At the Nadir of the Calendar Year

Yesterday I went out briefly in the windy evening, wet with light and drizzly rain that felt like snow on the face, to buy face masks and other necessaries at a drugstore.

Along the way I stopped at a large florist's shop. While the Berlin landscape in general is not strikingly green at the present moment, there at least tulip bouquets were amply bundled along the sidewalk. Winter aconites were deep, bruised yellow and — as they stood in their earth-filled pots bowing their flamboyant, ruffed little heads — resembled a rank of bishop or cardinal that the Catholic church hasn't yet invented. On a top shelf, pale crocuses were splitting into flower. And at the end, early white and yellow daffodils were bristling.

In the end I bought yellow-hearted, pink primroses that had been grown in Germany (Schleswig-Holstein), along with a terra cotta saucer to catch the water.

Indoors, where I paid, large pots of ivy swung their leaves near thriving houseplants like 'mother-in-law's tongue', a few women shoppers were making their selections, and a wall of shelves bristled with teddy bears made of red roses and rectangular towers made of Ferrero Rocher, for the Valentine's Day shopping bonanza.

I've been an Eeyore for most of the weekend. (Not 'Eyesore,' as the spell check option would have it.)

In between other things, the weather has rather depressed me. And even while sleeping, work worries have nagged away at me. That said, it's been worse, so I have a regrettably unhealthy threshold to measure against.

This morning I arose early because my uncle-and-colleague M. had arranged a walk. In the end, I went to get tested for Covid, partly recharged my smartphone battery with a belated realization of its necessity, cycled fairly safely with a few buffeting side winds from yesterday night's storm, and finally reached the exit of the late 1920s S-Bahn station Priesterweg where M. was waiting.

I had arrived ten minutes late when I saw him standing beneath a leafless bush underneath an equally leafless oak tree outside the station. But he informed me — face at first a little pale and grim beneath a warm woolly winter hat — that I was the first one there. We found out ten minutes later that nobody else was coming, which we understood given the circumstances!

In any case, the park we'd partly come to see was closed until noon due to the weather conditions. So the question was how to entertain ourselves. In the end, I suggested that we just both visit the family apartment, and we stepped back onto the train platform.

Part of the view was nice while we waited for our train. The rectangular lattice-paned stair cases and an intact 1920s cabin, with sky-blue tiles and brick moulding and old-fashioned white-framed wooden door and window frames, for example. The old reception part of the train station, with its unassumingly proportioned bare brick, factory-style and briskly rectilinear, a minimalist clock face on a white ground perched proudly on a tower, was also charming.

Right alongside us a tranche of thick old, white-patched birch stumps, leafless trees standing and fallen, revealed birds' nests, and new and old tangles of gold-green mistletoe, beneath the tower of the park we hadn't entered, alongside the railway tracks, lent a touch of mystery.

To the other side of the tracks, the distant ridge of an unbroken line of 19th-century apartment buildings, now painted yellows and pinks but lost a little in the mist above the garden colonies, lent a touch of history and drama.

And the rail platform was clean.

But the wind was howling and draughty. The trains were running at irregular intervals due to the weather conditions. We waited 15 minutes for ours, and some of those '15 minutes' were rather longer than sixty seconds. (Which admittedly would be dramatically long only in places like Berlin, where we're rather spoiled by frequent 10 minute train cycles even on weekends.)

Also, the billboards at this rail station were dedicated to an anti-sexually-transmitted-disease campaign. While the idea is laudable, garish pictures of bare bottom cheeks and the inquiry ARE YOU ITCHING? were staring at us as we walked up and down to keep warm.

The 15 minutes were spent, in short, in physical, mental, and aesthetic discomfort.

But the train arrived, we reached our destination safely, we left the station and walked to the family apartment. We had cookies and tea, hot coffee and bread buns left over from breakfast; and chatted with Mama and Ge. and J.

Then I read a few chapters of Vincent Cronin's 1960s biography of Louis XIV.

We also had fried potatoes for dinner, and T. came over fresh from an active day where she'd met up with multiple colleagues.

Let's hope things become better also in general.