And everything turns to winter

There's a specific kind of light in England. A kind of slanted, sideways light that never hits anything full on, drifting through the branches of trees, across grass and up against buildings. It's why, when you see all those old paintings of fields and sheep and church spires rising up out of a dip in the landscape, nothing seems sharp and clear.

This light is most obvious in late autumn, winter, and early spring. The sun rarely hits this small island from over head, but it's in this time of year when it seems too lazy to rise properly in the morning. I walked to work this morning in this kind of light - the mist rising up off the grass in Lincoln's Inn Fields and drifting like fog into the soft spills of weak sunlight between the branches of the towering horse-chestnut trees. The world seems fragile on mornings like this, as though reality doesn't have the hold it usually does.