Transition

Two different people have told me that an early autumn means we're in for a long, hard winter.  Well, we'll see.  But there is definitely a chill in the morning air, the leaves are turning, and a bumper crop of blackberries is already ripening on the hedges that border the river.

So still this morning. A milky sun giving a soft and gentle light. No wind.  A very distant hum of traffic on the main road.  Birdsong. I keep meaning to re-listen to my bird song CDs to help identify the different calls.  I disturbed half a dozen goldfinches making the most of the opportunity for a blackberry breakfast.  Incidentally the collective noun for goldfinches is a charm as my father once informed me.  (Other collective ornithological delights here.  A bellowing of bullfinches is a particular favourite.).

Today I'm particularly aware of the onset of the cold months as my gas central heating boiler's days are numbered, or so the British Gas technician I called out when the radiators remained stone cold after half an hour of running informed me.  I'm lining up several firms to give me a quote on a new, modern, energy efficient one over the coming week or so but I'll miss my old warhorse.  It has a steampunk look about it and dates from the late 1980s, from the era of Duran Duran, padded shoulders and mobile phones the size of a brick.  It has grunted and creaked  and whirred its noisy way through the last six winters since I moved into this house and I've always been aware that it and I have been living on borrowed time as far as heating is concerned.  Even now it hasn't given up the ghost completely, as it still provides hot water in the taps.

Quite a significant week to come all in all.  I've an appointment this Tuesday that I'm pinning far too much hope on because, probably mistakenly, it feels like my last hope of getting back to anything approaching a normal life. Yes, there is more than a hint of desperation here but my ability to "trust the process" has been severely tested of late.  Don't want to say any more about it in case I put a jinx on the whole business. 

Pattern

The poor thrush flew full tilt into the closed bedroom window and was killed on impact.  I retrieved it - gingerly - from the patio. 

As I can't dig the garden I had to dispose of it in the rubbish. I can tell you, this felt like sacrilege. But not before recording and marvelling at the beauty of the plumage. Just amazing.

Power

Spring sunlight and long shadows.

Then an urgent swish of large wings cutting through the peaceful garden sounds.  Loud and rhythmic honking.  Two swans, necks extended, skim over the roof of the house like daredevil pilots and continue their straight line west towards the river.   More than a little disturbing, all that power, in the midst of such a golden afternoon. 

Lavender and Blackbirds

One of the joyous side effects of the sorting out of my gut flora has been the occasional flare up in the sinuses (don't ask me why, but apparently it's not uncommon).  I've never been particularly prone to sinus problems.  There's no sore throat or cold or flu, no swollen glands, just a dry burning pain at the top of the nose that at times makes me want to rip open my nasal cavities with my bare hands.  

The first bout was in early March when I tried to increase the probiotics dosage too suddenly; then a badly upset stomach was accompanied by the world's worst ever sinus headache.  Fortunately I had an appointment already booked with the cranial osteopath who worked her usual magic and the pain dissipated the same day. A second flare-up yesterday; this time the osteopath's on holiday and anyway it isn't that bad, but it's bad enough.

So switch off the central heating (too drying), open the windows to let in the damp rainy air and steam inhalations every few hours.  A towel to cover the head and a bowl of hot water with a couple of drops of lavender essential oil.  Surprisingly soothing.

But I wish it would all go away.

By way of homage to the modest but so useful plant, my own lavender bush a few summers ago - a magnet to the bumble and honey bees of the neighbourhood. 



(For anyone out there with an astrological bent my natal Moon at 25 Aries is currently  being battered by the ongoing planetary line-up and, yes, in particular Mars.   So no surprise perhaps.)

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A pair of blackbirds have built a nest in the large evergreen shrub (nobody, not even the gardener, can identify it) by the compost heap. Peering into the shrub's depths the other day I caught sight of the female sitting on her eggs, quiet and unmoving.  I feel honoured.  The downside is that I won't be able to have the lawn mowed for several months until the young ones leave the nest for fear of driving the parents away, but do I care if the back garden resembles the savannah grasslands come June?  No.

Sunday

Should I blog about the new computer and the relief to back and shoulders of not hunching over the laptop and the delight of a proper keyboard? Should I, after watching the news and trying to take in the futility and the suffering? It's the dilemma of personal blogging, the sense that trivia is sometimes just, well, trivia.

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A solitary female blackbird pecked at the stiffened crusts of bread. Minus 6 degrees yesterday and the frost seems permanent. Low grey cloud. Rock-like soil. The rasp of the scraping of car windscreens. The cat dozing on the sofa. M did indeed install the new computer. A visitor engenders a flurry of tidying up. I made him two cups of tea - milk, one level teaspoon of sugar - and he polished off the plate of Jaffa cakes.

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Saturn transiting 12th house. A stripping down, a melting away.

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At one point a robin sang in the rowan tree. The song pierced the silence like an arrow. Clear. Utterly beautiful.

Red kite

Mobbed by crows,
rising high,
high,
out of danger
effortless,
wings invincible,
wide as the world,
and silent,
riding an invisible wind
floating in blue.

On the other side
of the valley,
watching,
I drink tea
from the flask.
I eat my sandwich
then the banana,
carefully packing up
the rubbish
to take home.

Deo gratias.

Magpies

Flu. Off work. Aching back. Scrambled brain.

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Candle and incense lit. Can’t focus on the breath. Or chant. Through the window a low, grey sky as the wind separates more leaves from the branches of the rowan tree.

A pair of magpies chuckle and squawk on a neighbour’s nearby roof. I don’t get the dislike these birds apparently evoke - they can be garrulous and, um, assertive, to be sure but they are also beautiful and there is a dash of entertaining villainy about them. Rather attractive, all that thieving.

Hard to sit still.

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Finished: Restless, William Boyd. Well written spy story.
Surfed the net: Sporadically. Found this illuminating op-ed in the New York Times on the global implications of the current financial mayhem.
Watched: 2 episodes of the West Wing.
Watched: News bulletins. Lots of them: elections: climate change: Afghanistan: credit crunch. Retained some of it.
Purchased: The Millenium Collection - Tim Hardin (via Amazon). I had an LP of Tim Hardin in the 70s which I lost. Like many other things in that decade.

Drank rooibos tea.
Used one full box of tissues.
Coughed.
Fretted
Slept.
Cabin fever.

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Two magpies.

One for sorrow
Two for joy ...

Thoughts

Click to enlarge.

A photograph taken this week on the regular morning walk/commute. It's amazing I make it to work at all these days.

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Two male blackbirds perched a hundred yards apart, sing out piercingly beautiful warnings to each other. Stay away. Stay away.

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The electrician in the office takes his time, working steadily and methodically. He pauses for a moment to chat and asks about plans for the weekend. I stop what I am doing to reply. There's no hurry.

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V, wearing a green jacket to go with her Irish lilt, brings me an armful of flowers from the farmers' market as a birthday surprise. I'd mentioned to her in passing a few days ago how much I liked that particular flower stall. Unkempt and wonderfully imperfect blossoms, redolent of another era, so different from the tidy bouquets in the florists. The tansies and cornflowers - and many others whose names I don't know - in my bunch are plucked in local gardens and tied together with thick, rough string. As best I can, I thank her.

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J's eyes are exactly the same shade of dark brown as mine. It's unsettlingly like looking at a male twin. Previously I've been attracted by opposites: men with blue, or grey, or green eyes, the colours of the sea.

I doubt anything will come of it.