Country diary: Starry-eyed, watching the lights in the dark

The sun has stopped working. The Latin sol means to stand still. In December, the hiatus is around our star's southernmost rising and setting points and lasts about two weeks to the naked eye. It gives us the shortest of daylight hours in the north. There wasn't enough today and we ended our afternoon walk gathering dark to the sound of bird roosting rituals and the nightly round of blackbird pseudo alarm calls.

By 10 o'clock, the cold is clean and sharp as a surgical blade. The moon is not yet visible but the night is vivid with something bigger than life.

There is a smudge on our lane that is 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609-. In the south-eastern part of the country, my favorite light in the sky has risen. Mars is showing gold over the other side. Above them all, the seven sisters of the Pleiades are dancing, nuclear ring-a-roses. The world's oldest known depiction of astronomy is on display in the British Museum. At the latitude where the disc was found, there is a golden arcs on the rim of the disc.

A new light illuminates the night with white gold. Several of the brightest, longest-lived, longest-tailed I have ever seen are included in the shower. I mention it on social media and other people are looking up from bedroom windows and gardens.

This will be the turning of my year. We will be moving a lot by January. It's better to call it now because there are lights in the dark that remind me that the stars are ours.