Last full day in Keswick – memories/nostalgias:
Sand martins nesting in Portinscale – whole family cycle: arrival, mating, hatching, growth and furious feeding, fledging, new flight, the air filled then with over twice the amount of birds that came, then their departure one day just gone, empty nest holes, the air calm and quiet –
Pol on stage in After Miss Julie, letting a different aspect shine through – the quiet, calm performance filled with far more mystery and tantalising charm than she is normally required to muster – her high point, bravura performances in Private Lives and Loot, shining, full of feverish comic energy, unstoppable –
Ospreys fishing and first seen among the onlookers at Dodd over Bassenthwaite Lake, the rapid commentary of shared sighting there and then, tears in my eyes at the beauty of the birds and the shared experience of strangers captivated by nature –
Sitting in the incessant heat this summer gone, under the dense maples at Green Gables, watching the Robins move for worms, listening to the tree-tops, aware of the chameleon face of Cat Bells across the lake altering moment to moment with the rush of light or moving clouds, my body and fingers aching from the shearing of a Yew Tree, paring it back to it’s cleared trunk and then up into the foliage, bringing it back to life –
Goosanders and a dipper so near at hand –
Being woken in the middle of the night by the flood warning and having to rise and move the car and discovering that half of Keswick was awake, battening up doorways, laying sandbags, saying hello to each other in the full knowledge of the potential shared difficulty ahead, and listening out for the tell tale rush of water, through the constant wind, expecting to wake up in a puddle –
Discovering Loweswater, walking it’s banks –
Red Squirrels at Whinfell in the cold, clear winter mornings –
Driving up over Uldale heading straight west into the brightest, descending winter sun, almost blind on a straight road through the wilderness, the entire sweep of the Solway Firth over to my right –
Workington – it’s glory almost anathema to itself –
The constant, beating sigh of rain on the roof –
The tree in Penrith, in the town centre, full of Pied Wagtails flitting here and there, chattering away, hundreds of them coming and going, congregating, like nothing I’ve ever seen them do before -