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 The glorious sunshine that we experienced on Saturday has been replaced by grey mist and drizzle.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.
With parties forbidden — by law — there was little to do except go for another walk as a way of trying to see the world. All in all, a fungus-ridden slab of dead wood seems to be a suitable metaphor for the last day of 2020. So be it.
My favourite photo of the year? Well, there have been fewer opportunities, all told, for creativity but I do like the one of the fox I took above Kentmere, Cumbria, on 4th March. I couldn’t believe that when I first saw it, it did not flee from me, but sat down to keep an eye on me (almost certainly because there were cubs nearby). It was certainly a poser, as foxes go.
If to “anthropomorphosise” is to assign human characteristics to animals, is there a word for assigning animal characteristics to plants? For this tree is clearly doing a good impression of something or other, maybe a lizard, with not only that obvious eye and snout but a crest of moss. I’m inventing (perhaps) a word for it — zoomorph. Noun: a plant that takes on the shape of an animal.
Another deeply unexciting day. At the moment, this fungus probably has more of a social life than the whole human population of the UK. I chose this shot because I like the stately swelling of the grey trunk to either side; but the fungus has made it inside, and looks there to stay.
Being 42 