Up

Driving last night, with the evening sky as a backdrop, I was distracted by the Western horizon, still bright with the setting sun. A cerise smudge touched nearly ninety degrees of the scene with traces of blood and milk marking higher cloud and the final rays of the day breaking through.

The same clouds acompanied me on my way to work this morning. A canopy of cryptic corrugations, like snow on willow hurdles , thinning in the East to show cracks of sun like the first shreds of processed cheese emerging from a grater.

At lunchtime the cloud had evolved again and passed from orange peel texture, through crumpled crepe and beach ripples to electron micrographs of prehistoric tooth surfaces, monochrome and strangely ridged.

These skies hold a drama. As picture backgrounds they steal from subjects. They defy cameras.

Wind of change

Earlier, the slight twigs of valley trees tangled a thin mist, preventing it from leaving the river course to form higher clouds. Seen from a hill the bare crowns of these trees appeared snagged in soft cotton-wool that thinned as the grazing land rose to my viewpoint.

The misted sky just fell dark heralding a swift storm of rain bringing wind and a sudden rush of water, like the overflow of a bath in the carpark. Soon this passed and the clouds tore, creating at first a rectangle of baby blue in the grey that had two horizontal stripes of white lit cloud like nothing else but a slice of angel cake. The tear spread from the North Western sky until, above the horizon, clouds made only small scuffs in the graduated blue canopy.

The rising breeze that whipped trees with the rain has waned. Enough to flash the underleaf colour in the evergreen oaks, but playfully; without violence.

Relaxed flocks of winter birds now lazily seek thermals or survey the agricultural landscape for the next safe beak-full. The washed world reflects the new sunlight and gently dries.

The Incredible Lightness of Mornings

Either the lengthening of the day or the extra few minutes spent scraping off windscreen ice allowed the sun to surmount the horizon behind a thin screen of trees to the East of a straight road I use approaching my place of work. The misty grey cloud covering most of the sky trapped these acute sunbeams close to the earth, shedding a pinkish light over the otherwise wintery landscape. Frost clung to the grass on the heaths and the puddles corralled crazy icing in shattered patterns left by browsing ponies and cows.

Southern England was spared much of the exciting weather received in Scotland and the North over the Christmas break, but even so we have our own shipwreck (Technically inaccurate I'm sure as it hasn't been declared a wreck as such). We must regard it as a seasonal decoration for the Brambles Bank. I was mildly disappointed that the poor visibility on Sunday meant that I was unable to see the leaning Hoegh Osaka for myself, but the pictures have been stunning on the island news website, Twitter and elsewhere.

Walking the Forest during the break we heard mostly thrushes, but saw mostly robins. On the heaths crows foraged and an occasional buzzard patrolled. Expecting gales later today the farmland around has already filled with seabirds. On the sunny days the Forest carparks were crowded, but the usual 200 yard rule applied and the paths were no more busy. There were fewer DoE candidate parties. we saw deer from the car, but little sign on the tracks. Most prints were pony, dog or human.