Mild, dry morning, pewter and silver-gilt sky. The mild weather means no birds, they're a regular temperature gauge, but the squirrel is busy out there, upside down and precarious, scoffing freebies. I'm waiting here at my desk for the news that the dreadful Forever War (You remember? My family's interactive gothic novel, the one with all the Dickensian lawyers in it) is finally over. Not a victory, and the people who most mattered are gone, anyway, but not a defeat either, and (with the proviso that there's always been another turn of the screw before when I've thought this), just maybe, I really will be home for Christmas this time.