Faves

The flutter of an orange-tip
A cuckoo's call
The questing hooks of bracken breaking sod
Ponies, ribs spread, bellies full, with new life
Miniature oak trees on each terminal twig, trailing green flowers
Apple blossom
Dusty gutters
Sunlight
The ghosts of sleepers in the disused railway bed
More cyclists than cars

A new nag

My new fitness watch;

I'm wound up by its nagging.

Funny how times change.

The pace of ***

Our right to roam around the ironmonger has been suspended. Transactions are now conducted over a trestle table round the side. The till is a flowerpot tray.

The pace of life has been reduced. People on the streets in ones and twos (or families with the compulsory bikes) are happy to smile from a distance and nod or greet. A few cars still circulate, but the steady drone of traffic has receded behind the bucolic whistling of bird life.

I realised when out for a piece of daily exercise yesterday that, after changing my trousers more than a week ago, I had still not accumulated that cruft of jangling coin in my pocket. Not sure whether to feel denuded or liberated.

The loudest noise I heard when outside was the sneeze of a pedalling youth on the opposite pavement; the quietest was when a fox, trotting up the churchyard, noticed my attention and broke into an easy lope.

How will this end?

With a whim or a banker

Quiet Spring

I have always enjoyed supermarkets, for the wide range of ways they provide for avoiding social contact. Often, I have the energy to chat, and I choose meats and cheeses from the delicatessen counter and the more voluble checkout operators. Occasionally I'm in a hurry, or just plain grumpy, and I choose the pre-wrapped stuff and the self-serve tills.

Yesterday, under the new regime, I waited fourth in line to enter the shop. I enjoyed a peaceful time selecting from (a slightly decimated) range of produce, paid, nearly in silence, and emerged faster than was possible before this crisis hit.

I don't think it was grim satisfaction, just that the experience was far less unpleasant than I had expected.

Boot swinging

Across the lawn, North of the path I walk on automatic, I heard the bubbling cry of curlew from the boggy bottom I skirted. Water has run so long on this grass this winter that the shallow sheets of runoff are choked with mats of algae. Off the made-up paths, the tracks that ponies make are puddled and muddied. Boot weather.

Squelching and splashing through the gorse stands, clothing grabbed by thorn and prickle, things only get marginally worse when more rain falls. Fortunately it is a day of very short showers. Where this landscape opens to heather heath, with fewer bushes, stonechats flit and chatter; over the marshy lawns skylarks make cryptic love songs.

Taking a dryer, unfamiliar route, I find a spot where I can see the church 6 miles to the North as well as the spine of the Island, 4 miles South. The cranes of the city to the East are hidden by smooth hilltops and wooded enclosures. Thrushes and goldfinches fly and call between the trees dotted here.

Almost without exception, those I meet are exercising dogs. I'm passed by a couple of runners, half a dozen cycles. I see two picnics; it is lunchtime after all, albeit damp and only just in double figures Centigrade.

UI woes

The DeWalt flashes while charging and indicates fully charged by a steady LED. The Oral B does the opposite.

When the toothbrush caught my eye in the bathroom this morning, I wondered how it had received an email.