In Conclusion

The days will rumble on into September, warm and gradually cooling, shortening until December.  Perhaps the summer too will carry on, an Indian Summer in September/October, but for me the observations are over.

These journals have given me the focus on the everyday that I had aimed for, the minute appreciation of the everyday.  It has been difficult to sustain, this concentration, and sometimes difficult to find relevant things to write about; but generally it is a body of work I am pleased with.

What will I remember?  Making lemonade, lying on the ground in the Bedouin tent, strawberries in the Wye forest, buffet lunches for mums and babies, empty French roads and fields, water fights, fruit from the hedges, hot Sundays collecting firewood on the hill, the Milky Way over Evenjobb; but my abiding memory is standing in Eddie's vast barn gazing up at the tiles and laths far above my head, the floor of worn stone and packed earth; a summer-peaceful interlude between meals, conversations, summer games.  

An Ending Of Sorts

A house surrounded by owls, mainly from the hill behind; dark from 8.30 onwards.  Family staying in the pub, trees lit by the pub lights, soft warm darkness.

And suddenly the month ends and with it this journal and even a whole seasonal journals project running back two years.  I find it hard to slow down and think of the project as complete.

But driving home yesterday the fields here seemed richly golden, if perhaps heavily golden; the green of the trees looked tired and fading.  And it has been cooler, stuffier, damper.  It feels as if the summer is winding down.

A weekend of festivals, perhaps the festival season's last splurge; Presteigne Music, Creamfields and Mathew Street, Reading, Leeds, Notting Hill.  I always associate the August bank holiday with Larks in the Parks in Liverpool, a three day free music event in one of the city's parks.  I remember walking home across the park at the end of one event and seeing a patch of early autumn colour in the trees, and realising with a shock that summer was over.  

Summer at the Seaside

Just back from a few days in Southport, where we used to live.  A simple party yesterday to celebrate my parents' Golden Wedding Anniversary, a lovely afternoon of cake and children and buffet and champagne.  

It was too cold and windy to feel like the summer, but there were people in the town on holiday.  The beach was deserted but the amusement arcade was very busy.  I have always hated such places, to me they are noisy and expensive and far too busy.  Another version of the summer, though, a holiday of English seaside pleasures; amusement arcades, an afternoon on the beach, fish and chips, coloured strings of lights swaying in the evening breeze.  Blackpool we could see on the horizon, a nuclear glow at night.  It made me realise how little I miss urban life.  And perhaps what a miserable get I am.  

Crepuscule

I do not notice twilight unless I am out in it.  Tonight I found an hour to trim the hedge at the front and it got dark as I was working.  When I went outside the light was grey and starting to fade, when I came in the street light was on.

There is something very beautiful about working in fading light.  The eyes adapt very quickly so that electric light seems harsh and alien;  I trundled the wheelbarrow to the quarry in deep gloom and only saw people outside the pub by the light of their cigarettes and the low murmur of voices; yet I could see perfectly well.  Bats started to appear near the church, and when I was finished I watched them against the (surprisingly) bright grey of the last of the sunset.  It looked as though the sky was still lit but that the light had drained from the earth.  And it was nearly dark at 9pm.  

Is crepuscule a word?  It should be.

Unsettled

The unsettled and unpredictable weather continues.  One minute a heavy shower, one minute warm sunshine.  It is cool enough indoors to have the fire lit in the hall, where the washing is drying.  The line under the ash tree I have left out, hoping that the breeze will dry the clothes and that they will be protected from the showers.  

The garden birds have come back.  I put food out yesterday for the first time this summer and the garden was alive with birds all day.  Sparrows, great tits, blue tits, nuthatches, coal tits, even (I think) a garden warbler.  And again today the feeder has been almost emptied in about four or five hours.  

Schools start again next week and mornings and evenings are noticeably cooler.  There seem to be blackberries everywhere - lots of bushes on the hill behind the house and in the old lane - and I have been wondering about the hazelnuts in the hedge.  These seem to be signs of the season winding down, but then the sun comes out again and I think about shorts and meals outside.  

Smokes, Rains, Glooms

A run of wet, grey and gloomy days.  Yesterday was stuffy and close, an apt word for the tightness of the air; my chest didn't let me get far all day.  We managed to get up into the beech woods on the hill for a small firewood run, and gathered a good-sized bag of small logs.  It was too warm for a fire but far too wet to dry clothes outside.  The garden is heavy with water this morning, and the hills around the village are only occasionally visible, and there are slow rain clouds obscuring the Radnor Forest.  I wish it would rain properly; the air seems clearer when it rains. 

A Day of Birds

Some days we see more than others.  Yesterday I was in the garden looking at the view and a sparrowhawk flew through the garden and landed in the ash tree about fifteen feet above my head.  I think it was a juvenile as it seemed a little unsure of itself.  A beautiful pale silver colour, banded with darker stripes, with a darker head.  The bird was hidden in the tree but there was an anxious mob of swallows and house martins high above the ash, a swirling mass of birds calling and shrieking at the sparrowhawk.  After about five minutes - five minutes - it flew back the way it came, over the garden and out towards the valley, with a halo of mobbing birds above it.  I hate saying 'it' but I don't know if it was a male or a female.  

Then sitting in the living room in the late afternoon I glanced up to see a red kite swing out of the woods and down the hillside towards the valley side.  

And in the early evening two buzzards were mewing at each other - in play or courtship or war I do not know - in and out of the trees above the house, tumbling over each other in the air, through the trees then out and back again, until they disappeared over towards the quarry.