hestaskál

First Wednesday of every month, this is a test test test, this is only a test, beeping and booping like a trans-Atlantic call that doesn't go through, and then the sirens go.

This is not a test. This time there should be real skirling and piping, by all rights, piping and skirling and solemnity and a drum. We are so advanced now. I did not receive a trans-Atlantic call but a silent pulse of e-mail: a dear friend dead in Copenhagen. I'll miss his merry wit and generousity, his tales of now-vanished places. I miss not having had just one more glass with him, for the road, for what used to be a short, icy walk between our houses, the stirrup-cup, the hestaskál.

Sirens die down now. This has been a test.

Now I just hear it starting in the next group of blocks south of here.