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.

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.