The last day of the shortest month of the year ends in rain. Showers have been sweeping through the Mountains and across the coast since last night and may well continue, or so we are told. I have picked up my son's sore throat, somewhat inevitably, and find myself restricted in what I can do. No swimming for the meantime. Nor kissing the bride.

I finished Basho's short travel diary, Narrow Road To The Interior, which was very pleasant to read. It would be a cliche to describe this five-month footslog as a spiritual journey, but not to presents us with a mere journey, albeit one with a lot of decent haiku thrown in. But unlike us, with our focus on objects and ephemera, the Japanese invest vast meaning in the natural world. The placement of a single stone can reverberate in ways that defy any Western aesthetic, though the good news is, we can learn.

Narrow Road is not a triumph of travel writing and there are much better travel writers than Basho. But there are few better observers and for Basho, it is full immersion, in every moment.