moon, mole

blogposts/mole.txt

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+I've just risked my life to save a mole.
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+I was walking along a country road, when I saw a baby mole, black with its little pink snout, crawling blindly in the middle of the carriageway.
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+I stepped into the road to pick it up and put it somewhere safer.
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+Moles are vermin round here. I can understand why. If you have a nice lawn, coming down to find three or four molehills in it can't be a pleasing experience.
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+They're tolerated in the fields, as far as I know, but nobody stops the plough to spare their homes. They are, as the saying goes, neither loved nor hated, but made of atoms that a superior intelligence can use for other purposes.
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+And this one was a baby. A tiny mammal unprotected in Winter. A doomed thing.
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+As I stepped into the road, a car appeared, coming fast down the other side. 
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+And as my shadow fell on the mole, it tried to run, scrabbling desperately with pathetic little flippers that weren't good enough even to lift its body off the ground.
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+But it reached the white line, and crossed, and crawled into the path of the car.
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+So I stepped out in front of it and held my hand out like a storm trooper with the palm flat for STOP.
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+And the car braked. Hard. On the icy road. And stopped in time.
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+And the old couple wound down their window, and I explained. And as I did, I started to feel sentimental and foolish. And the lady of the couple said thank you, because she hated to kill things when they drove, and she said that if I hadn't I would have ruined Christmas, because the death would have been my fault, and I'd have been thinking about it all day.
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+And while we talked the mole scurried off into the icy brambles at the side of the road. Where, without its mother, it will die, sooner rather than later, in one of the many ways baby animals die in Winter.
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+We are not rational beings. I knew that. It is always nice to have one's beliefs confirmed. But what the hell heuristic was I using, and what strange utility function did it think it was serving?
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blogposts/moon.txt

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+I've written before about how bright the full moon is.
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+Last night, I was driving to Sheffield, and at around half past ten, after about a hundred miles on the A1, I turned off the road into Sherwood Forest, and parked in a quiet layby for a smoke. 
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+It was far too cold to get out of my van, which is a comfortable place to sit anyway, and so, for I think the first time since I bought it ten years ago, I lit up in the cab.
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+There was a beautiful German mass on the radio, which I hadn't been able to hear properly with the engine running, but in the quiet and the darkness it was entrancing.
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+When my cigar was finished I carried on listening to it until it was over. After fifteen minutes in the dark I could see for miles, snowy fields and trees under the moonlight through the clouds.
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+Eventually I remembered that I had promises to keep. I started the engine, checked the empty road, indicated and pulled out.
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+After I'd been driving a few minutes it occurred to me that the light was a bit unusual. It seemed more flickery than normal, like the light from a flourescent tube, as the most moonlit of the clouds was obscured and revealed by passing trees.
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+"Oops", I thought. "Headlights."
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+Slightly embarrassed I reached for the switch and turned them on. Suddenly the cone in front of the car leapt out, daylight bright and in shocking colour. And the rest of the world disappeared.
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+Tonight I walked home from Stannington along the Stopes road, a few miles. The temperature is far below zero. The road is lit, but steep, and the pavements are covered in ice. It seemed safer to walk on the carriageway itself. There wasn't much traffic.
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+But there was some. I hate and fear cars at the best of times, but on an icy road, people not competent to drive on ice, driving cars too fast, with useless summer tires that will send them flying off the road should they meet black ice and a corner at the same time, are not reassuring companions.
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+If you don't like the way I drive, get off the pavements. And the lawns.
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+About half way back, there's a choice, to carry on the long way on the road, or short cut on the "Old Lane", an unlit track that you might get a horse or tractor up. It's usually a sea of mud, and today it's churned ice.
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+I took it anyway. It felt much safer away from the speeding steel. And the moon was out. There was plenty of light, and I felt sure-footed in a way I hadn't on the slippery road. It didn't seem nearly so dark.
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+Street lights on such a night aren't for pedestrians. They're for cars. They light the things that cars need to see. Car lights dazzle pedestrians so that they can't see properly most of the time.
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+You, Miss, who feel safer where there are lights. Consider that if you can only see the road, then you have no idea what might be lurking just off it.
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+Once upon a time, the moon lit the night. Now it's always dark.
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+Go on. What is the phase of the moon? Our ancestors knew.
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