Weathervane

Here’s the thing. I wasn’t going to use the zoom. And mostly I didn’t.
 
I went down to the beach again but the pigeons of yesterday were not there. Then there was a loud cooing and emerging from the darkness a big daddy-o puffed up and courting like mad came out with pirouettes and bobs to his more-or-less consort. I looked in on the cave and did not see the dying bird of the day before.  
 
Later the still grey weather found me with the chainsaw reducing large pieces of Monterrey Cypress into small firestove-sized pieces of Monterrey Cypress.  I did cut out some blocks from the best wood for later carving projects.
 
As I trudged down the lane with my camera in diver-heavy boots and chainsaw stopping trews to take a picture of the growing wood pile  I saw this view and stopped and with the zoom blipped the blip.  It has more life and light than anything else today.
 
It is of my weathervane ‘sculpture' made from two pieces of oak engine support from the wrecked yacht, Egretta, whose deadweight I lugged over miles of low tide slippery chalk foreshore (along with many other ‘treasures – as The Principal will attest).
 
I cut half circles in the two pieces which were shaped to fit the yacht’s hull and they stand on top of a column of Monterrey Pine from the garden above ours that blew down in the Great Storm of ’87.
 
When the wind blows hard the two pieces of oak fall to the ground. Thus I can tell that it blew hard when standing looking down the garden from house. The direction of the fall gives some indication of the quarter from which the wind came. It must be said that this – and indeed the whole assemblage – requires some refinement.
 
On another completely unrelated item my website traffic has suffered an  explosive growth spurt. From the regular daily catch of 50—60 viewers I had a day when visitors numbers climbed to the very dizzy height – for me – of 500. Nearly all were looking at a page that explores the small town of Bluff at the very southern extremity of New Zealand’s South Island.  I’ve no idea why.
 
The only thing that links these two items – the weathervane and website - is the fact that I realized that the trees in the garden above ours are Monterrey Cypress and not Monterrey Pines – as I had erroneously thought - after a photo I took on Ulva Island in New Zealand (an off-island of Stewart Island which stands across the fearsome Foveaux Strait from the aforementioned Bluff). 
 
The Ulva Island Cypresses were planted in the 19th century by an Orkneyman, Charles Traill of Woodwick. As I researched his story it turned out that his half-brother, Walter, had gone to the same school in St Andrews, Scotland as ‘The Principal’ - separated by a hundred years or so.
 
Thus the world turns and the wind blows.
 
(after which I was timed out of Blipfoto and I lost all my text – aarrgghhhhh - which will serve me right for being vane and writing so much in the first place).

Out-takes, woodpile etc here