Category: Weather
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When life’s fraught, and there’s a momentary break in the clouds
It’s been a busy couple of days, but mostly filled with increasing anxiety about the immediate future. Will the house sale go through? Will the anticipated surgery actually happen, for our own surgeon daughter, so she can keep working for the NHS? Will we get everything ready for the imminent arrival of family? Will there […]
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Joys of Christmas present
The tree is ready for dressing . . . when the time comes, we’ll move it from the jammed-in corner and centre it a bit. The star will point the way to Bethlehem, and we’ll figure out a proper angel, or perhaps a stand-in, for the peak. The stories will be told and re-told: religious, […]
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The joy of a clever idea
One of the reasons I get quite grumpy around this time of year is that I have to deal with siting the annual Christmas tree. We’ve had so many live ones in, over the years, that there’s no more room in the garden to plant any more! So this year, with great reluctance, I agreed […]
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The compelling relief of access, or egress . . .
When you live far up in the high fellsides, half a kilometre from the nearest road, you do feel properly isolated. That’s lovely, and we’ve loved the sense of living in a remote location for the past decades, of course. But there are challenges to this sort of lifestyle, and perhaps the most salient one […]
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Soft and frosty morning
Everything outside today, high in these North Pennine fellsides, is still. The frost, the real first we’ve seen this season, is a harbinger of harsher weather ahead, but just now it’s rather exquisite. Even the commonplace looks different in its white morning gauze. I lowered my eyes from the hills and cast them over the […]
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Autumn wood
We ventured forth, just after 3pm, to walk in the woods, along from the end of the village, over the manicured golf club lawn and penetrating deep among the moss-covered trunks by the path littered with fallen leaves. The damp colours seemed to shimmer in the last light of the day. There’s a little circuit […]
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A walk in the sunshine
We ambled forth this morning, delighted to be catching the sunshine. I was that pleased to walk without hamstring twinges, though I could feel the strain, just not the pain. The breeze was brisk, however, and it didn’t pay to stop too long, or the chill might have felt more onerous. The little bit of […]
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Like a murmuration of sunlit clouds . . . ke-e-ep dancing!
The dance of starlings is awe-inspiring, as they gather together to swoop and dive, in a display that ostensibly befuddles predators. I thought that the clouds the other evening, as the sun set behind our sheds, seemed very reminiscent of that floaty swirling activity. Not to mention the lovely dance put on in honour of […]
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The fruiting body of the Fly Agaric
I stepped out this morning, getting ready for the dash back to Northumberland, and discovered a swarm of fruiting bodies of this poisonous mushroom under the trees across the way to the bottle bank. This one caught my eye, so fresh after the heavy rain yesterday, so vigorously pushed up through the topsoil. These crimson […]
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A morning tizz . . .
It’s been a little bit frenzied, this morning, as I had to make sure the access to the woodsheds was clear, that the woodsheds themselves were clear, and that all was ready for the dumpster truck to lift and deposit the load of hardwood within easy grasping distance for stacking. It took an hour and […]
Roads to Joy 