Winter heath afoot

I abandoned the search for explanation when I found two small pools, adjacent. One pool was clear, dark and with faint ripples striking reflections off the bright sky above. It's neighbour, equal in every other way I could discern, held fans of crepe paper ice in the sort of not-quite-repeating pattern that ruins much 1970's Artex.

More cold gathered in the pockets, especially those with a North facing slope. In these lowest depressions, frost held onto the grasses and the puddles were either hard or harboured chipped ice-caps, where broken by browsing animals.

My early companion, half moon, dimmed to the fiercer yellow of its parent light  and the field above blushed blue; fading to thin mist at the horizons.

Hi-viz foot strikers were out, considering each next stride to maximise exercise effectiveness. Dog walkers checked their charges to save me from their unwelcome salivas. The ponies wore their hearth-rug coats.

The wind was keen to cut, though before half way I removed my gloves and rolled my coat zip to regulate my temperature. Seven miles without a stand to stare; just the rolling landscape and the brief encounters for company. Good walking.

Charmed? Yes. Surprised? No.

With winter, a change to the garden visitors. An indignant young male blackbird in the front garden is steadily stripping the pyracantha berries; the holly is already bare. More frequent visits from a greater spotted woodpecker where I've opened up the rear hedge to expose the trunk of a dead hazel. Bullfinches and coaltits.

In the tops of the tallest apple and the living hazels and hawthorn, small flocks of birds gather or stage their garden explorations. Even in silhouette blatantly goldfinches. These were rare visitors twenty years ago.

The rise of the..

It seems inevitable that, with increasing automation in production, services and transport, the route to making money is to own the robots. This future seems destined to increase the perception of unfairness of the economy, since only a small number of people or organisations will eventually own "the means of production".

I consider myself a little ahead of the game in this respect; I at least understand the problem. I understand some of the underlying technologies. Sadly though I have acted too slowly. The opportunity to own the first robot within my means has already gone. I failed to mine Bitcoins.

Spread

I have had occasion, some time of a morning, in the breakfast-lunch interval, to indulge in a little toast with spread. Over the last couple of weeks I have been enjoying toast and insect spit mixed with the floral emanations of plants and have found myself dipping the knife into the same jar of honey on different occasions.

One of my children is missing.

Seasons, on auto-repeat

My modern, illuminated (cheap) keyboard has finally gone beyond. It's developed a habit of bounce on the 'D' key, which any vi user will understand can be vexatious, especially on the second strike. From my stock of stuff that I haven't the heart to throw away has come a ps2 connected, Siemens-Nixdorf branded object that must be 18 years old and, doubtless, briefly spent time in a skip. I popped all the keys, cleaned with isopropyl alcohol (an operation almost guaranteed to remove the lettering from modern keyboards) and reassembled. It is a thing of beauty and I look forward to losing all the bad typing habits I've recently adopted from having a dodgy keyboard with poor feedback.

Plenty of time in front of the kitchen sink today to watch down the garden and observe the scene. A mob of blackbirds came through, uninterested in the remains of the apple crop, from which they've already had the best and easiest pickings. Today they came to trash my water garden plants. They pulled strands of re-hydrating sphagnum moss from a tray I intend for carnivorous marsh plants, knocked over a seed pot, turned over some lily leaves, picked a few twigs from a bucket of kindling I was collecting for a neighbour and squabbled the whole time. Also this morning, plenty of bluetits and starlings; a robin bobbing and a warbler. I don't know my warblers and this one was the usual sharp beak, eye stripe, grey/yellow with hints of green and, on this one, almost buff. Leaves are dropping quietly, the first few that are trying to avoid the rush later.

Two weeks ago the first tree crowns began to turn (ignoring the browning horse-chestnuts, which were earlier). One cold night and autumn's starting gun is fired. Heaths are damp, spiders are fattening. The ponies are going towards winter with full bellies this year after a warm summer that didn't suffer drought.

Traipsing

Blundering through gorse;
Low sun sets off dewed, drawn silks.
Spiders divert me.

Wind noise

Returning West yesterday we watched brooding rain clouds cross ahead of us from mainland to Island. Closer, these storms dropped stray rain on us and threw wind eddies and vortexes that tugged our sails and blew white horse foam across the sea's surface. Rain shrouded vessels in the path leaned heavily and the sky slowly darkened as our own shower arrived.

Large drops fell within the storm system; a contrast to the light spitting outside. Staring ahead, upwind, our faces were washed and the shock of cool rain as it entered our ears became common. In still calm seas the wind peaked, probably around 30 knots and then followed the waves, travelling more slowly than the wind. Another mile and peace returned. A washed sunshine began to warm us and with only the outgoing tide to counter, mooring was simple.

We stowed and tied, made fast and made tea. Just as we were ready to go another shower arrived and we closed the hatch, settled to wait it out and snoozed a little. We watched the peregrine put on a little display flight before motoring the tender back to the pontoon. When we made shore, the retreating rain was still on the South Eastern horizon, making a rainbow whose coloured stripes were cut in sections by bands of rain, looking like an ironic manicured eyebrow.

Dry to home, but the sky was becoming confused. Clouds seemed to stand on end. Tiered vistas of dark and light water vapour revealed ragged islands of blue. Some cloud appeared completely inverted, showing the mounds and crevices that are normally seen from the air. Fleeting flashes, seen from an eye's corner soon became to dominate the fading sun's brightness. Thunder rolls that sounded like the sky's fabric tearing lasted up to half a minute each. The core of the storm, a dark glowering mass, loomed from the West. Without atomic thunder events, timing the flashes was difficult and the results were stochastic. A mile, two miles, a mile and a half. A quarter mile! The note of the fridge motor changed, the Internet dropped out. Ten minutes later it was gone, just a deep grumble left to remind us and a clearing sky that, after another twenty minutes, was virtually empty. Pale blue with just a few remnants of cloud, like the trail of a distant steam train, miles gone.