per iter tenebricosum

Strolling by the riverside within walking distance of the town centre.

I become aware of a fallow deer standing nearby looking at me.

Lovely tawny creature.

Not much older than a fawn.

Oh shape of life sculpted from pure joy.

Oh thought in the creator's mind.

Oh presence.

Well you know.

Entranced I watch.

She skips off into the trees.

There is a stillness in  my consciousness in the space where she has been.

Presently the stillness is filled by bluff brisk matronly Maisie Baines coming striding along the riverbank like a small planet, in grey anorak and don't mess with me bobble hat, taking her evening constitutional.

She is a perpetually angry woman  existentially angst ridden, stewing in a lifetime of unspecified resentments, and displaying for many years what one might postulate is a particularly inexplicable distaste for me.

She teaches Reiki for healing in one of the night colleges.

Picture the sitcom character Frank Costanza the father of George in the television series Seinfeld screaming maniacally: "Serenity now," and you've got her.

Her arrival at the riverside, where seconds ago I'd been in a state of  ethereal bucaholickness touched to the soul by deer and river and sighing night winds, is like the knocking on the door in Macbeth.

It sort of breaks the spell.

I decide to try and establish some common ground with her.

As she draws level, I say: "Maisie I've just seen the most beautiful deer right here close to the town centre. I've never seen them here before."

"Vermin," she hisses without altering her onward trajectory along the riverbank and through the universe.

It is not clear whether she means me or the deer.