January; short, dark days dragging on. Hard to go out – outwards – when the instinct is to curl up like an ammonite and wait for the light. One smoky morning in the park, it’s as if the sky has descended. Black-headed gulls, disturbed by dogs, rise from the grass and drift away, spectres of the mist.

There is a Welsh folktale called The Daughters of the Sea set in Cardigan Bay in which Dylan, the sea god calls up a fierce storm to steal three sisters away to his kingdom under the sea. When he comes to regret his action, he is unable to return the sisters as they were. So he turns them into seagulls, able to move between land and sea. When their old father walks along the beach and calls their names, three white gulls fly to him from over the waves.