Symbolic Forest

The wind truly howled last night. The storm came in and the rain battered hard against the windows, keeping me awake half the night and making me almost believe we had been magically transported up into the mountains. Every so often I would hear a scrape outside as someone’s bins went past, or a For Sale sign from further down the street, and I wondered idly if, by morning, we would have accumulated a harvest of poorly-secured neighbourhood trampolines in the garden.

When morning dawned, the recycling boxes were scattered around the garden but nothing seemed to have blown in and nothing blown out. By the time I sat down at my desk with my second cup of tea, the wind had abated, the rain stopped, and the sky was clear and blue. It looked as if it was going to be a fine bright sunny day, and the weather forecast concurred that no more rain would be coming.

Even though there were reports from the Bristol colleagues of hailstorms so violent they were setting off car alarms, the weather here still seemed positively bright and friendly by midday, and the forecast still promised peaceful sunny calms. I set out for my daily walk without a coat, wary that with one I would overheat. Nevertheless, when I was at my furthest from home, the sky began to darken. The further hilltops faded from view. First fat, heavy fast-blown drops of rain fell on me, as I trudged down a muddy lane; then sharp-stinging hailstones a few millimetres across. I stopped by the wall of one of the village chapels, noting how the village on the other side of the valley had faded into murk and disappeared.

By the time I reached home again, the sky was clear and the sun was out, but I was chilly and damp. I probably shouldn’t trust the weather forecast quite so much next time.

Keyword noise: winter, weather, seasons.

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.

So it didn’t snow. I was back on the railway yesterday, and everything went rather well. None of the equipment failed, I didn’t do anything stupid, and I didn’t drop any tokens, which is always my biggest worry. It was a relatively quiet shift; I sat in the big armchair with the coal stove roaring away next to me, handwriting a diary piece about how sitting in the big armchair with the coal stove roaring away next to me and the clock ticking on the wall reminded me of visiting my grandmother’s house on winter Saturday afternoons when I was small. I was the first person to arrive at the station; and by the time I left all the station staff had already locked up and left too, it was getting dark, and all the lights were on. Although it didn’t snow, it felt all day as if snow was potentially on the menu.

I do wish the children could come with me to the railway, but I doubt that getting them in the same room as a cast-iron coal fired stove is a good idea: it would result in severe burns and trips to casualty, if not a full-scale conflagration. It is a shame, though, that I spend all day working on the line and then am not home until after they’re in bed.

Today, well, we have a strict no-romance-on-the-14th rule in this house; so instead of doing anything special we went into town and did the usual mundane weekend shopping: new gloves for the children, some stuff from the craft shop; a new USB cable. The Child Who Likes Fairies has learned the word “gouache”.

Keyword noise: winter, weather, snow, The Children, volunteering, childhood.

Most of the intractable problem I was slowly chipping away at at work was solved, today. I suddenly realised that the vast majority of all my unsolved problems - and another, urgent problem, that an outside contractor had asked me for help with - were in all likelihood all just different facets of the same thing. It wasn’t, it turned out, the sole cause of all of them, but it was enough of a hint to clear most of them and give me the boost of encouragement I needed to sort out the rest.

I don’t mean to bang on about the weather, but I’ve been warily watching the forecast all day today. On Saturday I’m due to go and work on the railway, and to get there I have to drive 90 miles ending in a good mile of steep, twisty country lane. Saturday is forecast snow. I really don’t fancy driving there in that weather, and I definitely don’t fancy the risk of getting there, the snow starting, and being unable to get home again. Still, even if it does snow, it should be too warm and wet for the snow to stick.

Keyword noise: coding, weather, winter, snow.

Lots of wind and rain today, rain being blown hard, the sort of rain that seems to be in your face whichever direction you are travelling in.

Went into town with the kids to do various dull things, like go to the bank to pay the bills, and pick up some firelighters ready for a turn on the railway next week - being February, I will probably want to get the stove going. The regular busker who only seems to play Nirvana and Green Day was in the Podium again, and as usual The Child Who Likes Fairies approved: “Like it music!” She has started introducing herself to other children when playing.

Keyword noise: Bristol, weather, winter, rain, wind, The Children.

The temperature was minus 4 when I left the house today: not cold by global standards, but cold by my standards. When I left work to come home again it had risen to plus 3, but most of the buildings around, especially the big dull office buildings, had roofs still covered in rough, powdery frost.

Keyword noise: winter, weather, ice, frost.

The rest of the country has snow, apparently, and we have drizzle. I consoled myself by thinking that, by 10am, everything elsewhere was slushy and grey.

I took the children up to the Ponds, and back home again. It’s not the most exciting walk: straight and tree-lined. On the way back I passed a family with the dad telling a young girl: “steam trains used to come up here.”

Keyword noise: Bristol, Fishponds, overheard, weather, winter, drizzle, snow.

Feeling sad today.

Went to the pub for pizza and beer; then strode up through drizzle to the cemetery and did a circuit of the place. Then home, and I sat quietly on my own in the kitchen staring into space and drinking a cup of tea.

Keyword noise: weather, rain, drizzle, seasons.

Never mind “Spring Bank Holiday”: it’s June, and it feels like it’s summer already: last weekend, we had a day at the beach, and both ended up horribly sunburned. As shorts aren’t an option for work, I winced every time I moved my legs. Yesterday: a bank holiday weekend, and beautiful sunshine again, so we went off for a cream tea and a steam train ride.

The footplate of a steam locomotive on a summer’s day is a horribly hot and airless place to be. Nevertheless, riding behind a steam engine seems like such a naturally summery thing to do. So we travelled down to the South Devon Railway,^* for a day’s relaxation sitting in railway carriages and watching trains go past.

The South Devon Railway is, as steam railways go, an unusually scenic one. Being in Devon it’s surrounded by lush, verdant countryside; it follows the River Dart down from Buckfastleigh, past rough, rocky rapids; weirs and once-busy mill-races; finally alongside the more placid deeper, lower stretches of the river, down to its tidal weir just by Totnes station. It doesn’t take much effort for a train to trundle downriver; as we sat in the front carriage with the windows open, we could hear the locomotive clanking its way down the valley with barely any steam on, the vacuum pump making a light chiff noise for each revolution of the wheels. Every so often, a gentle touch of speed was needed, and we heard the deeper huffhuffhuffhuff of the cylinders, four huffs to each vacuum pump chiff. We passed sleepy red cattle, wading fishermen, and groups of wading photographers standing on mid-river rocks to take photos of the passing train.

Country trains often ramble a little, and pause unexpectedly. Midway along the line, we halted in a loop, and waited quietly for another train to pass. Other passengers, not used to this sort of thing, looked around and wondered what the problem was. We were too far away from the signalbox to hear the block bells chiming; but we could hear the rattle of the signal wires as the signals for the down train were pulled off, then we watched it slowly chuff past us before we started on our way again.

This is not Photo Post Of The Week, incidentally. That’s because the photos below aren’t ones I took yesterday; as usual, my photo uploads are far too backlogged for that. These, though, are from the last time I visited the South Devon Railway, about three years ago. The fixed stop signal has been repainted since, but not much else has changed.

* Things it is important not to confuse pt. 373: the South Devon Railway, the line from Exeter to Plymouth designed by Brunel, opened in the 1840s, and bought out by the Great Western Railway in the 1870s; with the South Devon Railway, the heritage railway formed in the early 1990s to take over the Dart Valley Railway’s tourist line from Totnes to Buckfastleigh and turn it from a business-oriented tourist attraction into a more charitably-run steam railway. You may spot a problem of similarity with the names there.

Keyword noise: Buckfastleigh, countryside, Devon, railway, River Dart, rural, seasons, South Devon Railway, Staverton, steam, steam train, summer, Totnes, travel, weather.

… you start talking about the weather.

Some springtime might be nice. Instead, it’s been getting colder and damper and colder and damper. We’d turned the heating off to save a bit of gas; and were very reluctant to turn it back on, especially given the capricious nature of British Gas’s billing system.^* It had to be done, though, otherwise the house probably would have started to sag into a mineshaft, or something along those lines. At least today things seem a bit brighter.

A web search that came in yesterday – terry williams artist bristol birch road – reminded me that I’ve been meaning to write about another recent event we attended, the Southbank Bristol Arts Trail, tramping the streets of Bedminster and Southville – in the damp, of course – visiting artists’ houses and viewing their art. As we did last year, in fact; and, like last year, we went to look at Terry Williams’ art in his home on Birch Road. His paintings aren’t the sort of artwork we’d want to buy for our own walls, but he’s clearly an accomplished artist; my favourite painting by him was a large canvas titled “Birnbeck Pier By Night”. Largely black, the spidery lines of the semi-disused pier-bridge^** were marked out more by texture than by colour. I will write more about the arts trail, as soon as I go through the list of venues and can recall which one in my head matches up with which description.

* It will trundle along for a while before saying “ooh, you’re hugely in credit, we’d better cut your monthly payments.” Then, a few months later, it will change to “ooh, you’re hugely in debt, better treble your monthly payments.” You’d think they’d realise that gas usage is bound to drift up and down seasonally, and compensate for that; instead, the seasonal change in the payments seems to magnify rather than even out the changes in usage.

** It’s called a pier but I’d say it’s technically a bridge, because it goes out to an island.

Keyword noise: art, arts trail, Bedminster, Birnbeck Pier, British Gas, gas bill, merchandise, seasons, South Bristol Arts Trail, Southville, Terry Williams, weather, Weston-super-Mare.