Technically this picture was taken last night rather than today but it was late last night, after I thought I'd ended the day, and today has been uneventful and hasn't provided an image to replace it. This is also a REALLY bad picture, taken hand held in the dark in the hope of catching the glow lighting the sky from the fire burning in the cooling towers of the power station and the arc of the water hoses rising above it, they're kind of in there somewhere but if you hadn't seen the real thing you'd be hard pressed to spot them! There was no way I was carrying a tripod up that hill so there you go.

I had a new and unsettling experience last night. The news had come about the fire and I decided to grab coat and camera and head on up Ladygrove Hill to see if I could get a picture of it. I pulled up in front of the deserted shops in the middle of the housing scheme and walked out of the pool of light of the lonely street light, off the footpaths and up the black mass of the hill which you could feel rather than see. It was hard going so I stopped for a moment and looked around, pitch dark, when the wind changed you could hear the fuss from the hundred firefighters at the cooling towers, shouts, engines, sirens as another fire engine made its way through the town (25 of them in the end). Nearer to there was little noise, the occasional footstep of unseen feet on the darkened pathways...and I suddenly realised I was feeling something I hadn't felt in all those years I lived or walked around the night in various places such as the East End of London and the towpath of the Regents canal where the addicts shot up under the bridges and predators watched for prey...something awfully close to fear. In my time I've been attacked, mugged, even knifed (which ended up costing me a kidney) but I was never really scared in all of that, too busy concentrating on the situation or trying to make sure those responsible at least knew they'd been in a fight ...but here I was in a quiet south Oxfordshire housing estate and jumpy as hell. I was sufficiently taken aback to stand there and try and work out why I felt that way in this relatively safe and certainly well known place, I came to the conclusion it was because I was shuffling on crutches and more than half blind (cataracts play hell with your night vision), what I was feeling was vulnerable, powerless , all my self sufficiency knocked out of me by the awareness that there were others here in the dark with me and that if something happened there was bugger all I could do about it. I felt like turning around and heading straight back to the safety of the car and the street lights, I may even have considered it seriously for a second before I got angry at myself, I'd decided I was going somewhere and I wasn't going to be stopped by any imagined fears I'd have laughed at a decade ago, hell if anything was going to go wrong it was more likely to be giving myself a heart attack or falling and breaking my neck climbing a hill in the dark - prospects that didn't bother me at all - rather than a local Ned. I got to the the top and found a tiny group of others with the same idea of finding a viewpoint. We stood in silence watching the glow of the fire. When I did gingerly make my way down someone made me jump out of my skin, running out of the darkness on my right (completely blind) side, but of course they had no interest in me and simply vanished back into the darkness on the other side. This is an aspect of my condition I hadn't really considered, give me a tangible threat, a new physical deterioration, a physical problem and I'll try and deal with it as best I can but this knowledge of ones own powerlessness...that's a new sensation or perhaps rather an aspect I'd not been self aware enough to consider, one that can stop you doing what you want, what you need to do, one that could make you a prisoner.