Clouds in formation

The skies were wonderful this morning during the Friday walk. Cotton wool clouds stretched off in columns into the horizon and contrasted beautifully with the blue sky and the golden ripe wheat. Many enterprising farmers are growing fields and fields of wheat this year as the price has soared. I didn't realise, until I read it in the Guardian, that soon up to a fifth of the wheat we produce could be used in the manufacture of biofuels. It looks as though we will be seeing many more fields of gold in the future.
Someone on the walk mentioned that we might see the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane) as they were making an appearance at a nearby RAF station. We didn't see them on the walk but later in the afternoon while I was in the kitchen I heard that familiar drone, rushed out into the garden and they flew over! What a sight... Very occasionally they do pass over our village. I think we must be on their flight path back to their base at Scampton in Lincolnshire. It took me on a flight of fancy and for a moment I imagined a lone Spitfire going through its paces maybe in 1940 in a beautiful English summer sky like the one above.

High Flight

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of. Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew.
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

By John Gillespie Magee, Jr, an American pilot who flew Spitfires and was sadly killed in a flying accident in 1941 aged 19



For the record: 18C, sunny periods