coffee before dawn

5.30 a.m. - I've been awake since 4. Chilly and black outside, light and warm inside. I'm drinking coffee from my favourite mug, the Star was waiting outside the front door, the crabby cat is curled up next to me, ignoring me but so lovely to look at. One of the reasons we go away is that these small, familiar moments mean so much when we get back.

I lay awake at 4 thinking about the film I saw on the plane, Mike Leigh's Another Year, and how I should not have dismissed it. Once again, as in his last film Happy-Go-Lucky, he is showing us that happiness is a choice. Some of his characters are so mired in misery, so sealed in - the unforgettable Imelda Staunton in a cameo at the start and the mesmerizing and exhausting Leslie Manville all the way through - that they cannot comprehend the extent of their own suffering or that there's a way out. Manville's character buys a car, and the tale of that car is like her own life - careless chaos and destruction. We live once, the director shows us. Choose your spouse wisely. Get fixed. Plant a garden. Do what you can to help.

The central couple are the world's good people, generous open souls who shelter their wounded friends and family. Ordinary decency, the film is about, and kindness.

It is hard to watch the broken, though. They do go on and on.

God, this coffee is good. The furnace chugs. It's my furnace. It's my responsibility - and my comfort. Home.