Rainbow

The wind and rain woke me yet again last night, wild and threatening.

It's been a season of hurricane force winds and floods and storms, of falling trees and swollen rivers.   Flooded homes and communities. Submerged fields.  Some have lost their lives.  Others are homeless.  We're all stuck under the Atlantic Jet Stream it would appear.  Global warming and climate change then, or else the gods are simply not happy. 

Then, a few hours ago, this. Totally unexpected. It lasted perhaps two or three minutes.  Magical.

Beast

Two - 2, a photo by elefthis1 on Flickr.

Don't need much excuse for a photo of the late, lamented cat. He wasn't posed for this shot, honestly. I just came into the room and there he was sitting calmly alongside his miniature double. I grabbed the camera.

This is my entry for this week's Photo Friday challenge "Beasts".

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Today it feels the world has stopped on its axis. No drama or crisis in this little corner of the planet, just a grey, damp and very still January day with no percepible movement in the immediate surroundings. There is a low-key, understated beauty around if you look and listen for it: the first snowdrops; the silence; the complex silhouettes of the trees with clumps of misletoe dotted at various points through the branches - the latter a sure sign of the cleanliness of the air, or so I'm told.

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I've started chanting again.  Thirty years or so ago I was given a mantra, and it suits me.  I've always loved voicework and singing and the morning and afternoon ritual of sitting down and sending out the sounds has become a necessary part of my day now.  All sorts of benefits are supposed to derive from it and I'm not dismissive of the claims.

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The sorting through and chucking out of stuff continues with DVDs currently in the frame. I'm watching each one again before reaching a decision. Today it's Raising Arizona (charity shop). Yesterday was Hideous Kinky (also charity shop). A few days ago, The Chorus (a definite keeper).

It's all preparation for the new life chapter. In actual fact I'm dubious about this concept of new chapters: barring the major stuff of life - sudden accidents or illness, bereavement, house moves and so on - minutes, hours and days merge and flow into each other without definite endings and beginnings.   I mean when I'm able to be out and about more, to be a social animal again who has much less time to watch DVDs.

Climate

My entry for this week's Photo Friday challenge: "Climate". 

Taken five years ago just a few miles down the road. No snow so far this winter.

Joy

It really has been a beautiful day.   Crisp, cold (but not too cold), very still.  I went into the garden to put some vegetable peelings on the compost and was filled with something approaching joy.  The blue of the sky. The quiet. The generous and unexpected brilliance of the January sun.  Such has been the nastiness of the last few years that these days I'm wary of opening up to this kind of upbeat emotion without vetting it, patting it down, thoroughly in my mind first  - for safety's sake -  but today I just went ahead and let it in.

The sun has vanished now and night is falling fast.  The waxing moon in the east peers in at me through the window as I type. 

Jupiter

Early. Very early.  The glorious, shining speck of light against the cold blackness of the night sky is the first thing I see as I raise the bedroom blind.  Jupiter slowly descending towards the western horizon.  Uplifting and encouraging? Yes definitely. Illogical reaction? No.

Colour and Warmth

On the third day of spring, when the sky is leaden and the slushy overnight snow is melting slowly and grudgingly and we are told by the news bulletins to take care because it will all freeze tonight and the roads will be treacherous and a wicked easterly wind straight from the Urals is forecast and power supplies may have to be rationed if this weather continues, I am hunting around for colour and warmth.

Candles help.  So do red peppers.

More Snow

No better place to be than on the bus this morning.

The road winds up and out of our low-lying city and as the altitude increased the view broadened till we few passengers could see across the fields to Wales. Skirrid - the Holy Mountain - and the Sugar Loaf and the Black Mountains, all, including the last, a pristine white. A panoramic view in any season. Today, heart-stoppingly beautiful.

In town you have to be up early to see the snow at its best. This past week it has fallen overnight then as the day progresses the temperature rises. Snow drips off the trees, turns into slush, flows away down the drains.



Here, just a little higher, the land is colder, the air crisper. The driver changed gear to accommodate the upward climb. In the reserve and silence of the lower deck we stared out of the windows at a changed world. Random travellers. The familiar reborn, recreated.

Update: More snowy pictures here.

Snow

You'll have to indulge me with this post, readers in North America and, indeed, other parts of England. And Wales, and Scotland. Our snowfall has been minimal in comparison to yours, probably, but nonetheless in these parts it's a rare event. I'm not working till Thursday so can enjoy it all as I prowl around the garden with a camera.

A touch of cabin fever mid-evening yesterday. Home alone after an exceptionally social and stimulating and surprising weekend. Restless. The urge to pull on boots and go out into the fields, into the snowy darkness, to explore. Sloth overcame courage and I surfed the net instead.

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The male blackbird is getting braver in approaching the patio, the one spot in the garden that is free from snow and where I can scatter crumbs. He flies off with staccato cries of alarm when the the cat approaches the French window - just a few feet separate them through the double glazing. Suddenly my elderly cat is transformed from the peaceable beast that I know. He crouches, every muscle on alert. Teeth chattering. Pupils dilated.

My companion. Still a hunter after all these years. His instincts remain as sharp as ever. Does the same apply to his owner who is also, in her own way, ageing?

Candlemas

Cotton wool balls of snow rush towards the windscreen. The wind whips up the flakes on the road surface into swirling, dancing patterns. White snakes, says B. He drives fast, even in this weather. Oncoming headlights dazzle, dip and disappear behind us.

To the west a hill curves on the horizon. A line of trees on its summit, stripped of leaves, fine drawn shapes against the last vestiges of daylight. The silhouettes are so distinct that even at this distance I fancy I can see individual twigs and the discreet, tumescent buds of spring.

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.

Impressions

The scale and grandeur of the buildings, public and private. The pillars and porticos, the flights of high stone steps. The relentless hardness and shine of the marble. Left overs from the days of empire or steel and concrete temples to Mammon, so plentiful I barely noticed them when I lived here. After two years away, a surprise, a shock even. Acres of concrete. Scurrying people. Flocks of men in suits. Christmas muzak. Icy, grey dampness as we walk across Albert Bridge and P, always upbeat, says that Monet would have painted the view with its diffused, nebulous light. The dawn chorus of mobile phones and switched on laptops on the train that had carried me back to the capital that morning. The cough that I couldn't stifle. Buses. Trains. High prices. Noise.

Being greeted with such unexpected, tentative warmth by H it brought tears to my eyes. Realising that I am an uneasy houseguest as I hate to be beholden, but I make a huge effort not to let it show. Understanding that it is wise not to accompany P on her shopping trips - much better to arrange to meet at the coffee shop afterwards. Saying goodbye to P, hugging, then breaking free, then thinking of something else to say, three times before I make it through the ticket barrier to catch the train home.

London and me. So long together, reunited again for a few, short days.

Survival

Running down. Tired. Days till I leave work. Days till Christmas. The cat's special diet for failing kidneys is out of stock till the New Year. The vet and I are working out what to feed him till then. It's OK. We'll manage.

This winter is desperate. No snow but a insistent , threatening cold that we rarely experienced in the city. Heavy frost. Ice that doesn't melt. A sense that darkness and death are not too far away. If the gas and electricity as well as the cat food supplies failed, for example. I live in a modern-ish house with no fireplace. Build a fire in the garden with newspaper and branches foraged from nearby fields and woods. Dismantle the washing machine. No use for it without electricity. We walk a narrow line in the developed world.

The inner drums make excellent braziers. I know someone who has several.

December 2