comes January. I’ve been reading tales of the Silent Service, their life inside the creaking pressure hulls and ice or tropic fug glistening on compressed cork walls. They called surface sailors skimmers. It must have been strange living in steel tubes for fifty-day patrols, with some men in the engine watch never climbing the tower ladders to see a patch of sky. It’s caused me to gape at the spaces around me, my study walls, shop aisles, car park tiles. It’s too rare that I’m out in the unbuilt open. Winter’s bite – or depth charges – drives the retreat to sheltering walls.
