Emmanuel

On Sunday night I drove down the A1 to Cambridge, a journey so stressful that I would have willingly pulled over into a lay-by and spent the night in the car, had not my lovely daughter been waiting for me. There is a peculiar kind of hell in driving on the A1 on a dark winter's night. It's like war. Everyone on that narrow road wants to be elsewhere, their heads are full of the drama of the weekend (and the impending doom of the working week ahead, just hours away) so they all drive like they've got one day left to live. I'm rather keen to hang on to my life and drive accordingly incurring the wrath of every other suicide junkie. By the time I got to Cambridge I wanted to a) start breathing normally again and b) celebrate my absolute relief at having cheated death by getting as drunk as possible.

Rosh was waiting for me and we hit a surprisingly empty Cambridge and noshed, drank and talked for three hours non-stop. I tumbled into bed just after 11pm and woke up the next morning not to dogs howling (my usual early morning auditory accompaniment) but to ducks quacking and a lone blackbird woken into life by the city lights. I took a quick snap of Emmanuel before I left, a place so calm and luminous it would make anyone want to sit down and study.