Saturday 19.02.2011

Today a perfect example of there being no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes. Bitter easterly wind whipping sleet horizontally across the fields. I donned several layers, including padded ski pants and my woolly Icelandic headband over my woolly hat. Sartorially challenged perhaps but good to go.

Fortunately dog couldn`t care less what I look like as long as I get out there. We battled up the road more or less into the teeth of the wind but once in amongst the trees the action was all overhead: you could have imagined from the noise that you were by the sea but where we walked was calm with just the odd flake of floating snow.

Too cold to stop and take pics even if I`d had a camera (pay day end of next week and am surfing ebay in anticipation) while on Thursday wouldn`t have taken any anyway because everything was swathed in low cloud and mist.
It was so grey and cold hadn`t intended to walk but by lunchtime at work was falling asleep so decided a brisk trot round the block was in order to get me through the afternoon.
And a very strange thing happened. Earlier in the day I`d come across a Ted Hughes poem about rooks.*
It happened that I passed the local school just as children were emerging for lunch and a flurry of them ran out in front of me, all gawky and giggling, and shouting and excited, with their dark school uniforms flapping in the wind.......and it was the poem all over again.

*Rooks love excitement. When I walked in under the rookery
A gale churned the silvery, muscular boughs of the beeches, and the
wet leaves streamed -
It was like a big sea heaving through wreckage -

And the whole crew of rooks lifted off with a shout and floated clear.
I could see the oiled lights in their waterproofs
As the blue spilled them this way and that, and their cries stormed.

Were they shouting at me? What did they fear?
It sounded
More like a packed football stadium, at the shock of a longed-for
goal -

A sudden uplifting of everything, a surfing cheer.

That`s what it was with those children - a sudden uplifting of everything.

And are my crows in fact rooks? Questions, questions.

And if you haven`t watched the Dimbleby Lecture yet,catch it while you can - and cheer.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00ymf57/The_Richard_Dimbleby_Lecture_15_02_2011/