Tuesday 11th February, 9:25am (day 4,919)

From the colour of one specific bit of Manchester yesterday, to this scene of utter grayness. Or is it greyness with an E? I’ve never been sure. Gra/ey it was today though, for sure. Such a gloomy day .

From the colour of one specific bit of Manchester yesterday, to this scene of utter grayness. Or is it greyness with an E? I’ve never been sure. Gra/ey it was today though, for sure. Such a gloomy day .

When Clare first looked at this photo as I uploaded and worked on it last night, she thought at first the backdrop was one of stormy skies; but it’s not, it’s the woodland up the side of the valley. The reason that is not catching the sun, and the houses are, is that at this time of year around 2.20pm is the point in the day where the sun is already starting to go down behind the valley wall. Here, you get what you can in the winter.

There was certainly a decent amount of smoke coming out of one of these stacks; but it seems he was satisfied that nothing was particularly amiss. I pray that I never have to get up on our roof, or the roof of any of these overdwellings, for any reason, professional or otherwise. It’s a long way down from five stories up.

The world turns. Bearing in mind that the earliest I have seen the sun reappear at one side of our house in the mornings is around 16th February, and assuming a basic symmetry on each side of the Winter Solstice, that means it’s about to disappear for the winter, an event that is rather less noticeable. But bearing in mind the clocks are going back in a few days, quite soon even this rather wan level of sunlight isn’t going to make it over the chimneys… and we’ll see it in February. (It’s not like winter in Tromsø though, that’s true.)