cloud wandering

We wandered about a bit in a cloud.

We left for the hill in a slight drizzle and luckily as it turned out later, fully waterproofed up. As we climbed up the hill it became foggier and darker. It was cold and the wind was blowing. When the fog became thicker and decidedly wetter we realised what had happened: we had walked up into a raincloud.

We met up with a couple of old dead friends as we ascended, their bodies now empires of insects. Both came looming out of the cloud separately to greet us.

We came back down the golf course way, for some reason nobody was playing, but it was getting dark by then. We were walking straight into the wind now, and it was cold. We were becoming wetter and had been out longer than we had intended as it's a fair old walk back but we returned cold and happy and grateful that we had a place to come back to. No money had been spent in the process.

It was a lot wetter than it appears in the photographs as the rain is not always that easy to see in photo's, but the camera comes out in the rain anyway.

Succulents

I keep meaning to put up some of these photo's that I took when we went over to see our friend Jeremy in September, so here are some. He has one of the largest collections of succulents in the UK and we went over to help him put some of them to bed in his series of polytunnels that he keeps them in for the winter. I don't really know a lot about succulents although I did grow some in a house that I lived in back in the early 2000's. The flowers are very beautiful but they are good shapes and interesting colours anyway. I had to give all my plants away after we were evicted by a landlord who wanted to sell the house, after which I have been a bit reluctant to take on a lot of houseplants. Jeremy has all sorts of interesting and rare plants and I like to visit him but he lives in the middle of nowhere so he is a bit difficult to catch up with. Hopefully I will get to go over again in the springtime as he also has some nice woodland around where he lives that I like to potter about in.

On a different subject, It has been very encouraging to see the amount of students organising sit-ins in the universities and colleges recently in support of the people of Gaza and to boycott Israeli products that are sold on the campuses. They have some interesting lists of demands, a lot of which are being met. For many years students in this country have been very disengaged politically so it is good to see them becoming aware and organised. Hardly any of this activity has been reported in the media here.

link: http://occupations.org.uk/

a year in the round

Spring is still a bit of a way off yet, but we do have snowdrops and the first primroses. Snow everywhere tonight though it's mostly sleet and strong winds here, news of 200 motorists stuck on the Haldon Hills near Exeter. The weather seems to have moved south, so that what we usually get, which is wet warm westerly winds, is happening in southern europe and we are getting more arctic weather, or at least what they would usually get in Scotland. It doesn't happen round here often.