Driving home so-late-it-was-early I noticed the sky above Moota Hill was already lightening behind the traces of rain-clouds. About to descend towards Parsonby I caught a glimpse of something astonishing. A lens of purple light stretched the length of the Solway from Cardurnock to Robin Rigg. It seemed to be floating in the middle air, weaving between the red-lanterned transmission towers of Anthorn, wreathing the shore light at Southerness before dissolving around the offshore wind turbines in mid-channel. The effect was jolting and hallucinatory, not so much a trick of the light as a shameless piece of effrontery. A moment's thought suggested that a shoal of cold night-air above the Solway was condensing mist and then refracting what little pre-dawn light was streaming over my shoulder from above Skiddaw and the north-eastern fells. The sight was a small bit of nocturnal conjuring to which I was very probably the sole witness. All it lacked was a distant Brockenspectre, a ghostly car projected upon the lens of light.
Two minutes later, in the lane at by Arkleby Toll a hare appeared in my headlights and ran off just ahead of my wheels before vanishing into a dark hedgerow.