In the Low Winter Light

From 15thDecember 2024

The northern lands are almost winter quiet now, at the still point of their hibernations. When early mornings are darkest and the darkness has begun its rising back, minutes-by-minutes, earlier each afternoon. Time then and right now to walk for the sake of it in the briefly here time of the low winter light. Like I did along Hope Street in Liverpool as the north approached its Winter Solstice.

Audio version:

On Hope Street

My walks, so you know, are just the walks these days. Along fewer and more regular routes than when I’d be exploring and explaining the city in an earlier life. Yesterday’s walk being much like the one I wrote about a fortnight ago. The walk of across the parks to the outer edge of the city centre, with variations my feet decide on along the way as they’ll usually do. While I watch where they take me.

In an earlier life when I was walking and writing as the blog called “A Sense of Place” I’d describe the routes and places I’d go and tell stories of them, sometimes with maps, as I went along. Like I was a guide and explorer, telling traveller’s tales.

But now, in these later days I walk for different reasons than the discoveries and explanations of back then. To think more, to be out in the light, for the movement, the wellness and sometimes the stillness of them. Then sometimes to hardly think at all, but simply to walk. Feeling the air in my lungs, the blood in my muscles, my feet on the pavements, and occasionally through a field or two, of Liverpool, my walking place.

And on this day? Like always on leaving the house it was “Just for a walk.” Until a mile or two along, on the parks to the outer edges of the city centre route, I noticed the light. And deciding I might like to write about it, I began taking photographs.

Across Falkner Square I’d reached the University Library soon after midday. And taking a photograph from there of the light already dimming over Abercromby Square outside, had decided I’d move on to Hope Street for the main photographs I’d put into what I’m writing here. Knowing the light in these ones so far wasn’t quite right. Too “Morning” the first two. Then almost too late on that last one.

So I walked, quickly.

Round the corner from Abercromby, to opposite the Catholic Cathedral then next to the Everyman Theatre. Where I walked onto Hope Street and into the full on low winter light. There like I’d thought it might be about now, this. And just how I’d hoped. Glittering up the roadway ahead of me, past the Philharmonic Hall and Pub, glinting off the windows and cars by the London Carriage Works, onto the twin statues of the saintly bishops¹ between their cathedrals, past the Institute of Performing Arts, and shining all the way to the Anglican Cathedral. All along Hope Street, like a river of light.

And I’ll shut up now while you look at the pictures. Of the low winter light, flowing ahead of us, along Hope Street.

Ten minutes it probably took me, to take all these photographs and gather the light in my camera, from one end of Hope Street to the other.

And by soon after then, when I’d dropped off some books at Toxteth Library and was arriving at Squash for a sit and a drink, the best of the light had already gone. And the darkness was beginning its rise as I walked home, through the Welsh Streets and the parks, one early afternoon of the week before the Winter’s Solstice, before the lighter days began their slow and tentative return to our northern lands.

This was precious though. The hours of walking and thinking there and back, either side of those ten perfect minutes, along Hope Street in Liverpool in the low winter light.

End Piece

For this time’s recommended reading I’m continuing with the low winter light theme. But going much further north, to Orkney. Where I want to encourage you to have a read and a watch of artist Samantha Clark’s writing and work at “The Life Boat.”

Here’s a film of her in her island studio talking about her work “exploring the movement of water and light” as she describes it, here and working on her beautiful paintings.

Her writing is equally liquid, flowing, always interesting, useful and recommended. So do have a read here.

A day after that Hope Street walk, in a late afternoon break from writing this, I walked over to The Mystery, the closest of the parks to where I live, and watched the last of that day’s low winter light. Setting in all its golden glory.

And that’s all for this time, and possibly this year. Though you never know in these still dark days. Some more writing might be just the thing I’ll feel like doing, to brighten my own northern sky.

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1. Not official canonisations, just from me for their joint caring and peace-keeping in the uprisings of the early 1980s.