Winter's visited.

The blinds are closed. The heating is on. My belongings are lit by the yellow glow of a single lamp. My room is an enclosed, padded box, so I can cough and sleep this fever away in privacy. I haven't even looked outside today. Apparently it's snowing. The Snow Maidens are spreading their gifts once again. But the outside does not concern me right now. The last thing I want to consider is the cold.
But when I glance up from my screen, I get a sudden glimpse, a flash of white: the winter has slid its long fingers into my room.
A crooked mirror. An inexplicable gap between blind and window. And there, sat frozen on my shelf, is an image of cold. Thin branches scratch black lines across the blue-white of the icy sky. Edged with frost, they glitter and flicker with the movement of the light. This slither of winter is bordered by the blue of my blinds and it looks like... a fairytale.

Quiet.

Sitting on my grandmother’s bed with my legs stretched out, warm under the duvet, and my laptop on my knees, I feel as though I should be trying to type silently. It’s so quiet. It’s been this quiet all week. Even the high ceilings and empty spaces are discovering the impossibility to find anything to echo. Only in the evenings, when my grandmother leaves her temporary bed in the conservatory and stretches out on the sofa to fall asleep in front of the telly, does the noise escalate. The tv is on “loud” throughout waking and sleeping moments alike.
But now, when the television is off, and she’s reading in bed, and I have this time to myself, as I have quite a bit this week, the silence reaches round me and wraps me tight, so that I find myself being extra careful with every move I make. Even the tapping of the keys makes me flinch.
This quiet is a strange thing. In other occasions the quiet would be a release. Creativity and enjoyment of my craft tends to follow, when I have time to myself, but here, in this quiet, nothing happens. It’s almost as if it satiates me. I feel as though I’m soaking it up like a sponge, until I’m heavy with the apathy of it.
I hit the enter key and the click makes me jump.

Car journey

Everything changes when you’re ill, you know? Curled in the back of the car, with a thick scarf and a blackberry lollipop, watching the cars cruise along around me, and I suddenly realize that what the man in the van behind sees is a twentyish year old female snuggled up against a fluffy cushion with a lollipop in her mouth. And suddenly I feel small. Small and stupid. But then, do I care? My head is sending abort signals to my stomach, my throat and nose are refusing to cooperate, and behind my eyes a group of industrious little men are building up a great thumping pile of weight-soaked sponges that just sit. And seep an ache into my jaw and along my teeth. No, I do not care. Rather, I relish the childish lack of consideration for other’s opinion.
Besides. I like blackberry lollipops.