Volatile weather, volatile life, and joy all around

Sunday was one of those wonderful days when you can get up out of bed at about 8 a.m., enjoy your early-morning coffee and toast, and skip out into a crispy, sunny November Sunday that makes you feel good to be alive. We were at our London home again, and our other home in the New Mexico desert and mountains was more than 5000 miles distant and vertically a mile farther from sea level.

We were walking through Victoria Park – at most the gate is a couple of hundred yards from the flat – among o...