I’ve been thinking about my brother’s advice that process is much better left unseen, that the result of a piece of writing is not enhanced by seeing the intestinal knots and their unravelling, but rather better if it is just the final result that is seen. I don’t know.

I write three pages longhand every morning, space clearing, and I don’t know  has been the number one phrase this week. I do know that here, for the next few lines I want to take you for a walk, the walk I do on most days: along Gloucester Road, Clifton Road, down the alleyway where the squirrel jumps, to the canal; and then along the canal to the stone bridge and beyond: come with me.

They’re making humps in the road at the moment. There were humps, rather gentle humps, but they were deemed not humpy enough, even though they were new, so they have been taken away and new humpier ones are in the making. I don’t really look at the road when I’m walking, I look at the rooftops, the sky. I see starlings and jackdaws, wood pigeons and collared doves. Occasionally a blackbird screeches across, and there are generally sparrows chippering away in the roof gutters and holly bushes.

After Gloucester Road becomes Clifton Road I walk past the house that has a walnut tree in the garden, where the walnuts we had with our breakfast came from, and then the house that is being made anew in a modern ecocentric way. At the end, on the left, is the huge chestnut tree that sheds its nuts all over the little lawn. One day I watched a squirrel quietly eating one of the chestnuts, nibbling it, turning it, nibbling it again, unaware of me. Maybe the same squirrel follows me sometimes as I turn down towards the canal; maybe overtakes me unseen to reappear ahead of me on the top of the fence, and show me his skills by jumping from one side to the other, and then up into the beech tree there; or maybe that’s another squirrel.

I emerge beside the canal. Today Louise was with me and we stood looking at the water. Somehow that was enough. There was no need for the swan to fly past a foot above the water, carrying with it another, it’s reflection, equally majestic. There was no need for a kingfisher to appear and glint in the willow strands, before flashing off towards town; no need for another kingfisher to appear in Louise’s binoculars, as she searched in the bare branches of an alder tree, and dive into the water; it was enough to stroll along in the sunshine, wrapped warmly against the frost, peaceful, arm in arm.

The world was out to greet us this morning. A great spotted woodpecker glinting in the sun, and then another; an exploration in a field looking for redwings (which we did not find); back to the path, and on and on, very slowly. We walked past the place where I first saw a redwing here, looking and looking until I finally decided that that was what it was; past the place where I first saw gadwall here, now a field, flooded then; where Louise saw a great white egret and I went later and it was still there; where we saw a sparrowhawk sitting on a post and watched it and watched it; on and on.

Up on the old railway track we stopped and peered up at finches in the treetops eating seeds from the alder cones. Strobiles, they’re called. I’ve just looked it up. It’s not really a word anyone needs to know, but there is: the cones of the alder tree are called strobiles. What challenged us was what species of finch they were. In the end we decided they were goldfinches and siskins. There may have been others, but we weren’t sure. They were hard to see clearly. We did see a treecreeper there, and another later. I always think of a letter my mother wrote to me once years ago when I see a treecreeper. At the end of the letter she drew three or four stick trees, and a dotted line to denote the path of a little treecreeper as she went up one tree searching for food in the crevices of the bark before floating down to the bottom on the next tree and climbing again. I like treecreepers.

I am going to stop writing now before I get to the end of this walk, before we walk past the place where perhaps tomorrow morning Louise will be swimming, and on home past noisy Canada geese. I will stop here, because here we saw a goldcrest. So often the Merlin app has heard one, although we never do, and today there was a clear and frustrating sonogram – and then there it was – so tiny, so neat, so busy. I couldn’t get my binoculars up to see it, for fear of losing it, but Louise did, and saw the tell-tale flash of gold on the top of it’s head.

All that was yesterday. Since then I have enjoyed (is that the right word?) a night of cricket and been to my my yoga class. Louise has actually swum in the river.

And now I have published my regular weekly blog!