jackals, false grails: the lonesome era

I head away from home along a country lane. It's cold. It's dawn. Haliborange clouds rip the sky apart over cottages, farms and the huge tv mast on the hill. Travelling east there's nothing higher than this until you reach the Ural Mountains in Russia, which might as well be Mordor. There's no eye of Sauron here though. The tv tower beams CBeebies directly into the bedroom of the milk gurgling child I leave behind.

It's cold in the car. I'll be miles away before I can turn the heater down to something steady. It's too early for music. I listen to the news. It's about the roads, the congestion, the cars, the trucks and the white vans. I turn it off. I don't need telling. I drink hot coffee from a metal mug. I drive to work in silence.