View to Shap Summit

Looking at the summit webcam and traffic reports before setting off for work I had no hesitation in deciding against going over Shap but it looked as though the Tebay-Kendal route was okay. Big mistake. Once on that route I almost instantly realised it was a bad move but was committed and there was nowhere I could turn. I gingerly ploughed on. After some miles of not seeing anyone I found a spot to pull up a little off the tracks without blocking anyone and which I could pull back out of. I sat for a bit and wondered whether to keep going or just sit there and cry! After a while a little convoy came crawling along and I tagged on at the back and arrived safely in the freezing fog of Kendal (extra). Luckily I was able to head back to Penrith mid afternoon so I braved Shap. It was spectacularly stunningly pristine and beautiful.
...although passed this salutary reminder...
https://mobile.twitter.com/CumbriaRoadsPol/status/1090244779932352513/photo/1
(I was saddened to read the twitter comments where only a few seemed to realise or care that some poor soul was in that car...something wrong with our disconnected so-called connected world).

Work is very depressingly continuing with its parallel process with Brexit and I was talking with craggy this afternoon about whether we should have a hard border at Shap. It’s a process in which there appears to be an entirely disingenuous pretence at negotiation and consultation over a fait a complis. If you engage with that process you become complicit in the ‘we’ve consulted/due process’-myth, if you don’t engage you seem uninterested. Damned either way.

And, further thoughts on power at so many levels and contexts.

The Snow Man - Wallace Stevens

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.