It’s only the second day of September but the kids have started back at school, it is much cooler and damper than it was, and there’s this general feeling of decline (and I don’t even mean in political terms, though we’ve certainly got that too). Autumn is upon us, I fear. Well, let’s make the most of it.
This little new sprig, coming out from what I think is an oak tree (those do look like oak leaves), is catching the light in a figurative sense — but surely a literal one, too. I imagine that it’s exactly because that little patch of trunk achieves direct line of sight to that ball of helium 93 million miles away that the sprig has been encouraged out into the world. Life’s like that.
One reason the valley of the Hebden Water is a protected environment is because it is home to many colonies of wood ants, and something to do while walking there is go anthill-spotting in the trees. I did so today, and caught sight of this monster — at around four feet high, this is probably the biggest I have ever seen in there. A teeming, writhing metropolis of the ant world, and not something to sit on or stumble into accidentally (perhaps not yet quite at the scale of the ones in Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull, but they may have plans).
Day off work today and glorious weather, so I got out and bagged the latest County Top: this one lying in the vast expanse of Swinley Forest, south of Bracknell in Berkshire. The ‘Ladies’ Mile’ was this seemingly endless, dead straight path; this view epitomising the day, both for the trees and also the large number of dogs running free, their owners largely oblivious.
Opening time at my local pub is 3pm on Tuesdays, and a nice thing about arriving early is that I get to light the well-laid fire. The lump of lava on the right is a firelighter doing its job: within a few minutes this whole construction will be alight. Sometimes the interest is in the details — such as the paper to the left, what series of numbers goes 3, 10, 50, 70, 100 I wonder?
A dull day in every sense. The glorious sunshine that we experienced on Saturday has been replaced by grey mist and drizzle. This explains a lot about the British psyche. Don’t get used to it being nice, because within a couple of days it’ll all turn to crud again.
Work, at the moment, consists of me banging my head against various Kafkaesque brick walls (Covid has infected the bureaucratic mindset far more profoundly than it has our physiology, and to more danaging effect) until I can’t stand it any more on any given day and need a drink. Today that point was reached about 3.50pm. Ten minutes later I was admiring the woodiness, almost meatiness, of the table in Nightjar at which I drank my first pint of the day.
An improvement in the weather, at least temporarily. The red tree proudly stands out from its neighbours; dare to be different…
Groundhog Day…. and as for Bill Murray, the snow came down, in Hebden Bridge anyway. Otherwise it was much the same as every other day recently.
Spring Wood is its name…. but it is going to feel like a very long time until spring. With weeks of stagnancy and economic devastation to come, let us at least hope there are more days with as good weather as today. If Bojo thinks I’m staying at home on such a day, he is mistaken.
Being 42 