Beautiful light mist rising at the back on the garden today... ethereal.... I half expected a spirit to take form, always just like in the old movie, The Amazing Mr Blunden!

Gorgeous day today, blue skies and sunshine, yesterday a bit grim... but it turned around this morning, a slight frosting on the grass... I see the fox most days now, running past the back door from the roadside to come out back and into the fields and his den I guess... Huge fox, but no wonder the amount of food he puts away each night!! Hmmmm!! Also a resident squirrel, he sits and nibbles at the red berries by the back door...

Roads were okay, thankfully, short drive to somewhere today for a couple of hours... then back!!  As you can tell, nothing more to say really...

I'm sleeping okay, but very lightly... so I am getting real tired now... Ta dah!!

We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.

Carson McCullers

Sunrise on the road...

A beautiful sunset... Always the sunsets... Never the sunrises... I can't see them from the terrace in Spain, and here not so much either... I have always wanted to see the sunrise in Petra, not a safe place now I guess, but something I have always wanted to do... on the bucket list!

I haven't fiddled with the photograph above, the way the picture is in the roof of the hay barn? That just happened, and I don't know how, so don't ask me... fluke!

Our Planet

A program on TV last night, a woman exclaiming over a 4000 years old punt!

How often do we think about the fact we are walking around on a plant billions of years old! Stop, walk barefoot, touch the earth with your hands... Centre yourself... Every thing we have comes from what already is, and one day, however changed it will return!

I reworked a bowl of stuff here in the kitchen, just rearranged and processed a bit!

And below a tiny berry from outside, also processed!

Four weeks through now (nearly!), half way!

I'm a bit tired, had neck ache since... Four or five days I think! Not sure if I've scrunched it somehow; someone said something about their flu shot effecting joints!?! But it's a week tomorrow I had it, the pharmacist said it takes three weeks to work, so maybe it takes three weeks to get through the body?

I guess I can go check tomorrow or later, on my break...

I'm glad I have a night in the hotel before my flight to LA, a night to completely rest, although it doesn't always work like that, and after eight weeks of not sleeping properly... it will probably take a few nights to relax... Lol... But I'll be in a different time zone! My born natural time zone!! I so can't wait! Who am I kidding!! I haven't slept properly since I can't remember when!! I always wake up anyway!

This Bonelli eagle is coming home!

Difficult Roads

I can't really just put a quote on here can I? I better fill some space between it and here then!

Today, Ophelia has passed on, trees here intact, apples aplenty fallen to the ground, we've had blue skies and full sun, yellow! The Saharan dust cloud has passed on by... I wonder in thirty years, when this storm is remembered, if it is, if the orange sun shall also be?

The nights are drawing in, six thirty this evening it was almost dark, the clocks change here in the UK in a couple of weeks, a week before they do so in the US.

Purloined quote from Twitter:
Difficult roads often lead to beautiful destinations...

Ophelia

There is a weird calm before the storm outside.. the sky is red... the wind is starting to build up... At the shopping centre today when I came out of a popular clothes store whose TV advertisement had drawn me in, and I thought what Next!?! So got some food shopping completed too!

But the car park there was eerie... a strange quietness, trees blowing and people rushing about quietly! It was, is, very warm out, and as I speak the color outside is changing again, almost an orange glow! I've just added this bit... I've realised too, in the car park, and here.... no birds!

I know the hurricane Ophelia is headed towards Ireland, but that is some way from here... wondering if the great storm of '87 which happened exactly 30 years now... could be on a re-run!

Sorry, had to get coffee... hah! Like you knew... and also!! ah ha! I just ran back down again to answer the door! Package for next door!

So... here is a photograph of the sky when I got back at 11am...

This is not stylised, this is as is! I also know, Do Not Look At The Sun! Mwwwhh!

The sky is more orangy now...

Last night, lasted a while, so when I got back here after shopping, I laid down for an hour, couldn't really sleep, but rested a while knowing I didn't have to keep an ear open!

So when I got up I felt more refreshed! And now only concerned I will have fallen trees ahead of me to collect my customer later!

Traveling Road

Wow! This week flew by! Blogging from my phone so apologies ahead of time for errors to be quite honest, I am not going back to look for!

As in life as in Blogging!

Just eaten my breakfast, coffee going down well, thought I would write to you...

Weather is still great, had a two minute downpour yesterday as I was walking, change to running! into a supermarket yesterday after morning in a centre.

My Parker remains unworn!!! Three weeks, no coat in England, sometimes just the t-shirt! I am sure by mid-November I will be all hugged up in my favourite winter coat!

And so yes, three weeks gone, four weeks to go then a week of days! Lol

Last night I couldn't sleep properly, thinking I'm already moving into US time zone! Was talking about this last night... Which means every morning I wake up tired from bed, it's because that's where I should be going!

I have often wondered over the years the path my life would have taken had my mom not flown me as a toddler, across the world... Where would I have settled, what work, what life... lol what accent!

I am truly blessed that this is the path I'm on, because of a life filled with richness of family, friends, my life so far... my amazing sons both with beautiful and amazing wives, my granddaughter, the most remarkable baby girl in the world, of course. Nothing, not one single thing would I change... I have such amazing bonds of friendship, which will never break, I have such gratitude for everyone I've met along my path, for good or bad, people make us who we are...

But, and it's a big but! But what of the wheel I imagine our lives run along, like an old wagon wheel, or maybe spiders web, with the links across? I am guessing the middle would be birth... then coming out, jumping from line to line... Towards Ithaka...

But what of the lines we lived on in our lives? Do they continue somewhere? I know I've said before but when I'm back in the states, I see glimpses of a life I feel I'm in...

And how many times have I bumped into people I know, somewhere I wouldn't normally see them!??? Okay, well maybe that's nothing to do with anything!

Couple of photographs from the other week... Above an excellent capture of two flying saucers! Must be one of those areas for UFO's just here...

And apples!

Its very strange I don't normally get lost for words...
Maybe I can think of an old story from my 'way back when'...

I remember picking a decade once before to pick random happenings? It was a while ago! Wonder where I got to with it?

The only day I skipped school! It was the games lesson, and my best friend and I decided we didn't want to run around the playing field all afternoon, so we walked to her house, which was... I can actually check now with maps... 46 minutes, 2.5 miles! and then I had to walk home!!! 1hr 3 minutes, and 3.1 miles!!! I think I drew the short straw there!! And of course the moral of this story is do not avoid games to walk other people home first!!!!

I had my flu shot yesterday! Unlike the one I witnessed last week, mine took ages and was covering me for four strains of flu, which is handy as I had to call the paramedics last time I got the flu and the shot I'd had didn't cover that strain!! She said my arm would ache, and to stay in store for five minutes in case I went into anaphylactic shock! I did, stay in store, but no problems... apart from the arm ache!

Spiders web...

Hello, been a while, difficult posting from a placement... can't talk much about places or day to day activities... I guess I can say at one activity on Monday we had an opera singer entertain us, she was amazing!  Music no mic the room did the job wonderfully, she walked about us as we sat at our tables, it almost felt like we were on the stage with her as she sung her part... felt very part of the whole experience... She sung a selection from many of the old and new shows... sadly nothing from the Phantom or Les Mis... Lol the only two I have actually seen of course, and only the Phantom was live at Her Majesties in London with mom many moon ago now...

We've been out and about shopping in the car to nearby towns! And a farm shop!

We've gathered apples from the garden and adjoining paddocks...

I feed a fox every night!!

And there we have it really! I'm in the Cotswold's! Guess I say that! So you know this is a very pretty area, very chocolate box!

And I am about three weeks into the placement, kind of five to go, but the last week is only days isn't it... when you break it down, so I am going to say four weeks when I get to Saturday! I know it will be four weeks and seven days... but its days!! Me and my positive thinking... well, who'd have thought it eh...

I feel a poem should be going here again... Shall I write my own again!! Or look for something... let me think a moment...

Well, I wrote a poem then decided not to post it here, yet....

So just posting this amigos...