Avoiding the Issues

I ought to write about Conficker. The Dear knows I've stuck my neck out on that one, pre-emptively saying that we weren't vulnerable to a large-scale infection. But I already did, and the fear I felt then made me patch then, and that's why I'm moderately sanguine now.
I ought to write about the City, and the limited scope for information security if the information guarded loses its value in an afternoon. But what do I know?
And I ought to write about the more mad son, who is doing such stuff lately.

I'm going to write about the sky.

Yesterday morning, it rained so hard that my coat pockets flooded with rain running down the sleeves I'd tucked into them. If you were waiting in a platform shelter for the Cannon Street service at about ten to seven, and you saw a man hoicking up the skirts of his coat to pour water out of waxed patch pockets, that was me.

By the time I got back, in the dark again, the sky had cleared. I crossed the railway, went down the steps, and found myself stepping into water. I know that path and I know the floods so I walked into the spinney transformed into a river bed. The fields on the other side of the bridge were flooded out -- great smooth sheets shining in starlight. To the right, Venus decorated the old lady's land. On my left, a perfect reflection of Sirius and Orion. In the zenith, I counted six Pleiades.

When the path faded, the wading got deeper for a while, and I was trudging through the broad lay under that glossy, freezing, sky. As I looked up, a big orange meteor tore off Orion's belt and flashed twice as it headed straight down into the SE horizon.

Quite a night.

Microclimate (2)

A nice strong frosty morning. When the train went into Sevenoaks tunnel, the double-glazed windows were clear, but when it came out, they were obscured by condensation -- on the outside.

I guess it takes a while for the roots of the North Downs to cool.

Free Health Food

One good reason to get home in daylight is that you can browse the hedges. It has been an amazing year for blackberries with whole sprays ripening at the same time. Even the fruit of the hawthorn are edible, though no tastier than they ever were.
Mrs U made hedgerow jam which allowed me to claim that I had spent the afternoon hawing in the hedges. Which is a very fine image.

The Truths of Astrology

I am sometimes praised, mostly by me, sometimes by him or her, but very rarely by Them. So, this afternoon when I was very deliciously, loudly and fulsomely praised by the lovely ladies on the admin desk, swiftly joined by the very gorgeous customer service head, apparently with no motive other than to publicise my wonderful personal qualities, I was a bit perplexed. In fact I couldn't restrain myself from wondering what their collective game was. (And I still don't know)

I got a glimpse through the mists, though, on the way home. My horoscope in the thelondonpaper which they won't have seen, is absolutely explicit. It looks like a good weekend -- at least as a test of newspaper horoscopy.

How? Well, it couldn't be more obviously about me, and I have got -- as it happens -- a fine project to throw myself into and a number of things that need to come together. There's even a defined timescale.

We shall see.

UPDATED: 22:34 Saturday -- I assembled a chicken coop with plenty of flair, and energetically picked fruit in the hedgerows, but nothing yet.

UPDATED 21:53 Monday -- Overall the weekend has passed off like many others -- on Sunday I mowed the lawn, cut wood, picked apples... So it looks like a clear loss for astrology -- it got the right guy, but gave the wrong advice. And yet. At 3AM today, I woke with a clear sensation of being outside in a lightning flash with the roar still echoing in my ears. I was so terrified that I would not have been surprised to find myself blind with a Voice asking "umacf24, umacf24 why do you persecute me?" As it was, I shook with terror as I made my way to the toilet and then shook with terror in bed until I fell asleep. I don't think it was real lightning -- I'm too far from the window for it to have that effect. But as a way to bring things together in a rather intriguing way, it totally sucked. So I call this a draw.

The Visitor

If you care to watch out, the light evenings expose one of our regular visitors -- a barn owl cruises the paddocks a little after nine. It looks like a ghost, a big white bird flapping hard so as to fly slowly but totally silent. In the three years it's been coming, I've never seen it stoop but I suppose these summer visits must pay off.

In the winter, when I'm walking across the fields well before dawn, I hear owls calling in the dark, but I can't tell what sort, or whether they're hunting or socialising. Sometimes they sound like they have a warning for me.

Slave to the Rythm

Slightly disconcerting moment this morning when I realised that I was striding across London Bridge precisely in time with Sophie Ellis Bextor on my music player.

How gay is that?

Still, I suppose I should be grateful -- it might have been Kylie.

Two Observations

1. A sad little entry for change control at the meeting last week: ZWD the Zimbabwe dollar is now so close to worthless that the calculations overflow. Remove from the forex universe. No impact expected.
2. The may is at its peak. The madder thorns are now iced with a continuous white crust. As quickly as it came it'll be gone....

Spring

The woods are full of bluebells, and sunrise showers make elegantly decorated skies. Beech buds on the front hedge have just broken.

Messages from the Divine are Ever Clouded in Mystery

Last week I laid a fleece before the Lord. I washed the worst of the mud off my boots and determined that if they stayed clean, I could conclude that winter is over. That's important -- I look pretty eccentric commuting in boots -- I'd rather wear my regular shoes.

This week my boots are cleaner than ever. But the reason is that I've been wading through vast pools of standing water from the storms. The fleece is dry, but my shoes would be very wet indeed.

So what's the message? Simple: God is cleverer than me.

This Job is Weirding Me Right Up

I was sitting next to a man on the train and noticed that he was looking at porn photos on his telephone. I didn't think "Blimey, that's a bit much on the train!" I didn't think "I wonder if that's his missus." I didn't even think "Ooh gissa look!"

No. The first thing in my head was: "I hope that's not a work phone."

Microclimate

Clear skies left yesterday afternoon much warmer than the morning. But this morning I was crackling through frost again -- except for a moment: as I crossed the river I felt a waft of heat and my glasses misted over.

Export

Every morning lately, when I've been there to see, a train of twenty or so flatcars each with twelve colossal steel billets heads east, to Ashford and I guess the tunnel. This morning they were behind a class 92. In my mind this question: If the country is so prosperous that the government can offer flexible working hours to every employed parent, how can anyone make money exporting raw steel? Am I that detached from the real world?

Physical Insecurity

A frisson walking across the fields on my way home this evening -- that lively sound of bullets wheeling past my head. It wasn't a demented assassin emerging from my ugly past -- the faint red light gave it away as an incompetent lamper with a silenced rifle killing rabbits behind Forstal farm. He carried on firing as I walked out of danger even though I was shining my torch at his likely location. Once I'd got to the safety of the lane I walked along to find out what was going on, and encountered a man claiming to be Shay Harbour(?) He knew about the footpath, he said, and thought his line of fire would be OK.

Any more of that sort of thing, and I'm getting a 50mW green laser and a night vision scope -- after this shone down his bins he'd be hard put to tell up from down, let alone fire his weapon.

Colours

Light grey sky with a gentle mottle. At my feet, I can see green June grass, but looking across the meadow to the ragged black-green hedge, the colour is lost under the floating carpet of pure yellow buttercups and smoky lilac ryegrass tassels.

Lunar Velocity

On Saturday evening there was a pretty but not unusual conjunction of Venus and the moon in the remains of the sunset. Venus made the apex of an equilateral triangle with the horns of the quarter moon, about 3 lunar widths east. Looking at the same time on Sunday, the moon had moved about a full hands span at arms length east in the 24 hours. I had thought it was faster.

Personal Service from Dawn's Rosy Fingers

Luscious pink sunrise this morning faded abruptly at 04:10 (GMT, natch). It felt as if it had been laid on for my benefit and switched off when I'd enjoyed it. Solipsism rocks.

More Colours

In the pre-dawn twilight, looking south west across saturated acid yellow of fresh flowering mustard rape into the darkest steely clouds of an approaching storm.

First rain all month.

Log Lust Blog

Long train ride today, for a futile meeting.
Looking out of the window, I see it's not just in the south east that there have been many trees felled all along the track to control leaf fall.
Left behind: piles of logs, entire tree trunks. It's obvious they'll just be left. And I am consumed by lust to possess them.

I saw the Comet!

Weather today is dreadful, wind and rain, but yesterday was totally clear and I saw comet McNaught.

17:10 in central Kent, bearing about SE, in the orange glow above the horizon. Tail subtending about 1/4 of the full moon, leaning slightly to the right and tighter toward the horizon. Could have been a cloud but it looked cometty to me. I've never seen a proper tail before.

As soon as I saw it I raced home to show the less mad son, but it had set by the time I got there.

Commuter 2

Today I found out how Champagne sales ladies sell lots of Champagne to restauranteurs.

The glamorous lady opposite me on the train home was working very hard and very loudly on her phone shifting cases of "Pol" and arranging visits. Normally I'm a bit irked by the louder sort of commuter, but she was charming: her blouse didn't even pretend to have any buttons above the bottom of her sternum, and her push-together bra was working as hard as she was. She leant forward every time she wrote down a sale or an appointment. Those visits must have been devastating.