Staying Cool

Finally we have a dull, grey day, but it is still warm enough to wander around without a coat. I used to think May was a good month to visit Britain, but  anyone holidaying here this summer has been lucky beyond words.
Some days we've stayed indoors until the evening when things cooled down. The back of our house  - and the garden - face south, and so we get the sun all day long. That's great in the winter, when it helps warm the house, but this summer I've been following the French habit of closing the curtains and keeping the sun out on that side of the house. There's little air-cooling equipment around because we usually don't need it. John Lewis is always a nice department store to step into whatever the time of year, as they keep the air cool and fresh, but some of the older buildings can be unpleasant.

In May everything is new green and growing like mad and the weather is often sunny and gentle - or perhaps it just seems that way after the horrors of winter. Here in late August the cornfields are ready, some have already been cut, and the hedgerows are full of berries. It looks spectacular.

There is nothing quite so dispiriting as the sight of a cornfield laid flat by wind and rain, but this year the farmers must be laughing as every singe stalk stands tall and proud. In Somerset, government marksmen on behalf of farmers, are busy culling badgers because they claim they transmit TB to cattle. Given that other creatures - rabbits, deer, foxes, rats, mice and the like - all share the fields with cows, I don't know how they can be so sure badgers are the villains. Farmers in this locality shoot crows, which is sad because they're intelligent birds. We have a family of four who visit our garden, and we've watched the parents raise their brood each year. They're always together, the four of them, once the infants can fly. They seem such a happy group, much more so than the blackbirds, where the chicks harass the parents endlessly. The parent birds look quite hen-pecked by the time the fledglings can fend for themselves.

Christmas Battles

Here's one incident I observed over Christmas.

Now I'm not usually this nosy, but...look at this. A heron and a crow. Not a normal sight on our neighbour's roof ridge.

And not just one crow.

Two crows.

Two distinctly aggressive crows.

The battle went on for ten minutes and you may notice the effect it had on the heron by observing the roof...shortly after that, the heron departed.

Our Christmas has been updated almost daily by photographs coming via e-mail. The offspring are travelling, and we received pictures of their various stops as they travelled west to east across America, and north to Tremblant in Canada. The Canadian party of two almost didn't make it as their plane from New York was cancelled due to snow. They got to Montreal and somehow made it to Tremblant where they reported temperatures as low as -40 but I think that was at night. I hope it was at night. Two days later they reported rain washing away all the snow. They were not pleased. I believe a retail therapy trip back to New York was negotiated by one of the party.

The second party of two will be travelling on to France and Switzerland soon, and we shall meet up with them in Zermatt. The other party head back to Oz after New Year.

We have been going for long walks across wet muddy fields, and peering into all the nooks and crannies you can't see in summer for the abundant vegetation. Houses we didn't know existed have suddenly sprung into view now that their shield of leaves has vanished and left them open to the wild winds and my gaze.

I had a couple of days relaxation infront of the tv and I'm still going through the cds that make up the boxed set of Shogun, which I bought to fill the gaps when there was nothing but rubbish on the box. Christmas stuff is usually so sentimental that I can't watch it. Black Beauty, for heaven's sake, drives me out of the room and I dare not switch over to Lassie. Even Johnnie Depp as JM Barrie had me surreptitiously sniffling in my handkerchief.

Then it was back to work. Today I managed 1600 words very easily between Daisy and Rookhope. KEEP TRUST seems to be going very well now I'm concentrating on only one story.