Truly Jamesian days in Cambridge: once you have walked through the fog, you can imagine how he wrote his Ghost Stories exactly here, on these very streets, with their lost and found dangerous treasures and obscure figures slowly disappearing into the misty void. He was “telling spectral tales at Christmastide,” as HPL once pointed out.
The longer I live here, the more I feel that the bond between myself and flatland (Fenland) has become stronger: who knows, maybe I develop a new, still feeble and weak, but already visible root of dubious Englishness: it feels like it’s been always a bit unsettling in foreigners. The fog persisted, and it makes everything more despondent outside: the trees’ silhouettes look disturbingly sharp even in the milky wet clouds, the stormy gales weep, bringing seagulls from the North Norfolk seaside here: they are sitting on the roofs and barking at each other.
But the inside life, on the contrary, is warm and cosy: the advent windows on our street look amateurish but lovely; nearly every one of them is lit up with Christmas lights, and one thing you really want is to wrap up inside and hibernate next to your Christmas tree.
Checked out our favourite Italian shop, asking the owners, if they sell their hand-made mince pies. Nah, one of the staff said, Rocco (the owner) doesn’t want to bother this time: there are not so many customers for that.
Never mind, never mind. This year is almost over, which is the main thing.
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