A Snapshot of a Sunday, Southeast of Berlin

This afternoon my two youngest brothers and I visited our uncle Pu in the wilds of Brandenburg. Caught in the grip of winter still, the grass was short and greyish with remembered frost, the trees leafless as ever. Limbs or whole trunks of pine trees were slung over the forest floor where they'd been broken, uprooted and fallen during the storms earlier this year. A haze of ice crystals appeared to shimmer on the surface of a pond. Deep pits in the forest floor beside the road looked to me like potential bomb craters from World War II, which of course made me wonder why we'd opened up another chapter in this unenjoyable history of conflict.

But when we turned into our uncle's driveway, timid little stands of snowdrops were huddling in the grass. The moles had also formed more colonies of earthy hills in the lawns. Early signs, perhaps, of spring even outside the warmer microclimate of the city centre.

When we arrived home late in the evening, we were delighted to find T. there. She had popped by as her food delivery had landed on our doorstep instead of hers. We foregathered in the corner room, J. and then I hopped onto the stove, and T. and Mama were wrapped in sleeping bags while we chatted.

I have a warm mug of substitute coffee beside me, and am just catching up on my evening relaxation routine and doing my best to ignore a tense headache, before going to sleep and waiting for the next work week to begin. (If you know the 'glorious chaos' emoji of Elmo from Sesame Street against a dramatic background of flames, you may picture it here.)