Dark Decisions

I spent most of today sitting in a windowless conference room in the library, which was a pity as the day was very sunny. This picture was taken as I emerged from the meeting, blinking as the low sun hit my eyes.  
It reminded me of my first and last working days. My first working days (17-years-old) were in the huge Kodak factory in Harrow. We often worked in complete darkness and would emerge like moles at lunchtime and at the end of the day. Ironically I was a keen caver at the time, and would spend large parts of my weekend underground and in darkness too!  49 years later, my last working days were in this library and my office was also in the centre of the building, far from natural light.
Today I was here for the Planning Committee. Mostly it was mundane stuff but we also discussed what to do when some of the privatised services come up for contract renewal. The Left and the Right were not in agreement - what a surprise - but since we are are only asking the administration to outline the different options we were (eventually) able to agree on a suitably neutral question. However, I don't think we'll reach consensus once we start to actually make decisions, but that's at least three months away.
By the time I got home it was nearly dark so Rusty's second walk of the day (Jan fixed the first) was by the light of the full moon (extra).  We walked down to the edge of the big lake, where I thought we may see some of the geese/swans that spend their nights honking noisily to each other, but we couldn't even see open water, far less the waterfowl swimming around.
We ventured out onto the ice, which felt really firm, but this early in the season it would be foolish to go out there in the night, especially without ice safety equipment. So we kept to within 15 m of the shore, where the water would only be a metre deep if the worst happened, which it never has, touch wood!