It is one of those days.
Getting towards the middle of June when England is traditionally looking its best with all that fresh greenery, the high point for our wild flowers and, of course, the time for endless blue skies, sunshine and heat.
Well it isn’t cold and all the nature thing is still pumping away out there but blue skies? Forget it.
I have been hanging bedding out on the washing line, looking up at the sky and thinking: rain or just malicious greyness sent here to spoil my day?
I hung it out because I have always seen myself as an optimist.
If so why do these days always feel so depressing?
I suppose it must be disappointment.
Certainly about the weather but then weather is only weather. It only gets serious when it is a hurricane or a blizzard or even a tornado. A grey day in June is hardly a crisis.
It must be that superficial depressions unlock the door to deeper ones. You are reminded, maybe, of all those other hopes that never got fulfilled. The ones best kept under wraps and easily forgotten when a simple minded soul delights in the glory of a sunny June day.
The roses are now all in full bloom out there in my small courtyard garden. Once again they remind me of how things should be today but instead those flowers are just hanging there, desultory, drained of some of their colour, somehow stranded in a time-frozen moment.
It feels a bit like the moments before an eclipse of the sun. I remember, the last time I saw one, being impressed by the creepy way nature stood still in expectation of something, almost certainly beyond their knowledge. I was standing looking out to sea when seagulls fell silent and landed on the beach in their hundreds and just stood silently in that moment of grey stillness before the sun disappeared.
If it wasn’t for a wood pigeon cooing nearby, it would be silent like that here today. Well done to the pigeon for keeping its spirits up. Pigeons we know have very small brains but optimism is a gift.
Oh, and by the way, the sun has just come out.
Yes, I know what you mean. It's been so cold down here today that nothing seems really bright and cheery even though the colours are there.
I wonder when the warmth will come back
.. soon I expect.
It came with hearing from you Bridge!