For the past few weeks I have been visited occasionally by what I can only describe as a half-heavenly image of a flying-haired, bushy-eyebrowed satyr — were he to be crossed with Nigel Hawthorne’s mad King George in a diaphanous nightdress.

Sensual in substance and form, the apparition involves a meadow romp in which he and I are holding hands and dancing round and round in a clockwise circle. Knees high. Laughter spilling. So ineffably a thing of the spirit, I dare not write too much about it for fear it will not wish to return. Still, I can see that it is a signpost pointing me in the direction of my earthly future, one in which I throw off the notion that life is a vale of tears and I am its wailing wall.

Image