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never made it across the lagoon alive. Elena had to persuade the sea captain to carry her husband home in a box. The penultimate chapter of On the Eve is the best thing I’ve read in months, Venice casting its not-quite-real spell of chalk-blue water, alleyway switches, churches and that lullaby symphony of drips and sea gurgles. Enchanter Death is always only a corner turn away. But today I’m far from the white stone walks, the swaying horizon and the mist hiding the mainland, all I’ve got is the fading text and the paper curl of my bedtime reading. There’s no espress with the workers coming in, no getting lost in the afternoons. I’ve concrete paths to break up, a square of dirt to level. I’m down at the sheds, buying my work boots, enjoying the vistas of modern British retail. But soon I’ll slip eastwards, out to the old empire and the lovers’ last stopping place before Venice, after their sleigh ride from Moscow. Insarov rested with his lungs in revolt, while Elena dreamed of the watery city and the uncertain land beyond. But none of us really know our next port of call.

and out to break bread with an old friend. And all the better for the pages typed and tucked under my belt this morning.

but it was a blow losing the Albion Beatnik. The Bookhouse is now a coffee shop – £2.50 for an espresso, when I can stand and lay a euro on the zinc anywhere in Italy and drink better – and the recycling crates are bulging. They’re dropping the prices in the charity shops to clear the shelves. All those unwanted trillions of printed words, lurking in bins, well-thumbed spreads spreadeagled in the leisure centre car park potholes.

in a week and the blossom bursts out around town. I walked to the folly in a winter wind, but now it’s dazzling and too warm to write. I’m not ready to shed my winter hide, but the year speeds away, there’s no holding on. And I still feel like the kid on the waltzer, terrified I’ll be spun out screaming into the dark beyond the funfair blaze.

in this town looking into the patterns, unpicking the locks. I’ve been around the track a few times but I’m still the humble fool, no great treasure house or tower built or tome tapped. This world is a carnival of delights, star-dotted backdrops, missings and interlinkings all a-swirl. I’ve far to wander.

the coffee doesn’t help. Hot milk keeps it hotter, milkless as I am the cup is cold too-quick inside my cupped hands. You can blow breath at ten. But I don’t warrant the rads, I drag out an oil heater I got for the builders, when the walls were down and the snow set on the insulation blocks. That gets it up to 16. I can hold out until the house rads come on in the late afternoon. And then I have to fight for the 20 degree buffer as the night comes down, shutting doors and closing curtains. They say it’ll snow hard tonight, but it gets warmer then. It’s coldest with the clear skies when you can count the hour on one hand, I can see the stars out and the airships blinking as they cross the cloth, not a murmur of wind, no traffic hum or yelp of life. Under the press of the boundless void. Scanning for ancient light.

for a month, an experiment to quit the half pint I’ve been heating every day for my joe for the last twenty years or so. From the third or fourth cup I don’t miss it. It was the same with sugar, I quit a two-spoon habit when I stayed at a house in Stockwell with no supplies for a few weeks. No milk in the tropics, living in a hut on Rarotonga. No milk in the village in And Quiet Flows the Don, the returning combatant cossack’s new wife branded a witch for spooking the cattle. Only a few pages in and it’s tugging me away from On the Eve. Turgenev’s dreamy ramblings don’t have the earth and blood hammer-hit of Sholokhov, like you can smell the ponies and the steppe dust. I thank the stars for the Russian scribes. I thank the stars for the two inches of java juice that keeps me turning the pages.

resting in the ivy opposite the butchers. I’ve stomped past here a hundred times and never spotted the masque, only with the fresh, sober snap of the New Year do I see it. All the things I must miss on my morning walks, hung up trying to download another distraction, I should throw the phone over a wall and spend my moments hunting for the hidden in the real world, the things lurking at the edges of the senses.

is fading. I spent the gathering days here, inside the city limits, pacing the lanes with my boxes and cards. There are more people sleeping out than ever, a change must be coming. And now to London, a last tarmac sleigh ride before the New Year. And more wisdom to search for in a week free from work, borrowed from the bowing shelves.

that leads up from the allotments, you’ll see the outline of the bridge through the bushes and the grey-sky fuzz. It’s quiet here, even with the cars taking off for London and the hospital traffic, the wind blows the engine fermata out over the floodlands. There might be nobody around for miles. You’re forgotten, but your heart keeps beating, defiant.