LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE On 1 March I invited four friends for a properly distanced coffee on the terrace, even though it was the first day of another red-zone lockdown, in response to a third wave of COVID-19. Squinting in bright,…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE 13 February It’s snowing again, a lazy tumble hiding not a thing, dropping a delicate web over tree and field, garden and wall. My husband says he’s done with winter, and this half-hearted effort seems to show…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE 1 February Here’s a new month in the new year, but I can’t escape a recurring sense of déjà vu, of experience spiralling back upon itself. It feels as if the same full moon has been rising…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE 13 January 2021 We’re having a proper winter, snowy and cold, the kind we haven’t seen for a couple of years. The landscape is just as it should be—snow-covered hills, bare branches—a perfect study in black on…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE I could quote Sweet Baby James to tell you about the first of December, go on to describe the hush and sweep of falling snow, how it dropped a curtain between house and valley and filled our…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE With November comes la nebbia, the fog that rises from Piemontese valleys and blankets the plain of Lombardia. On the day before the United States presidential election I watched it form above our prato, the damp air of a chilly afternoon…
LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE October has been kind from beginning to end—sunny days, cooler nights and early mornings, leaves of red, gold, flame, and russet filtering the incomparable light of autumn afternoons. As the month ends, I have taken my car…
