August 7th

There are green spaces still. Beneath the canopies of the sweet chestnuts and sycamores. Hemmed in by the tall dark pines. Here are places sheltered from the intense noonday sun with only glimpses of the blue sky and the bay. Here are places to sit and read or doze. Here are dark, verdant tunnels and passageways pierced only by little rays of sunlight. Here are mysterious thickets where the Enchanters Nightshade grows amid the brambles and the bryony and honeysuckle and nettles. And bees hang on to the last flowers of the purple toadflax as if their lives depended on it. Which, I suppose, in a way, they do. Every breath of wind stirs up a cloud of thistledown which fills the air slowly drifting up and away.

From August 7th 2021

The big storm clouds, purple black as welsh slate on a sunday afternoon, wallow across the bay and touch down far out to sea. But then they begin crawling in towards us lifting to reveal big grey blankets of rain. Two - no, three, storms at once. Little threads of moisture fill the wind. Time to go in, I think.

From August 7th 2011

Little clumps of yarrow at the side of the path where they have been missed by the council mower. Dried yarrow stalks are an ancient form of divination. Should I gather some and take up fortune telling? What does the i-ching say?

Wearing my new pink plimsolls. Have to wait for a break in the storm before I can sprint home. I cannot get them wet.

Later

Has it stopped thundering? Can I uncover the mirror?