Symbolic Forest

Pancake Day!

Yesterday, the sky was black with cloud, wind driving rain through the city all day. Storm Imogen, apparently. I’m not sure I like this new idea of naming all our winter storms like hurricanes: Imogen is the only one this year so far to have made an impression on me, watching the black bare branches of trees thrashing wildly outside the office window. Before that, even: yesterday morning I was woken by thunder and lightning at 5.30am. Two hours before dawn seems like a very strange time of day for a thunderstorm.

Today, though, the skies seemed to be positively springlike, clear and blue, and I could get on with work without worrying the house would be blown down. I’m not sure work wanted to get on with me, though, as I spent a few hours chiselling away at a strange problem and making no headway at all with it.

Keyword noise: weather, winter, storm, thunder, spring.

Talking of summer storms: we popped down to Glastonbury the other month, for a poke around the bookshops, and for a walk up to the top of Glastonbury Tor. As we did so, the heavens opened, and we, and all the other tourists making the climb, got soaked.

We watched the storm motoring its way off across the Somerset Levels, away to soak the distant hills.

Keyword noise: Glastonbury, Glastonbury Tor, photography, Somerset, storm, weather.

Bude, in North Cornwall, back in May. A study in clouds and sea-spray.

Keyword noise: Atlantic, Bude, clouds, coast, Cornwall, North Cornwall, ocean, photography, sea, seaside, shore, storm, surfing.

The world turns, things change, and another week is over.

Wee Dave seems to be settling in well at the office. We seem to agree on a frightening number of things, many more than I did with Big Dave. The office still hasn’t been blown to bits by the wind, although it came fairly close. The office toilets are jammed up in the attic, spread out across creaking roof-beams, and sitting up there in a heavy gale sounds, I imagine, like riding in a hard-pushed galleon sailing across the Atlantic.

The storm seems to have been blowing everyone’s heads about, upsetting people, breaking things up, putting people on edge. I blame it for all the tension that seems to be all around me.

Keyword noise: storm, weather, Wee Dave, wind.