Advent Day Fifteen

Hello Friends!

These two photos were taken a few years ago, but how I felt taking them does not change, nor does it diminish with the passing of time.

Oh! how I miss those early morning December walks up to the bus stop to catch the ten to eight into town when the Christmas lights adorned the streets. I did not like my job, not one jot, at the JobCentre Plus, but it was a job. However, one of the few positive things, besides the cracking monthly paycheck, was the walk from my cottage in pitch dark and cold, up to the bus stop at the other end of the Smallest City where I live and past all the lights . . .

For most of the fifteen minute walk my companion was the silence, broken only by the sound of my own footsteps on the pavements. The breeze rustled through the trees on the Cross Square, and the sleepy houses that line the streets were slowly waking up to the new day that was dawning in the east. The only audible sign of human activity was a buzz of early birds in the then Post Office as people swooped in to collect their daily paper, a pouch of baccy, and a pint of milk for breakfast. The sound of their chatter spilled out in both Welsh and English on to the pavement as I walked on by to the bus that by now had come in from Fishguard, disgorged the handful of passengers working in St Davids and was now waiting the arrival of the Haverfordwest bound travellers to alight. The Christmas lights were on and I felt it was just me and the lights in this magical world of light. I close my eyes and am there once more, enveloped in the frosty cold air of a perfect winter's morning . . .

There were other magical moments too, that changed throughout the year, as five mornings a week I travelled east and five afternoons a week I travelled west . . . in Spring the hawthorn trees at the bottom of Clegyr Hill lined the road with branches full of candyfloss puffs of bridal white, and in the Autumn months were laden with bright red berries . . . the distant, snow dusted crags of the Preselis in Winter . . . the vivid yellow fields of oil rapeseed against a vibrant blue Summer sky . . . days when frost shimmered like diamonds in the pale Winter sunshine . . . days when everything melted under the burning heat of a scorching Summer sun . . . early morning dew made visible the otherwise hidden spider webs that draped the footbridge by Ocky Whites . . . in April and May the verges by the Rising Sun star spotted with clumps of fragrant Cowslips . . . Cow Parsley frothed along the hedgerows and Early Purple Orchids bloomed . . . trees, dormant over Winter came into bud, full leaf, changed colour then shed their leaves with the changing seasons of the year . . . and all the while the tide ebbed away and flowed back to Newgale with its ever changing moods that always caught the breath . . . the high, grass topped cliffs, the mile long golden sands, the bay with its ever changing hues of turquoise blue and green and grey . . . days when the sea boiled and roiled in fury, and the land and the sea and the sky merged into one big, grey mantle . . . days when thick fog rolled off the cliffs from Brawdy and spilled, like thick cream onto the bay, molding the cliffs, . . . days when the sand shimmered like burnished gold, the azure sea shone like diamonds, and the sky so clear and blue it hurt your eyes to look at it. When one tires of the view at Newgale one is tired of life . . .

and so the days rolled on, each different from the last and different from the next, but always full of beauty and wondrous surprise . . . like the coming New Year . . .

Apologies for the huge digression from the season, but the memories just started flowing and I just kept typing, a stream of conscious thought, a beacon of light in the dark days of Winter when it is so dismal we need a

gentle reminder that the light will soon be returning to the world, so therein lies the tenuous connection!

Until tomorrow . . .