Today, I have been in a deep, deep mood. The dense prospect of wading
through the stacks my lecturers have so graciously prepared was not an
attractive one. Wandering from room to library and back I realised that
I'd reached an impasse. Work was not going to be tackled.

So I decided to move outside and tackle a Lucky Strike instead. From my
room, I can see Three Figures. It's probably my favourite piece of art
in the college - understated, organic, shambolic and totemic. Until
recently it was surrounded by some metal fencing, which did a good job
of defiling the glade it's surrounded by. A few weeks ago I got rid of
the fencing. Maintenance have yet to complain.

Sitting on the bench, staring at the sculpture, I noticed a blackbird
was using it as a vantage point. I could hear another singing in the
trees, and I imagined this one was doing some detective work. He hopped
to the other side of the plinth and strained his head forward. Dropping
to the ground he began taking tentative hops towards me. He soon took
flight off somewhere else.

I recalled what the trees behind had looked like when I first moved in.
A golden weave of dry leaves and branch, something genuinely unlike
trees I'd ever seen. For the previous 16 years I had been living in the
Middle East, where the straggled trees are covered in sand blown in from
the surrounding desert, where someone has permanently turned the
contrast knob all the way down.

Their branches had since been stripped bare by the cold, then dressed
again. Moving in the wind, I had a sense of a world in motion while the
college lay static around me. The nicotine had long since faded. I
certainly wasn't refreshed, but I was refilled somewhat by a brief
conversation with the space I live in.