And this means?

Can you depend on nothing these days?

First, my husband of- so many years we've stopped counting, goes and loses his wedding ring. We go through the 'when did you last see it?', 'why would you take it off?' bit. Not that I'm sure I want an answer to either of these questions though I can conjure up several, straight off. His variations on 'search me' come as a relief. (Yes, I know it was me wrote the book about a lost ring, but that was made up, dear). Then (and this is a man who can forget his own birthday, never mind mine) he presents me with a card for St Ddwynwen's Day. Yesterday. Never happened before. Why would it?I suppose it is her day. Too miserable to check: she is a saint famous for a. being particularly difficult to pronounce by anyone non-Welsh and b. going into the longest sulk in history. What is he trying to tell me?

So now it's the day after St D's day and there are signs and portents everywhere. That huge beech tree has been felled by a not particularly strong wind and is blocking my favourite walk. And just in case I don't get it, a headless dove (still warm, its crop filled with, I guess, ivy berries) has been dropped beside the lane on my return. A puff of soft grey feathers show the exact spot the buzzard struck. Probably I've interrupted the feast so am responsible for another victim soon to be decapitated beyond the woods. I carry the weightless corpse into the field for the buzzard, but more likely the fox or badger to find.

Don't get too comfortable, all this is saying. Watch the skies.

The ripples of malice have infected the new book. It seems to have reinvented itself, no longer calls itself the JA but 'something to do with darkness'. That's it. Just as with new babies, I - its parent - find a title I like in the Penguin Dictionary of First Names. Then it grows to the stage where you can't imagine it being called anything else. If it had aunties they'd be saying 'oo-o he looks so-o like a little JA doesn't he?' But now, suddenly, a forty-thousand word teenager, it's decided to hole up in its sour bedroom while considering the options. 'Something to do with darkness' - that's what I get when I try to feed it. 'Maybe Dark-Something'. It'll let me know.