Slivers of light for 2026

This is Siena's Fontebranda, mentioned in Dante and other Italian classics, built in the 13th century by the Guild of Woolmakers. We revisited it in brilliant sunshine on St Stephen's Day after a splendid Christmas feast which began with a Swedish breakfast, 

and still the light broke through in patches. If I use it as a metaphor for where we are now, it's a loose comparison: we try to swim in the strips of light, aware that millions around the world are confined to the darker patches (where carp and goldfish glide, nevertheless). 

I know that my own life, for all its setbacks in recent years, is a lucky one, not least in the freedom and the resources we have to wander Italy and discover new places in the weeks leading up to Christmas each year. But the darker patches have become muddier for Americans, Ukrainians, Sudanese, trying or failing to lead their own private lives as public disaster engulfs them. There's some hope that the light may expand in the mid-terms, that this horror that the USA is going through, to which so many of its citizens don't seem to be fully awake, may be at least partly reversed and its perpetrators may face some kind of justice. 

Not sure whether Zelenskyy's New Year message is posted on Xitter or not - what the hell at this particular point - but it has special eloquence in stating 'what keeps us going: experience and memory, the world of home, hope and faith'. We all understand that, except perhaps the tyrants of the USA and Russia, wishing each other a happy new year full of further destruction and loss of life. And hopefully more people will realise the possibility of collective action.

America may turn things round, but I fear the UK is heading towards the worst, currently reeling under a Labour government persecuting protesters, refusing to call the Israeli murder of Palestinians what it is - genocide - and banging on about growth. Who will take over from all this - Deform, or the hope offered by the Greens? Anyway, Ireland beckons, where marching for Palestine still doesn't leave anyone in danger of arrest, where despite problems things are relatively good right now. We see how that can all change. In the meantime, here's a last glimpse of early morning light in Torino on our last morning, in the square where we stayed, with the Alps seeming so close at the end of the street,

and the 30th looking over to Dublin's Vesuvius, the Sugarloaf mountain, from Sorrento Park in Dalkey - Killiney Bay = the Bay of Naples... 

Athbhliain faoi mhaise daoibh! And yes, I had to look that up, but I fully intend to take Irish lessons in 2026. What comes more easily to me is the quotations from the end of Dante's Purgatorio, which Sophie painted on to her brilliant hallway floorcloth with a reference to the contrada to which she has been admitted, Onda. 

In English, straightforwardly (there are some very fussy translations out there):

I came back from that holiest of waves
   remade, refreshed as any new tree is,
   renewed, refreshed with foliage anew,
pure and prepared to rise towards the stars.

May we all find access to that 'holiest of waves' in the midst of our dark wood.