Everywhere I go I find myself watching the trees, drinking in the colours of leaves gently turned towards the fire end of the spectrum. Horse chestnuts have had a bad year with disease and seem pleased to shrivel their canopies to brown arthritic hands; brittle. Maples and Oaks are tinged with oatmeal or bright berry shades, often in patches where a branch has been caught by the season, leaving contrast with the still green remainder. The car-park hornbeams are yellow above and still verdant below; lemon iced.
The car glass has been mopped for more than two weeks already, but this morning the roof was traced with coral fans of ice crystals that spread onto the wind-shield, since I was parked the wrong way and the morning's warmth could not work its melting act.
We re-launched the boat on Monday, trying to calmly eat some sandwich while the hull was lowered once more into its natural environment. We never doubted that the re-assembled sea-cocks would seal, nor that the stern gland would accomodate its new cutlass bearing without a leak, but it was good to check and to take a deep breath before trying to tie to our new mooring up the river. Polishing that hull, standing on the hard on Sunday, we caught some sun.
The weather has turned a corner (as the wind has, literally turned) bringing cold nights and bright days that don't breach the curtains until 7am and by now, at 7pm, have faded to grey. We are excited to be able to sail again, but are thinking of warm socks and boots, scarves and cocoa and bracing breezes.
Wednesday, 14 October 2015
Wednesday, 7 October 2015
Wednesday, 23 September 2015
Equinox or not
We must have had the equinox by now, but following on from the revelations about VW cheating the North American diesel emissions test, actually there is no "equi", there have been about a million tonnes of extra NOX.
Quite a year for weather. Summer was warm, but was it windy? and never dry for too long. There has been a distinct smell of autumn about the weather for a couple of weeks and this morning was only 7 degrees centigrade as I left the house in a damp car on a fresh morning. The Hurst Castle camera showed the Isle of Wight in clear contrast to the cluster of cumulus that hung over it yesterday. The outlines were clear and the sky glowed, reflecting off the overfalls as they began to turn from flood to ebb.
The sun was low in the sky, as it was when I went home yesterday evening. Glaring off the window grime, side-lighting the landscape and its creatures. Ponies half of gold and half dark-horse, eyes glinting between searching browses of the verges.
Of the summer, a deal of business. Weekends of sailing, weeks of work. July's preparation for the New Forest Show, taxiing children. A strange year with a season ticket to A&E; broken bones, leaking lungs, operations and emergencies. Really, five hospitals, a dozen ECGs and probably an equal number of X-rays, four ambulances. How much chaos can two children cause? Even I have been to a hospital; only for a scheduled couple of physiotherapy appointments, but I think they must be the only actual treatment apart from antibiotics I've had since a tonsillectomy at age 6.
We have though had some beautiful days to make up for a few hard nights. The opportunity to sit out in the salt marshes after a day's sailing and hear the sea-fowl fly in to roost has been a wonderful experience and the mooring costs less than a beach-hut. To see the full performance of a setting star when the sky is fully half of the world and the only sound is the lapping of waves, the swoosh of wings and the flight calls of gulls is wonderous. We've slept onboard, but not enough.
So, we hope for a good few sailing days while the children are well and the the freeze holds off before the solstice.
Quite a year for weather. Summer was warm, but was it windy? and never dry for too long. There has been a distinct smell of autumn about the weather for a couple of weeks and this morning was only 7 degrees centigrade as I left the house in a damp car on a fresh morning. The Hurst Castle camera showed the Isle of Wight in clear contrast to the cluster of cumulus that hung over it yesterday. The outlines were clear and the sky glowed, reflecting off the overfalls as they began to turn from flood to ebb.
The sun was low in the sky, as it was when I went home yesterday evening. Glaring off the window grime, side-lighting the landscape and its creatures. Ponies half of gold and half dark-horse, eyes glinting between searching browses of the verges.
Of the summer, a deal of business. Weekends of sailing, weeks of work. July's preparation for the New Forest Show, taxiing children. A strange year with a season ticket to A&E; broken bones, leaking lungs, operations and emergencies. Really, five hospitals, a dozen ECGs and probably an equal number of X-rays, four ambulances. How much chaos can two children cause? Even I have been to a hospital; only for a scheduled couple of physiotherapy appointments, but I think they must be the only actual treatment apart from antibiotics I've had since a tonsillectomy at age 6.
We have though had some beautiful days to make up for a few hard nights. The opportunity to sit out in the salt marshes after a day's sailing and hear the sea-fowl fly in to roost has been a wonderful experience and the mooring costs less than a beach-hut. To see the full performance of a setting star when the sky is fully half of the world and the only sound is the lapping of waves, the swoosh of wings and the flight calls of gulls is wonderous. We've slept onboard, but not enough.
So, we hope for a good few sailing days while the children are well and the the freeze holds off before the solstice.
Thursday, 25 June 2015
patterns of
I dipped through a college car-park this morning. The pupils were arriving in ones, not the troupes and gangs I remember from my time. They walked like old men, or like robots, asthough having learned to walk as infants and having been rewarded with their first iPad or TV remote, they abandoned any further style development. At their age my peers were learning the strut (power-walking was a thing), the stride, the swagger and even the flounce.
I went for my second Thursday ice-cream at lunchtime. The rule is a simple one: I get to ride to town and buy an ice-cream if I walk back. Today's walk was the usual route from the town centre; over the bridges, passing up through meadows of cows or hay crops, into woodland rising steadily back to work and a short passage in pig fields. I saw brown trout, a hundred meadow browns, a small white, admirals white and red, a cinnebar moth (probably), an orchid (common spotted in damp woodland, very tall). I am reminded to look up this year's sightings of purple emperors (there are none). In the fields the sun is hot, oppressive. In the woods it occasionally cuts in in shafts, scattered.
Three nights running over into the weekend the house was overflown around 9pm with jackdaws; as many as 3-400 on the first evening. Enough for a murmuration, making harsh yet cheering calls and a hissing of wings, looking to roost, gathering the year's young to statistical safety.
I near met a young green woodpecker when driving last week; red crown, freckled below and palely olive above, beaky.
The sky is a blue-board with strokes from the side of the chalk. Parallels and striations, hardly moving. Even as I read-back and review a board cleaner is swept over, forming little clouds of chalk as it blurs the marks; the clouds hang. A single fine line is added by an airliner, etching West.
I went for my second Thursday ice-cream at lunchtime. The rule is a simple one: I get to ride to town and buy an ice-cream if I walk back. Today's walk was the usual route from the town centre; over the bridges, passing up through meadows of cows or hay crops, into woodland rising steadily back to work and a short passage in pig fields. I saw brown trout, a hundred meadow browns, a small white, admirals white and red, a cinnebar moth (probably), an orchid (common spotted in damp woodland, very tall). I am reminded to look up this year's sightings of purple emperors (there are none). In the fields the sun is hot, oppressive. In the woods it occasionally cuts in in shafts, scattered.
Three nights running over into the weekend the house was overflown around 9pm with jackdaws; as many as 3-400 on the first evening. Enough for a murmuration, making harsh yet cheering calls and a hissing of wings, looking to roost, gathering the year's young to statistical safety.
I near met a young green woodpecker when driving last week; red crown, freckled below and palely olive above, beaky.
The sky is a blue-board with strokes from the side of the chalk. Parallels and striations, hardly moving. Even as I read-back and review a board cleaner is swept over, forming little clouds of chalk as it blurs the marks; the clouds hang. A single fine line is added by an airliner, etching West.
Thursday, 4 June 2015
An interlude in the headlong
Summer I think. A hard season to call with the signs of spring still emerging, slightly late. Although it is a month since the moment I always call the "million shades of green", foxgloves are still only just opening, the elder began to bloom just last week. Never-the-less, it is June and the forest has the crop of early foals gambolling already.
I left the house, which was mostly relaxed, ten minutes earlier than has been my recent habit. Back roads were quiet; crossing routes were so empty that I stopped to watch them almost hoping for other traffic to corroborate my existence. The Plain was full of beasts, some with young. A gathering of ponies pulled in excited animals, some tossing their manes, some trotting and leaping haphazardly on the road. I wondered if they were getting ready to greet a new-born or whether there was a fight; they milled amongst the still-standing gorse between open lawns that have been mown or burnt to increase pasture.
On Monday and Tuesday the weather howled in passing, pouring water that briefly sat in corners until the greatful ground sucked it in. The spring, as well as cooler than normal has also marked long dry spells, but it has been wetter for a couple of weeks. The water has been washing dust out of the air and sprinkling it onto windows.
Today's sky hangs restful. A thin sheet of cloud appears to be trying to spread from one horizon to the other, but there is enough energy in the atmosphere already to roll it into scattered crumb with sporadic doughy fluff.
I left the house, which was mostly relaxed, ten minutes earlier than has been my recent habit. Back roads were quiet; crossing routes were so empty that I stopped to watch them almost hoping for other traffic to corroborate my existence. The Plain was full of beasts, some with young. A gathering of ponies pulled in excited animals, some tossing their manes, some trotting and leaping haphazardly on the road. I wondered if they were getting ready to greet a new-born or whether there was a fight; they milled amongst the still-standing gorse between open lawns that have been mown or burnt to increase pasture.
On Monday and Tuesday the weather howled in passing, pouring water that briefly sat in corners until the greatful ground sucked it in. The spring, as well as cooler than normal has also marked long dry spells, but it has been wetter for a couple of weeks. The water has been washing dust out of the air and sprinkling it onto windows.
Today's sky hangs restful. A thin sheet of cloud appears to be trying to spread from one horizon to the other, but there is enough energy in the atmosphere already to roll it into scattered crumb with sporadic doughy fluff.
Thursday, 5 March 2015
On reflection
It was driving past a large and partially frozen puddle this morning that caused me to reflect on the books I always planned to introduce to my children when they reached the right age, but never have. My own teenage years were filled, and to a large extent, informed, by a steady stream of science fiction novels by an eclectic range of authors, either borrowed from friends or my local library. I was fortunate in that, once I had exhausted the library's collection of childrens' fiction, I had the opportunity to access the adult fiction too. This resulted in me occasionally reading subject matter considered inappropriate to my age, but on subsequent reflection I believe that this does no harm, because the topics that I did not understand left no lasting impression, in contrast to the stories and themes I was ready for.
My own children (mostly) are willing to read, but they have had their own contemporary diet of Potter, Rider and Snicket. Reading the same books as one's peers is always more interesting than something that an adult is pushing, so many of my recommendations were ignored, or only grudgingly accepted.
So I managed to palm off some Milligan and Adrian Mole, I was fortunate that the Tolkein bandwagon rolled through town. I managed to find time to read and share some of their contemporary fiction, but these failed to engage me, in the same way that re-reading my own childhood favourites fails, because they have to be read at the right age.
The single book that I read at exactly the right age (that sticks in my memory) is "Hello Summer, Goodbye" by Michael G. Coney, which is a science fiction and coming of age story with sociological and political undertones. If you've read it, then you probably understand how its memory was revived by my morning drive; if you have not, then I can't recommend it, unless you are a slightly nerdy 13 or 14 year old. I haven't seen a copy for the best part of 40 years, and perhaps that is for the best, but it is still on my list of books I should have given to my children to read, when they were ready.
My own children (mostly) are willing to read, but they have had their own contemporary diet of Potter, Rider and Snicket. Reading the same books as one's peers is always more interesting than something that an adult is pushing, so many of my recommendations were ignored, or only grudgingly accepted.
So I managed to palm off some Milligan and Adrian Mole, I was fortunate that the Tolkein bandwagon rolled through town. I managed to find time to read and share some of their contemporary fiction, but these failed to engage me, in the same way that re-reading my own childhood favourites fails, because they have to be read at the right age.
The single book that I read at exactly the right age (that sticks in my memory) is "Hello Summer, Goodbye" by Michael G. Coney, which is a science fiction and coming of age story with sociological and political undertones. If you've read it, then you probably understand how its memory was revived by my morning drive; if you have not, then I can't recommend it, unless you are a slightly nerdy 13 or 14 year old. I haven't seen a copy for the best part of 40 years, and perhaps that is for the best, but it is still on my list of books I should have given to my children to read, when they were ready.
Wednesday, 4 March 2015
Opening soon
Creeping measures of another year; snow drops, daffodils, crocuses, icy panes, bees on camellias, wintery showers, spring light. A red kite.
Birds sing the sun into the sky and collect mosses and dried grasses to call home. Clematis buds and thinks to twine. Evenings gather, rather than fall.
I awake to pale curtains, retaining warmth, restraining the day.
Birds sing the sun into the sky and collect mosses and dried grasses to call home. Clematis buds and thinks to twine. Evenings gather, rather than fall.
I awake to pale curtains, retaining warmth, restraining the day.
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