I’m taking a break from worrying about Shield and The Gilded Scarab for a day. I’ve signed up to do around 20 blog posts to cover the two launches over a period of about a month, and before I start the Herculean task of writing those posts, I’m taking that deep breath before the race starts. Not that I’m any good at racing, you understand. I’m not built for it, and the undercarriage is too close to the ground.

So, I decided that today I’ll write a blog post that isn’t about writing, but about living. To refresh the palate, so to speak, before plunging back into the world of Rafe, or that of Bennet and Flynn.

I do my living in London. Still, I think the greatest city in the world, no matter what later claims are made by Johnnies-come-lately all over the globe. London is where three thousand years of history and the brashness of today!right now!me!shiny! sit cheek by jowl and are comfortable with each other. It’s a city that can be both indescribably beautiful and indescribably dirty, and manage that in adjoining streets. Actually, quite often in the same street.

I don’t live in a posh bit of London. Anything but. I live out in the exotic East, the original melting pot, where row after row after row of small houses fill the landscape for more square miles than you think you can fit into one lone city. Not a pretty landscape, but if there’s one thing London prides itself upon, it’s our parks. We have loads of them. And one is only five minutes away from my front door.

Molly, the Deputy Editor, regards the park as her back garden. Her daily walks (I walk, she runs) are made there. She regards each of the park keepers as her own particular friend, chases around the football pitch with other dogs or (occasionally, when she’s humouring me) after balls, and considers it her God-given mission to eradicate every squirrel that dares stick its nose over the park gate.

Today, the park was special. Today was one of those glorious winter mornings that start out bitterly, bitterly cold, with a thick white ground frost that glitters and sparkles in the light of a cool, low yellow sun hanging in a brilliantly blue sky. Today, the park made even my bit of industrialised, poor-person’s London look magnificent.

 (Click on this one ^ to see every spicule of rime frost
glitter better than the Koh-i-noor.)

For once I had my camera with me, and for once Molly sat quietly and waited for me every time I saw a leaf so thick with frost, you could see each and every crystal.

London was really very beautiful this morning. I’m glad I saw it. I do love winter days when they are cold and yet burn like fire, or

 if the secret ministry of frost,
Shall hang them up in silent icicles

I hope your day was as as good as mine. Have a good weekend, peeps.