If by chance you should look for me perhaps you'll not me find

I watched events in America with horror, anger, and fear for all my friends over there. I couldn't do much more than eff, blind, and cee about it on Facebook. Ohe of the more coherent things I said about Trump was that "It's not just that he thinks he has a God-given right to rule. He actually seems to believe he is God." The man is a traitor, not just to his country, but to the human race. One nation says no to him, and this is what happens. Imagine his answer if the world had said it.  I want him impeached, arrested, imprisoned. Not executed - I've always been opposed to capital punishment, and though it's very tempting to change my opinion in this one case, he'd die still thinking he was was right, and the obscene dipshits who get called "protesters" instead of the terrorists they are will only see him as a martyr. I wonder if he even thinks he can die. Let him whine and rage in a soundproof, social-media proof cell for the rest of his life. If his is the only voice he's ever heard, then he can still have that; but deny him listeners. Ms Harris, Mr Biden: I hope you can cut the tumours out.

Despite this I managed to sleep the almost-unknown "straight eight". Some dream or dreams of what I thought was a very sinuous street map, then the diagram of a tapeworm, then possibly the worm itself. But it might also have been the journey of the first traveller in the British time programme; I was her partner n the dream, waiting anxiously for her to arrive. We already had the evidence of her turning up a year in the past - paper clippings, TV footage - but no memory of it. And all this kept fluctuating  with her meeting two different lovers: a gamine huge-eyed man with soft-cropped hair, and a laughing red-haired woman in a tartan dress. I was jealous of them - who the hell were they? Somehow I realised they were both me. It was my own timeline shuffling like a hand of cards, trying to decide what gender I could become in order so my lover could land. I was at peace with that, but woke before anything resolved.

I woke to a hard frost and freezing fog and decided to go out, bundled in two overcoats. I probably have Raynauds: even in leather mittens my fingertips were numb. I took my old opera glasses in case I spotted any good birdlife: in the end nothing more unusual than a pair of longtailed tits hopping right over my head with little chirps. They looked like Victorian automata of birds. Wraithy silver fields,  honeysuckles pushing out their first leaves, crystal ghost trees - I was feeling kind towards winter. And then I found the fox in the ice by Catney Bridge, right by the towpath. The ice must have given way under him then reformed. It was horrifying and strange but also beautiful in an Angela Carter way: He was snout-down, his ears more charcoal than flame, with a dark streak on the back, his brush lifted - it was as if time had stopped on him when he was midpounce. He didn't look dead. It badly upset me. All I could do was hope it'd been quick; as it was I nearly tumbled in myself looking down. I walked back and the image followed; I wish it had been the fox himself, trotting over the ice.