folds of memory

I had just returned from the land of white foxes and red roofed houses and smoke smelling of peat fires and dried fish, and was immediately inoculated against whole kingdoms of micro-organisms and sent with a team and an ill-packed rucksack to determine the truth. The jungle was a child's picture book jungle, full of Rudyard Kipling animals chattering, slithering, camouflaged and caught in a moment of Riki Tiki Tavi clarity before disappearing again, becoming nothing more than the shadow of a tree. There were Tarzan's apes and chimpanzees and tiny little long-tailed monkeys who would hang upside down from branches, like children on a playground. There were all manner of flying birds and insects, the entire scale of the animal kingdom inverted, hummingbirds of bright tangerine orange no longer than a thumb, and wasps of yellow ferocity that were the size of kittens.

reading
Any human heart by William Boyd

weather
the warmest winter ever, all for the new boots and coat