Strand stroll

Sheltered, uncharacteristically, on the seaward side of the shingle spit Saturday. No sails, no bow waves at all and the breakers were flopping up and down in the lee.

The North Easterly blew all weekend, chilling when the cancelling effects of the sun were hidden, as they often were.

With more frequent sunny intervals and using the Forest's wind baffles I walked in the afternoon. Two dozen does and, chewing the cud and in repose, three bucks, their obsolete headgear like kelp arms faded to the colour of the trees they lay amongst.

In the forest we use familiar paths, pass familiar trees and waters. Some are points of pilgrimage. A sequoia which buzzed with hornets one summer (at least a dozen years since), a fallen tree whose roots are now so bony that they cast a lace pattern on the path, streams that hide fish and dragonflies by summer and run alternate crystal and mud in winter.

The car parks are weekend busy, but two hundred yards away the forest birds are beginning to find voice.

Stars, like grains

Freezing, and I expected a clearer sky. Stars though are glass chips, not diamonds. Mars is rose quartz and the moon an oblate crystal ball, still clouded; hidden future.

Still, quiet.

My Grain

A sand grain *.
A crystal shard.
Striated, revolving,
Just left of centre and sharper than my uncorrected vision can manage at that apparent distance,
Forward diagonals surmounted by gliding black triangles.
An etch-a-sketch beagle with big eyes looking left.
A flock of geometric birds takes off.
A glider from Conway's game of life.
A pile of glittering, flapping, open boxes.
A paint-by-numbers diesel electric engine.
Elmer the elephant in triangular patchwork.
The top half of a head, spiky hair down to flashing eyes.
A puffer fish (puffing)!
Fractal jelly-fish seen through rippled water?
Blurred, fringed centre with throbbing peripherals.

Two years since the previous attack of this painless visual disturbance which comes, never-the-less, from the seat of all migraines, the stomach. I can attribute this episode fairly directly to some luncheon falafels - I had the same meal on Monday and it stopped my digestion from working for the afternoon.

Outside; darkening and around 4 Celsius. Half a mile relaxed walk banishes the remains.

Casserole ending

Night fell; a shadowy lid on the day. The retreating sun painted a narrow orange ribbon across the Western horizon. Like the moment of being shut in Le Creuset oven-ware.

Not feeling it

Pigeons. Of the flighted birds amongst those least suited to that vocation. They've been trying to neaten my lawn of late, but no good has visited them of it. Not normally known for being two feet in diameter (unless we consider the dodo of course). This individual had met a swift and strangely beautiful end at the beak and claws of a sparrow-hawk. I expect the bones will be removed by fox or cat if I leave them to it.

I had a number of things to do before leaving for work yesterday morning, little things that had begun to build up and nag since, despite advancing dawn, I've not been leaping from the sheets with any urgency for a couple of weeks. During these tasks I was standing at the kitchen sink when a particularly plaintiff look from a sparrow caught my eye. It looked at the empty bird feeder and then at me, and back at the feeder again. Putting out food for the birds had slipped off my list during this spell of laziness. Wearing my dressing gown still, I slipped on some flip-flops and crunched across the spiky frozen grass. All the garden's moisture lay about me, at my feet, leaving none to steal my warmth away.

Three-phase games

Light-a-plenty from the sun today, but still needing a sheltered spot to keep off the keen edge left over from the clear night. By evening the few random patches of condensate had started to form patterns. There was no agreement about what sort of cloud to be and a scuffle ensued. Hardly enough atmospheric energy to power a game of rock, paper scissors and, as dusk shuffled in from the East there were still rags of fluff overhead as well as distant slabs with ill-formed bubbles on top. A single jet left an orange arrow above it all.

Later, the cover filled in somewhat, making the three quarter moon resemble a WiFi tablet hidden under a duvet. Wide gaps held stars; Orion striding, hunting Mars tonight.

Yellow and cool this morning, expecting heavy foals later

For this season the ponies of The Forest wear their thickest coats. Far, far from the clipped, curried finery of fully domestic horses, these coats are multi-layered and beautiful in any of the wide colour variants seen. My favourite view of these beast is on a damp and windy morning as the sun rises behind, creating a haloed silhouette showing the full range of colour, depth and fineness of the hairs. The wind plays through the coats as they turn, leaving tousled furrows that water holds in place.

On frosty mornings this weather protection can hold a layer of ice or even snow, but this morning, cool, overcast with the same clouds that looked like irregular waffles hovering above in the previous sunset, the coats look like warm, shaggy hearth mats, asking to have fingers run through.

It was not the coats that caught my attention this morning so much as the way that the mares are filling them. Broadening bellies suggest the curled life growing there; all head and legs and dizziness for April. A calm melanistic fallow doe joined their steady chewing, at the half way point of my journey. I'd judge in that same state.

It was the steady browsing of these beast that also led me to notice the gorse (not much else is still green except thin grass). Yellow buds cover the tops of the bushes, ready to burst out if the sun should kiss them. Along the more cultivated verges I saw that the daffodils were looking happy again. Heads bobbing where yesterday's frost had them bowing.

Projections

Vertical blind, squinting, allows sun-fingers access. Sharp brightness by the sill, tigering the desk and my shirt. Behind, on the floor, the penumbras merge until the shadows reflect the slats' separation. Light pattern of fanned quills, banded by window bars, like a tall head-dress.

Roman, Venetian and roller blinds all work. The inventor of vertical blinds perhaps did not enjoy dusting, but equally, they did not have a South facing office.

Clearly still

Unruffled sugar dust decorates the garden, briefly forming diamond-pearl strings with the rising radiation of the sun. On damper, still mornings a fog would boil off as ice sublimed, but today the aircraft fly as darts, not as arrows pulling feather tipped shafts behind. The condensation trails vanish as quickly as they form leaving the sky unmarked.

How low can you go?

We are promised cold and at 6pm the sky was a clear, graduated blue all the way overhead, except for a touch of fading yellow highlighting a stack of flying pancakes.

The sky now is stars, planets, galaxies and a bright near-half moon.

Vane attitude

Our prevailing winds are from the South West, the Azores, and often arrive with violence, tempered however by a mildness. This weekend though we have suffered North Easterlies, via the Home Counties, and these deliver a degree of malice and a keen edge.

Changeable

Cool morning, light with light showers, to my right fading stratus.

Forward, brightening. Hope about to break?

Brooding, over the house; Portentious darkness with biblical pretentions.
New weather delivery; sinister.

January, February, March

Easter is soon to be tethered, like a telegraph pole on the year's wire or a pin on a musical-box cylinder where once it was a bird that sat where it would, or a child's trumpet. Other religions of course have their own celebrations still governed by the wax of the moon, but the Westernised Christian calendar will soon be like simple clockwork; nothing will precess, nothing will leap (except the four yearly 29th of February).

Why do we tie things down so? Our birth-dates we celebrate regularly, despite the apparent time between each party diminishing through life. Christmas has its annual blast and while I appreciate the importance of its timing precision from an accounting point of view, I see no reason to tether the birth of someone two millennia ago to a single date of convenience.

Our annual measure is not even alligned with anything of meaning. The soltices occur on the 21st or 22nd and, with exceptions, those are not even marked. Our seasons are a moveable feast of their own, and increasingly so. Out the window the advancing signs of spring ignore that we are only just past the "depths" of winter, and what is more, may soon be swiftly erased by the cold season's resurgence. Camelias are flowering madly. Daffodils, primroses and snowdrops overlap. My lawn grass has not paused.

When early man first erected a sighting stone to prompt his sowing he began all of this. We should live more by the signs; declare holidays when the flowers bloom and the skies are blue, rather than suffer these false rhythms. Work, by all means, indoors when the winds blow cold.

Who to blame? Not the man with his sentinel. Either the priest or the accountant (who is only a priest of the money cult in any case).

The ponies look up

Under a still light blue sky with gauzy grey clouds I turned briefly East across an undulating heath. Sparse with trees and empty of buildings this is an ideal spot to look far into the distance, to try to measure the Earth by her horizon.

Today dark shapes loomed. Cumulus, like an implacable herd, gathered South. Each head growing, the shoulders crowding in until they became the horizon itself.

Now night, their rain falls straight in wet-hair curtains. Scattered to soak the ground by gusts of wind torn off the Westerly Channel flow.

Blow by blow

Once the rain began, no-one else fancied the walk, so I chose the coast. Where could be more beautiful on a damp and windy February? I drove to the sailing club, to walk the estuary there.

Low tide I was expecting, but there was more mud than I had thought and the boats, although all pointing to windward, were not playing in the wind but nestling in the soft ooze, curlews and oyster-catchers at their rails.

The flooded meadow's flock had made inland to escape the blow, but the next field up held a thousand or two of huddled geese, slowly beaking away at the rough grass that appeared to be their only shelter. A few folk were out braving the elements and as is the way in such weather, we all exchanged mad grins.

Across the stream by bridge and over the spit to meet the full force of the South-Westerly. I ventured over the tide-line - all cuttle bone and wrack, to the slope of the shingle specked today by foam and slammed by the waves driven by gale and tide.

I turned South-East, out along the spit, to enjoy the full force of nature. My feet crunched against the loud wash of waves, the hiss of stones and, when my hood was blown hard against my ear, the percussive ping of rain drops driven into the fabric.

Walking out I took the roughest route, deep shingle and the strongest wind. Occasional respite came from crossing the spit track to gaze over the lake there, where the ridge lifted wind came back down before deciding which way to proceed. At the deepest point of the lake, the moored boats bobbed against their restraints.

For a variety of reasons I had never walked the entire length of the spit (about a mile and a quarter) and, once I had passed my previous best I half decided that today was the right day to do it. I wondered about the wisdom as the castle drew closer. I appeared to be the last person out there and, after fighting the wind and the shingle my legs felt like someone else was in control.

Out to sea the Needles lighthouse was visible in the misty rain and I could see the line of breakers as the seas were forced over the Shingles Bank. Walking the front of the castle for the first time I went far enough to cross the transit of two buoys, North and East Shingles I would guess without a chart to hand.

A few minutes in shelter, a photo and I turned back, lest the rain worsen. I followed the much used path at the lee side of the spit and, other than a span of muddy weed and some loose shingle it was far easier than the path out, although the sounds of high seas just a few yards away were ever present.

The final stretch on the sea wall back to the car allowed the rain to begin to seep through my jeans and I'm sure that as soon as I got into shelter, the rain redoubled its efforts. The light was softening over the estuary's returning waters before I drove home.

Blow me tender

Successional storms sweep the Solent whipping waves up down and across this well-used waterway. This weekend the Beaufort scale leans towards the galey end of the spectrum and our boating is restricted to the river mooring, next the ferry.

Yesterday even the row out to the mooring was a bit of an epic voyage, as despite the wave barrier down-river, the 40-60 knot Southerlies are sufficient to create a wave system on the river itself. In the wind-mill of moored vessels and a swell the inflatable tender feels like a cork in a sink with the plug pulled. A few gusts are enough to cancel the force created by the oars and, back bent we paused episodically, waiting to be pushed backwards.

The tethered boat, once we arrived, was still quite mobile against the ropes and buoyage. After flask-chocolate and a bun and a thorough check above and below we stood on the deck to enjoy the spectacle of the ferry fighting against the wind to leave its ramp and set off back to the Island. I took a brief video on my phone thinking that it was unlikely to convey the sensation of movement and noise, but watching it again on dry land it is obvious that stuff is bobbing up and down quite a bit.

We noticed, after the ferry's departure that there was a cruiser, down river of us on the same mooring line, that was sideways to the wind and, apparently, unmanned. Weighing the threat of an escaped boat in the harbour against the upwind row to check it out, I decided it was possible to have a look. So we made fast and had a brief, windy reconnoitre. The bow-line had obviously snapped, but with no suitable line evident to remedy this we had to make to shore and report it. Fortunately the sailing club still had a rib in the water and sent three strong chaps to sort it out.

This morning broke bright, with gusty overtones. Flocks of jackdaws and seagulls wheel in the blue. No sign of yesterday's damp and ragged cloud.

Misdirection

Too many door signs.
I'll make one. "Here be dragons"
We'll see who reads them.

A reliable cycle?

Almost without fail, every three or four years, the high water pressure that arrives at my house eventually blows out the flexible hose connecting the cold water feed to my washing machine. Ever since I installed the plumbing 20 years ago, turning off the stop-tap on the washing machine feed has been getting more and more difficult.

Roughly 38 years since buying my first washing machine I have had to shell out for my third. I did consider the alternative of spending a hundred pounds and a day fixing the old one, but I had become a bit bored with its mechanical foibles and fancied a change. The old one, even with refreshed motor brushes, would occasionally refuse to operate (normally aborting a programme after just a few minutes), when asked to rinse it would leak. The killer blow was the disintegration of the drum bearing to the extent that cycles would halt immediately at random times with a loud thump and the whole machine would leap within the confines of its den.

The change of machine necessitated a battle with the stop-taps of course. The hot would slow to a drip, but the cold would not turn off. These tap connector devices are not helped by having levers of plastic all of three quarters of an inch long. Neither does it help that they are installed (rather cunningly I though 20 years back) right against the wall behind the sink unit. So I turned off the kitchen supply entirely and waited for the delivery.

It had occurred to me in the time between ordering a new machine and its arrival that it might be a single cold feed machine, but I hadn't bothered to check, in the hope that ignoring a problem would make it go away. The replacement is of course a single feed machine, so I had to redouble my efforts on the hot tap, eventually reducing the drip to a negligible level (I hesitate to say it has stopped entirely).

On a more cheerful note, my house it returning to a more acceptable level of laundry cleanliness. I even tested the wool setting on a couple of jumpers that hadn't seen soap yet this winter.