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.

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Keyword noise: winter, weather, seasons.

When the weather forecast says there’s going to be snow I’m always slightly cynical. For one thing, I’m suspicious the forecast always errs on the side of caution when it comes to snow. Secondly, in this part of town, snow falls less and sticks less than on the higher ground of high-altitude suburbs like Clifton and Horfield. In Easton, the snow is rare and quickly turns to slush.

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Keyword noise: Bristol, winter, seasons, snow, death, cemetery, Greenbank, Eastville, Easton, Greenbank Cemetery, history, local history, railway, disused, Rosemary Green.

Life feels very tiring at the moment. Back at my desk for a few weeks and work has ramped back up to maximum. Outside, the weather is grey, wet and windy. We haven’t been able to get the telescope out, and it won’t be happening for the forseeable future either.

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Keyword noise: winter, seasons.

A few weeks ago, I read on Twitter—sadly I seem to have lost the reference—that the Welsh Hydref, used for either the month of October or autumn as a whole, originally had the literal meaning of “stag-cry”. From that, it turned into “stag-rutting season” and hence autumn. Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru lists “stag-rutting”, but not “stag-cry”.

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Keyword noise: Cymraeg, seasons, autumn, yr Hydref, meteor shower, meteors, Geminids, astronomy.

This blog has been relatively quiet this week. Clearly, finally completing that in-depth work-related post about inclusion and diversity on Monday must have taken it out of me. There are a number of things waiting in the to-be-written queue, but all of them are the sort of posts that deserve effort and energy and research putting into them, and this week has been too tiring a week for that sort of thing.

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Keyword noise: The Children, autumn, seasons, superstition, memories, astronomy.

Today was the first morning of this autumn with signs of frost on the ground. I sat down at my desk and saw the roofs across the street fringed with white at the edges of the tiles, as the sun rose in a clear blue sky. Winter is coming, and our Hallowe’en pumpkins are in a dark corner of the garden for the local slugs and snails to eat. A robin fluttered around the garden, getting ready for all the Christmas posing; I doubt they go for pumpkin. In the summer the garden was full with house sparrows, as nearly every house in this street has a few sparrow nests under the eaves; but now they are quiet and are staying inside.

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Keyword noise: seasons, autumn, winter, frost, astronomy, Mars, Donald Trump.

I know it can be a bit of a cliche, photos of yellow and orange leaves falling in autumn, but the park was looking so seasonally russet-hued the other day that I regretted not bringing a Proper Camera along. We fed the swans and the ducks, and caused a flurry of seagulls frenzied enough to have Du Maurier reaching for her notebook.

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Keyword noise: Bristol, autumn, Eastville, seasons, Eastville Park, swans, pigeons, seagulls, birds, trees, lake.

Autumn is almost here, although this year feels as if it didn’t really happen. I have been working away at a little desk in an eyrie of Symbolic Towers since March. At the start, I could see trains passing the end of the street; before long, they were hidden by the leaves on the trees, and soon, I will be able to see them again. In all that time, no time seems to have passed. At work staff have come and gone on my project, staff have come and gone in the wider company, we have rolled out major pieces of work into the real world, and in all that time, no time seems to have passed. The children have flipped back and forth between holidays, home-school, part-time school, and back at school again, and in all that time, no time seems to have passed. And tomorrow, the autumnal equinox is upon us.

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Keyword noise: equinox, autumn, seasons.

The last blue skies of 2017 are outside my window; dusk will come shortly.

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Keyword noise: winter, seasons.

It feels like there’s an awful lot of year ahead; January moves very slowly.

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Keyword noise: driving, ambulance, seasons.

Feeling sad today.

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Keyword noise: weather, rain, drizzle, seasons.

Today, we were up in Worcestershire; and as we drove home down the dark motorway, we watched rockets flying up into the sky, from all the towns and villages along the way. Strensham, Tewkesbury; Gloucester and Stonehouse.

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Keyword noise: autumn, bonfire, bonfire night, Bristol, fireworks, rockets, seasons, smell, sound, winter.

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.

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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.

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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.

I had hoped that a thunderstorm would clear the air, get rid of some of the humidity, cool things down a bit. Unfortunately, nothing changed. We had the thunderstorm, and half an hour later the ground was dry and the weather was still hot, muggy, and sticky to the touch. Oh well. Summer isn’t nice when it’s too hot to think.

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Keyword noise: art, Ashton Gate, Bristol, Bristol City, Easton, Easton Arts Trail, heat, hot, July, seasons, summer, Tesco, weather.

No, really. I never thought I’d say that, and the regular readers all probably thought they’d never hear it too. But, yes, the past couple of days have made me glad to be British?

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Keyword noise: heat, seasons, summer, sun, weather.

The weather does not know what it wants to do at the moment. As spring comes in, we sat by the harbour, eating ice cream, and felt uncomfortably cold and hot at the same time. The sun shone brightly down, as a sharp wind nipped up from the water. We shivered, but were too hot to wear our coats.

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Keyword noise: equinox, seasons, spring, weather.

It’s nearly six months, now, since we moved house, and we seem to have made it through the winter. By next week the days will be longer than the nights; and this morning, when we left the house, the sky was blue and the sun shone down on us. Astronomically we might be at the start of spring; outside, it feels as if spring is already verging on summer.

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Keyword noise: anniversary, equinox, seasons, spring, summer, weather.

The night is drawing in, as I draft this post.^* The sky is darkening, and the lamps are lit, to brighten the house and drive back the winter darkness. It’s a time to light candles, and fires, and stare into their hearts. We still have a visceral response to fire, glowing embers and flickering, crackling flames.

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Keyword noise: seasons, solstice, weather, winter, winter solstice, Yuletide.

All of a sudden, this week, summer seems to be on the way. It can’t just be that we’re doing everything an hour later than we were a week ago. There’s something particular about a cool summer morning, or a drowsy summer evening, that this week has in spades.

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Keyword noise: Blaenau Ffestiniog, Caernarfon, Eryri, Ffestiniog, Llechwedd, Afon Menai, Menai Strait, Cymru, Gogledd Cymru, North Wales, photography, rain, seasons, Snowdonia, Wales, weather.

There’s five days to go, and I already feel like I want to cancel Christmas. I haven’t written a single card. I haven’t bought many presents, and I have no idea what The Parents actually want. To be fair, neither do they. I try to go look for something on my lunch break, and everyone else has had the same idea. The roads into town are gridlocked; as soon as I’ve found a parking space, it’s time to head out back to the office again.

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Keyword noise: Christmas, seasons, shopping, solstice, winter, Yuletide.

This week, it’s started to turn to autumn. I’ve closed my bedroom window, the mornings are getting cold, and the morning air is damp and ashy-smelling.

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Keyword noise: autumn, bonfire, equinox, Lincolnshire, North East Lincolnshire, fire, seasons, steelworks.

When I write posts on here, I normally write the title first, then ramble on about it.

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Keyword noise: driving, British Summer Time, daylight savings time, fog, Hull, Humber Bridge, seasons, summer, weather, Yorkshire.

The fog is thick all over the country at the moment, but it’s only now it is affecting The South that it makes it into the news. Up here in The Forest we’ve had thick fog all week, but it hasn’t troubled the press at all. I’ve been driving the Town route home rather than the normal Country route,^* because a fog-bump at 30mph is a lot safer, to my mind, than one at 70.

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Keyword noise: books, children's books, Epiphany, fantasy, fog, literature, new year, seasons, solstice, Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising, weather, winter solstice, Yuletide.

No, that has nothing to do with the content of this post. It’s just a nice word that I’ve just discovered, flipping through the dictionary whilst chatting on the phone. Let me know what you think it means.^*

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Keyword noise: frost, ice, seasons, weather, winter.

It’s dark outside. It’s not night, but rain-gloomy and grey. It feels dark. Winter is on its way. Soon, it will be dark.

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Keyword noise: autumn, change, future, mistakes, seasons, weather, winter.

I was thinking: really, I should post something newsworthy, or political, because there hasn’t been much of that on here lately. Nothing in the news has caught my eye, though – it’s all been football-related, and I really couldn’t care one way or the other about it. Then, though, I remembered that today is the summer solstice.^*

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Keyword noise: annual, astronomy, End Of The Year, ephemeris, festival, midsummer, seasons, solstice, summer, summer solstice.

The changing of the clocks has left me feeling a little tired and disorientated. It’s not surprising that there are more car accidents in this week, as people adjust to the shift.

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Keyword noise: British Summer Time, darkness, daylight savings time, dirge, funerals, Lyke Wake Dirge, rain, seasons, weather.

Today must have been the first day of summer.

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Keyword noise: commercial radio, advertising, deckchairs, garden, gin, radio, seasons, summer, weather.

It’s the shortest day. From now on, things start to get warmer and lighter again.

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Keyword noise: Yuletide, Yule log, celebration, Christmas, festive, seasons, solstice, winter.

Yesterday,^* we had the first snow of winter. When I left the house in the morning it was cold but dry; ten minutes from the office a few flakes started to appear in the air, and by the time I was inside at my desk everywhere already had a good covering.

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Keyword noise: Yuletide, Christmas, ice, seasons, snow, weather, winter.

This is the time of year when the black moods usually hit. I’ve heard of SAD, and maybe it’s that. I don’t know. Maybe it’s that the things I’m scared of, when I think back, all seem to have happened at this time of year too. When it gets back round to November again, the dark fears all start to come back.

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Keyword noise: depression, SAD, seasons, winter, The Mother.

You can tell it’s getting closer to winter. This morning was one of those mornings when everything under the duvet was at that perfect cosy sleeping temperature, but you just know that the air outside the bed will have a nasty chill to it.

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Keyword noise: autumn, morning, bed, seasons, waking up, winter, the calendar.