A winter walk to Fen Ditton

Yesterday Susanna and I took a New Year walk along the river to Fen Ditton for a drink at The Plough. It was a clear cold day and the sunset on the way back was splendid. Here, for your pleasure, are a few photos from the walk. All taken with my iPhone6+ and the Hipstamatic app.

In my mind as we walked was the opening of Auden's New Year Letter (1940) which begins:

Under the familiar weight
Of winter, conscience and the State,
In loose formations of good cheer,
Love, language, loneliness and fear,
Towards the habits of next year,
Along the streets the people flow,
Singing or sighing as they go:
Exalte, piano, or in doubt,
All our reflections turn about
A common meditative norm,
Retrenchment, Sacrifice, Reform.

Susanna and I certainly walked under these familiar weights and, although the sunlight and chill air was restoratively bracing, it has to be said, they felt to us heavier and more pressing than in earlier years. Perhaps they are beginning to become as weighty as they were when Auden wrote them?