A crisp, icy wind today and wonderful clear skies tonight. The five day forecast is still promising snow tomorrow though I can't see where the sky is keeping it. I'm imagining laden clouds drifting and gusting our way through the night and my day has been filled with quick visits outdoors to check for heavy clouds as well as frequent searching of blogs and emails.

You should never take things for granted damnit all. I should have learnt this a hundred times in so many years but I never do. Change comes not only on the wind but waits round every corner and behind every face and indeed lurks inside us all.
Ambushed again.

Barney is away, returning Great-Grand-FatherinLaw-Dad home. I have one night to spend by myself and I can't decide what to do with the rest of it. I've finished the Winter's tale and it was lovely (perhaps a bit sentimental but very round and full)
Here's lichen and smoke

Fine old stone

And hope in the face of devastation
And here's a wave of cloud, crashing silently across the hills
And old well rooted trees
An unreachable farther bank
Who knows, tomorrow I shall hope to wake to the silence after fresh snowfall.

I've just been outside. The wind is still icy and now there are clouds. Maybe I shall wake to a blizzard. This would be exciting but I'd like Barney to get home first so I'll only hope for snow later. I don't want him driving home with his cold along the M25 in a blizzard.

The sound

Last night I took the dog out for a late night constitutional. We stood around, as we do, sniffing and looking at horizons.
After a minute I began to feel as though something was odd. Couldn't identify it for several minutes.

It was silent.

No wind. No rain. no bird calls. No motorway noise. No hushing of the big treetops. No lights on the motorway.
Silence and stillness. Big clouds unmoving in the dark sky with a moon somewhere above them casting a very faint radiance over the fields. Me and the dog, sniffing and looking and listening with all our might.

Nothing happened. After a while we went inside and felt all peaceful and soothed.


It's amazing how rarely it's quiet even out here.

I have to add this story which I read in New Scientist about thirty years ago. Concerning the plains of....somewhere Mid Western America and FLAT - Iowa? Nebraska? Well, wherever. The plains were so vast and flat that a constant steady wind blew across them, always from the same direction, unceasing and unvarying.

One day the wind stopped.

All the chickens fell over.