. The squirrel has moved the stick of course…
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18 – 22 December
The Wikipedia page on tradition would be a good start to a novel. “Traditions are often presumed to be ancient, unalterable, and deeply important, though they may sometimes be much less “natural” than is presumed. It is presumed that at least two transmissions over three generations are required for a practice, belief or object to…
Walknotes 