Turning

The kitchen light and the washing-up water condensing on the glass hid the dark garden until I switched it off to let the morning glow in, reflected off the translucence of water crystals.
After I closed the front gate I observed the world a moment. Mist hung between the houses, obscuring the view just beyond the end of the close. Each little Christmas light held a halo of vapour in the front gardens.

The car door pulled back slightly as I opened it; ice sticky. The glass looked wet, but a fingertip test revealed cold, texture; water frozen in the moment of running and dripping to a glassy model of itself.
After scraping the outside I sat, engine running, waiting until I could read the number-plate on my neighbour's car through the screen's internal fog.

After five miles I felt some warmth on my feet from the heater; the thermostat must have opened just before. The sky developed a glow where the sun was rising, faint pink, smeared yellow.

As far again and the sun was visible, but still seen through a haze. Misted fields and hedgerows backlit by this spectral star were visible as snapshots between periods of attentiveness to the road ahead; a sequence of Turneresque stills.

Rising up further beyond the river valleys and their fogs, the sun, itself risen, began to cut, to outline and to shadow.

Shortening

Three weeks since was a cold spell that extended over a few days leaving steadily less frost on the morning car as the atmosphere ran out of moisture. Nights skies were a pierced umbrella with Venus brightest and the new moon was earth-lit. Early morning light glittered off frosted surfaces, bearing little enough heat to melt them. Skies stretched between morning and late afternoon greys through all the pale blues, just darker than baby blue at noon.

Then came dampness; pooling in the Forest, misting across the plains and fogging in the shelter of tree-lined avenues. Through occasionally thin cloud, when it could be seen directly at all,  the moon rose to fullness and then set to wane again as its visiting hours were moved to morning.

Last night, Venus was up again until the wispy vapour thickened enough to hide her and our second named storm of winter played amongst the bare boughs of oak and beech, shaking harder the evergreens; fir and holly. Rain fell in sheets that accompanied the night's soundtrack of whispers and vortical moans; windows and gates shook.

The Forest's beauty is muted by the light and cloud; the palette softened and compressed to heavy shades dominated by browns.

The shortest day is upon us.

Autumn, winter transition. Mark!

Crystaline coating.
Car, sky-lit, awaiting the sun.
Winter tests our steel.

Custardy

Much of the canopy has turned brown now and thinning. Last week, when I was passing, I observed that the custard maple was still in a lime jelly trifle stage, despite its taller neighbours being much further advanced toward winter. This morning it was doing the eponymous thing, so I took a couple of terrible snaps on my phone. I'd like to get a better picture when I have more time and when there is better lighting, but I suspect that this afternoon's weather is going to strip most of the remaining foliage.

The same old road trip

The road was better washed today and the sky held on to remnants of water vapour. Clouds in thin slabs like broken paving mixed with smoke and a distant, sun-lit topping of cotton-wool. After I entered the trees the sun broke over the slabs and showed bare boughs, with just a few terminal leaves left on the birches. The thick carpets of discards glittered with wet gold, heaped with rust, sprinkled with crushed cinnamon.

The managed heath, where heather and gorse has been cut this year, lies like a mohair camel blanket. Grass flower stems are the fine whiskers and the autumn sward the fabric. This superficial appearance deceives. In detail the ecosystem is more fractal; giving equal detail at all visible levels of magnification. Amongst the grass: herbs, moss, lichen, the tiny resurgent heathland weeds and critters from mites to small mammals and amphibians roam.

Red deer were the morning's highlight, five crossing, relaxed; a stag and four hinds. The stag stood in the road and regarded me for a few seconds. I returned the favour.

When in Rome

Public transport is cheap and frequent. You will have to guess when it comes to where to buy a ticket; try a bar or a tobacconist.

The famous sites, the set-pieces are excellent and spectacular and likely to be crowded.

Walk if you are able. Between the well-known landmarks you will see an amazing range of ancient/ruined/re-purposed Roman artefacts.

Eat where the locals eat. Pizza, pasta and puddings were good everywhere.
Drink coffee. I found one excellent cup of tea in Rome, Assam, without milk, exquisite; you will probably not be so lucky.

The price of coffee is very simple. As a rough guide: in a back-street bar €1.20 at a table, €0.80 at the bar; On the tourist trail €3; in sight of a famous site €4; close to St Peter's €5.

If you want to see a particular place, say the inside of a museum, figure out whether it is possible to pre-book. There are special visitor tickets that offer museums and local transport inclusive which may save you money.

The large, square romanesque building next to Castel S. Angelo is not in the guidebooks. As far as my Italian will allow, it is the law court and police headquarters. Its frontage and the adjoining Piazza are well worth a look and are empty of tourists. There is a reasonable wine-bar there too.

I stayed near Termini, the main bus and train station. The guide books will suggest that if any area of Rome is rough, it is this one. I had no problems.

At the main tourist attractions there will be hawkers. How it is that the hospitals of Rome do not have to regularly surgically remove selfie-sticks from these people I will never know.

Earthquakes happen. The hotel staff were happy to measure the severity by the distance that the chandelier inside the main door swung in response to the quake.

During my visit, at the end of October, weather was 17-20 degrees (62-68 F) and I wore T-shirt and sandals with jeans, with a scarf after dark. I saw no Romans wearing sandals, my primary school teachers lied to me.

Holy Zarquon singing fish (bird autumn)

No frost today and, unusually, no blackbirds foraged under the apple tree this morning. Just the bobbing motion of a robin searching for invertebrates amongst the pecked-out apples and crinkled brown leaves.

Birds in pairs as I left the village, on the longer route, offering time for reflection. Pigeons first, then magpies. Houses gave way to lawn and ponies in small groups; no more cars and then, just before the second bridge, a grey heron close to the road in the bog.

The bracken has all turned. Every shade of fudge from plain to deepest chocolate.

Recent rain has stuck the autumnal litter to the road and its pattern reflects the sequence of trees: beech, birch, oak, a corner broadly strewn with discarded maple, the dust of needles and clusters of pine cones. Smaller brown birds are swept up before the car, chaffinches, but also gold finches and later, pipits.

I found the missing blackbirds and almost killed one. A heart wrenching moment when a bird disappeared below the line of the front of the car. I watched the mirror, expecting disaster, but this bird must have landed and gone underneath, because in the rear-view I saw it fly back up, apparently hale.

Autumn pigs; the usual herd of cows. From the plain the sky showed baby-blue North in ragged cloud and the Southern horizon was painted in a rough, narrow ribbon with layers of paler cloud hanging over a crack of sunlight just above the distant trees.