Skip to main content

I smell winter - and something tells me its good goodbye summer...


The house is surrounded by weaving and dipping House Martins.  Every window I look out through they are there, dozens of them flying, swooping and catching insects.  Our house (and most surrounding buildings) has several nests all securely tucked under the eaves, we had thought they may be for swallows but instead have been hugely populated by sleek little House Martins.   The bird table gets regular visits from lots of little brown jobbies and various species of tits. The field opposite has been harvested and is now home to a large flock of lapwings who seem to be enjoying what ever the barley has left behind.  Yesterday there were half a dozen detectorists slowly wandering up down yielding metal detectors and spades - no great shouts or gold dances but clearly a methodical evening looking for treasure.  Yes its all happening here in the depths of  wild County Durham!!!!  The sun has very definitely withdrawn but the view is of deep brooding clouds and can only be described as atmospheric.  Its quite hypnotic actually and leaves me sat in bed drinking tea watching and watching as if something momentous is going to happen but instead its just more gentle scudding clouds.  Very restful and relaxing... 


Far too often wet stuff falls from the sky - useful I am told but I'm not enamored - it doesn't take long for me to become disillusioned with the British weather although I do realise this is what make our country such a beautiful green and pleasant land - so I shouldn't complain... but I do... maybe its slight pessimistic to be smelling winter but the nights are undoubtedly drawing in, its inevitable - bring it on I say,  but first we need to make the most of whats left of this glorious summer.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Alesund

Our final destination stop was Alesund. This is a very pretty town in southern Norway built on a peninsula. All the houses are painted pretty colours and a lot of the architecture is all very Art Nouveau based. This is because the town itself was completely burnt to the ground In 1904 by a fire for which they never found the original cause. The whole town had to be rebuilt and this became a huge National Effort and a lot of prominent and up and coming architects flocked to the town to stick there 20 pence in. Consequently the town is very heavily Art Nouveau which was very fashionable at the time. There is this wonderful Museum just off the harbour which is a very beautiful Art Nouveau house. It has amazing panelling, doors, wallpaper, and it's all furnished with beautiful art Nouveau Furniture. It also house a collection of of enameled Art Nouveau Trinkets,boxes, spoons, jewellery, very very beautiful.   There is an interesting collection of old books and paintings a...

The Blue Dot

Excellent evening spent at the first Blue Dot festival held at Jodrell Bank.  Clever use of the radio telescope as back drop for the main stage... there were some major teething issues which hopefully will addressed if this event happens again - mainly access and parking.. it was a nightmare approach to the festival and fortunately as we were only doing one night we decided to ditch the car and chose to walk the last mile and half into the site... what a relief as if we had queued we would most certainly missed Public Service Broadcasting which was one of the reasons we were going.. anyway we caught them and then enjoyed fantastic set by Underworld - danced much of the night away in the rain - my trusty solfest poncho almost kept me dry.. it was a splendid evening and the telescope looked brilliant when lit up when it got dark. There was a rather fab "installation" called a luminarium, lack of site information - another hiccup meant we were really lucky to catch it just ...

Goodbye Dissertation!!!

The dissertation is finished...  it took me ages to do all the detail stuff Harvard referencing ect... the simplest tasks were starting to drive me mad!! I cant believe how long it took me to work out how to number pages excluding the first two pages aagghhhh...  I suppose I should be grateful that its not like the olden days where you had to get it typed and bound before hand in - this essay has been a hard slog, a subject which I felt was interesting - how the digital explosion is ruining traditional creative methods turned into a fairly unexciting - pretty boring unexceptional topic!  there will never be a next time but my advice is think of something funky - does Danny Boyle like garden Gnomes - Racoon meets Lady Gaga - anything that might surprise you but not too grown up!! I have worked hard and will be rewarded with a mid grade because there is no passion in this essay - the hard slog is evident as is the lack of enthusiasm - C'est la vie you cant win them all....