Friday 09 October
Crikey, what a week. Coronavirus, interview and a new job and all the usual trappings of family life and a working week. Then, here we are at the end of another Friday.
Beautiful sunshine to start the day. The view from the bathroom, onto our back garden this morning, was good enough for me to take a picture. I should have known that nature would eclipse that at the very end of the day.
For the first time in a long time, Lisa and I were able to go for a walk together this evening. We did the usual, walk through the orchard, pick an apple and eat it as we walk past the reservoir. There were some anglers there today and we chatted briefly to one as he walked back from his car with a bag of Chinese food from the local take away.
“Do you know why the water level is so low?” I asked. He didn’t know either. This was the first time he had fished here and didn’t know any different. He headed off to his green tent and his fellow anglers.
We continued along the drive made of old bits of brick and concrete rubble. Mabel being occasionally, arm-jerkingly, distracted along the way by sounds and smells of rabbits shooting, on her lead, down their holes beneath the brambles.
Then we are hit by the rampant autumn sky. We are struck by a sense of fortune, the luckiest people right there, right now. The sky presents itself, clouds, colours and sunshine, putting on a light show just for us. Only we can see what we see. From any other place it would look slightly, or ever so, different. I look behind us and it’s equally as amazing. I get my breath back, walk a hundred steps and look back again, and it has changed.
No wonder artists have tried to capture skyscapes as a record of that moment. No wonder some see it all as a divine creation. The wonder of it all is right there all around us and my soul is recharged. I take a deep, slow, satisfying breath.
The Bald Birder 