Half past summer?

The rain, earlier just an optical aberration under a sky the colour of dusty sheets, graduated to falling mist and now, hisses on the conservatory roof, washes the leaves of the tired apple trees.

Birds have skulked to cover. Before 7am I was greeted by a fresh robin, dipping and chirping from the garden furniture on the lawn grazed by nervous, slow pigeons. Blue and great-tits searched crevices for insects and arachnids; blackbirds and jackdaws holed the unripe apples, spoiling them for all but the alcoholic wasps.

Dawn is still 5am by planetary motion, 6 by the clock, but summer is dissolving. This year's infants are entering adolescence. The cruel irradiating sun is filtered and the persistent blocking-high has welcomed Atlantic fronts at last.

There was some drought

Happy faces raised,
to accept the rain's blessing.
We run for cover.

Phase two

Buzzing; orange with purposeful banding, it flew low under the drooping apple boughs, disturbing wasps in their search for apple juice weeping from the browned flesh of fruit that the trees have let go. I wore jeans (for the first time in a month), made bearable by the slight diminishment of the morning temperature, for protection.

Hover-mower, hornet, or both. Your choice.

Breathe (reprise)

Not disconnected from media entirely, but away from television and radio for 2 months; I'm home again.

This song.

Isle of Wight, Monday

Gatekeeper

Snow again

Words rare enough in this neck of the Forest to be noteworthy.

Breakfast of the soul

Billy Graham's son was patronised briefly on Radio 4 this morning; advancing his belief that the hand of God could be seen in American presidential voting patterns (or more sinisterly, in the results?) and also signally failing to understand any insult he was offering his Rohingya Muslim "friends" by his oblivious evangelising.

The event reminded me of an occasion in my youth when I went, with a couple of house-mates, to see his father at a football stadium in London. On our walk from the station we were interrupted by a desperate outside broadcast crew who were finding the sort of difficulty in interrupting the flow of attendees that would be  familiar to a time traveller attempting to prevent the siren's call from enticing a stream of Eloi from their doom. I paused for long enough to explain to them that I was thinking of starting a religion of my own and wanted some pointers, that one of my friends was already a believer and was there for affirmation whilst the second claimed to be keen on a bit of chanting. I don't think they broadcast my interview. My recollection of the event itself was of a feeling of incomprehension swiftly followed by boredom.

I ate my breakfast to further reports considering the stature and style pointers of The Son of God, followed by Bishops banging on about child poverty and interfering in politics in a way that is bizarrely state-sanctioned. IMHO a failure to understand that government should be providing the majority with the means to be independent and to avoid fostering the sort of helpless position of a congregation petitioning an omnipotent body that they may not understand.

I silenced the radio before it enraged me further and before "A Point of View" which is the usually secular interruption to Sunday's religious output that inverts the position played by "Thought for the Day" throughout the week.

In the kitchen, some of the molecules that I had excited earlier were trying to escape via the glass, fogging the view down a cold and damp garden. The unemployed detergent bubbles were crackling mournfully in the sink and, with the rest of the house still quiet, I snook a brief return to warm bed covers.