Storm-waiting

Other people watch storms, follow storms, batten down hatches ... We spent several hours today aware that we were waiting for Storm Dudley to arrive. There was a lot of rain before the winds really got going, so I didn't actually go out all day, and as a result feel tetchy now. But in the morning, it was the dunnock sparrow in my blip that looked tetchy and made me laugh out loud. We'd taken the precaution of removing the dangling feeders from the bird table which has already been blown over twice in the short time since we got it to replace the old one which had never done such a thing. Our close-cropped privet hedge is alive with sparrows and  dunnocks, who clearly find it a good refuge all through the winter, and they sometimes pop out and sit, as it were, on their doorstep before popping across the garden for a feed. This morning I noticed several of them doing this, and then retreating back into the hedge, and this one was just beside the kitchen window. (We put the feeders back; they were thronged in no time)

The wind arrived in mid-afternoon, roaring down the chimney in the gas flue. We were relieved to learn that friends, driving back from London, had been early enough to catch the ferry over; they went off at some point in the early evening, I think, and haven't gone back on since. It's calm now, and feels cold. 

Other than waiting for the storm, I had a chat with the birthday son, languishing with his boys in Covid gloom, and the one whose birthday is next week, who had managed to bash his head with the car door while trying to get into it out of the rain and spent some time waiting for a nurse to glue it back together again. Funny - 48 years on from giving birth for the first time and I'm still able to be consumed with maternal anxiety ...

I managed to distract myself with some more work for my poetry class next week. This will be the final one of the series, and I was enjoying making a selection of some of the lesser-known poems of my favourite poet, R.S. Thomas. (Extra photo) Despite his forbidding appearance and apparent reticence on the subjects of love and personal relationships, the poems he wrote at the end of his wife's life are among the most moving love poems I know from a man whose other work deals with God and with Wales. 

Poetry has to be the best ever thing to teach. I'm biased, but I think I'm very lucky!