don't confuse the narrator

hazy thoughts

Yesterday I complained that the weather had taken a turn for the worse. In fact it turned out that really I was just up too early for my own good: once the sun got up, the wind blew most of the clouds away.

This reminded me of the times when we would be on holiday at the seaside when I was a child and the days almost always seemed to start off looking unpromising. I remember my parents assuring us it was “only a heat haze”, and it’s true it often seemed to burn off by middle morning.

It’s perfectly clear that yesterday’s cloud wasn’t a heat haze, but it got me thinking about weather, about how vocabulary is so often tied to location, and about how both weather and the words we use for it have personal connotations.
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fur tree

lichens on oak tree trunk — I'm lichen it

“The times they are a-changing.” Or, at least, the weather is. And in Spanish, of course, tiempo is the word for both time and weather. (More about that in the ‘having a good time’ post.)

Yesterday, I sat outside sun-bathing and watched the very first swallows of the season sitting on the phone wires apparently tidying themselves up after their long journey.

Today the wind is howling, and the sight of the the billowing tree tops through the window is enough to make any one feel sea-sick. Perhaps the oak tree in the photo will be pleased to be wrapped up warm in its furry green coat.

collective cats

A warmth of newborn kittens;
a suckle of queen and her young;
a snooze of kittens in the sunshine;
a tumble of kittens in the violet patch;
a wheedle of felines in the morning
and a squabble at the feeding bowl;
a snuggle of siblings on the window sill;
a quarrel of cats in the moonlight.
(Da capo)

penny for them

After a fairly miserable weekend weather-wise, Monday dawned bright and sunny and positively spring-like. So I took the opportunity to gather some violets for my desk.

(In the photo they are on the book shelf simply because it’s tidier than the desk.)
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anthological exercise

I’m pretty sure I’ve read that Wordsworth wrote his poems while out walking, and that the rhythm of his strides helped him work out the metre. (Pause here for a link to Lynn Peters’ Why Dorothy Wordsworth is not as famous as her brother.)

I try and walk every day, even if it’s only down to the post office to check the mail box. I walk in the hope that I’ll get ideas to write about; I walk to iron out the pieces I am working on; and I walk for exercise. Yesterday was the first reasonable day for a while when I was free to take time for a longer walk, so I went round the reservoir.