Went for a brisk walk today through my town. This castle is in the middle of the town and as I looked back going up the hill, this was the view.
The weather was somehow very Shakespearean today. It never quite became light and as I walked, I thought about what it would have been like to walk up the hill in the Earl of Northumberland's time - when Henry IV was on the throne and the Earl lay "crafty sick" as Shakespeare has the king say at the start of Henry IV part II. I imagined my heavy velvet robes gradually becoming sodden as they trailed through the snow that was peppering the side of the road. I crossed the Lion Bridge, which has the Percy lion, tail erect (that's how you know it's a Percy one) standing in the middle and I suddenly wondered how I would know if i'd just gone back in time, the place was so deserted.
Then I heard shots - the present Duke was having a shooting party and pheasants were heaving themselves up into the air, in that laborious way they have, looking as if they could fall at any moment. Unfortunately today, some of them did. A gamekeeper came out of one of the fields with his two dogs and asked me if I wanted a lift. He seemed quite puzzled when I said I was enjoying the walk. But I was. Torrential rain offers a very gentle anonymity.