the heretic genetic algorithm

Without the sun the grass
Would never grow and time would cease to pass
And everyone would stay just the same

The weekend was a funny one as at Friday lunchtime, it was totally without plan. And Friday evening it was pleasant enough to just be on my own, to watch a film at the cinema, to have a quiet potter around the house and go to bed. Solo time is underrated, and there is little enough of it in my life. For many years I never really did much alone-ness. I'd have my odd jaunts, but time alone made me feel uncomfortable and needy. And now in the Stockholm Syndrome of single parenthood, I'm always a little antsy as the quiet I dream of for days morphs into drinking wine and playing mobile games on my phone.

But that is maybe the downtime I need at the moment. It's Winter and there's little sun to do things by. It's natural to breathe in, curl up and settle.

I had places to be the next day, anyway. For a long long time I had tickets for a walk at Lamplighter's Marsh, out near Avonmouth, exploring the industrial landscape and birdwatching. It had been advertised by the Forgotten Landscape project, for whom I have a lot of time, and was guided by a bird expert and Tim Dee (who wrote one of my favourite books that is an audiobook regular in the car, dark yet mellifluous. And I had a lovely time - it's such an interesting landscape, one I've often peeped into over the househedges of the Portway, or off the M5 bridge. I shall go back, maybe with the sprog as there is a delightful pub and may train stations to hop back on from. And I met lovely people - an academic who specialised in Nature Writing. I need to email her. And a lady called Lynne who loved walking on her own but really wanted a companion for the Frome walkway near my house. After getting her number for future jollies, I span on down the M5 in the rain to grimy wet Devon.

Someone I'd met online (IOW on OKC) had invited me to her birthday party in Totnes. I'd put off making a decision for ages as I really felt peopled out, but ashlyme persuaded me to try it. And it was good to be in Devon again, all crinkly and wet and green, and of my twenties. The people at the party were lovely. Punks and activists. Friendly and expansive people who actually believed in things and worked towards them, and I've missed that. People with interests and politics and enthusiasm fire me. I forgot that in the recent wobble downhill.

And driving back was beautiful. There were dark clouds in places as I headed north. And then I'd come into patches of misty sun and as it had rained, Devon and the Somerset levels were doing their brimming full of silver thing. There are hills sticking out in waves of rock as you head up the M5, and the Mendips were bathed in silver smudging mist, capped in golden winter sun.

I think next year it might be Devon and the moors. I feel so much pull to Dartmoor and Exmoor now - tis the flipside of the dying sun.