"In my religion all believers would stop work at sundown and have a drink together 'pour chaser la honte du jour'. This would be taken in remembrance of the first sunset when man must have thought the oncoming night would prove eternal, and in honour of the gift of wine to Noah as a relief from the abysmal boredom of the brave new world after the flood. Hence the institution of my 'Sundowner' with which all believers, whether acquainted or not, would render holy that moment of nostalgia and evening apprehension. Brevis hic est fructus homullis. In my religion there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry and doubt. Life would be sacred, because it is all we have and death, our common denominator, the fountain of consideration. The Cycle of the Seasons would be rhythmically celebrated together with the Seven Ages of Man, his Identity with all living things, his glorious Reason and his sacred Instinctual Drives." (Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave)

Plucked Enemies of Promise from the shelf in passing which, in turn, sent me back upstairs to find this volume. One of those you keep going back to.

This morning I sat eating breakfast on my own (the girls still abed) my yoghurt accompanied by Samuel Barber's Agnus Dei unscrambling its digital bits across the choppy Channel from Broadcasting House. One of those 'moments': unaccustomed calm, sunlight, smoke lifting off chimney pots, steam from my cup of tea. Monday rhymes.

On days such as these I wonder what I might achieve ... that teasing sense of opening, a pause, a beginning to draw a circle in which ... knowing tomorrow it will all dissolve. & so we lurch on ...