I didn't bring the handheld so I'm writing on paper instead.

Calm, a completely calm day, but humid, with low cloud that could change into light rain, or into mist or fog at ground level. A large crow walks about near me, with its head and beak jerking back and fore at about twice the speed of its body over the ground. A small girl is walking hand-in-hand with a man and a woman - with both her arms outstretched sideways. The man, who looks about sixty, is pushing a buggy. The sun shines faintly through the misty cloud layer. I hear two aircraft but I can't see them.

Today I'm going to attempt some kind of connective writing*... A blob of liquid, is it from a bird?, lands on my cuff. I look at my watch and see that soon I must move to catch the train which will get me back by a promised time. While walking I've been thinking about time, and the avoidance of hurry, and the folly of attempting several things at once. I resolved to avoid both these mistakes by insisting on not doing anything until ready... and to accept the consequences of that. If I can remember.

*Later: what came of it was the story of Deon and his comparing of prehistoric times with the present - and with those of Uncle Evan. I wanted a fictional review of softopia - and this was how it emerged, unexpectedly!

11:56 Station. 2 minutes to wait. Imposed tempo of railway. Not as destructive of human life as was the state of some men I passed shovelling and controlling an hydraulic arm and grabber (or whatever it's called) to transfer soil from a huge shuddering truck to the road surface (prior to it becoming part of someone's garden, I suppose). They and the machine seemed to be acting at many times the speed needed for 'improving a garden'. And gardens themselves seem to me to be unnatural distortions of the tempo and distribution of plant growth. I'm sorry to say that I don't like them, not the real ones nor the mythical ones that are so often taken as models of peace and rightness. I prefer the sea or the sky, or a forest.

This question of tempo, of reconnecting human tempo back to that of bodily and cosmic life, - it will have to be tackled (though not in a hurry, I suppose!). It will call for the greatest of adjustments.