That Thomas Hardy moment

It turns out that, rather than set an alarm for 3am, I stayed up working on the paper I'm delivering on Friday at a symposium to mark LGBT History Month (really? me either!). I thought the least I could do is to wander outdoors, camera in hand, to think on nations at war with nations, heroes fairer than the skies, and to see whether it really was impertubable serenity despite the neighbours - so I emerged ( into the sublimity of the unknown )