Soft grey rain

Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing.
- The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám

The translator of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, Edward Fitzgerald, described himself as "an idl e fellow, but one whose friendships were more like loves".

Far from being the oriental traveller I had imagined, the only east Fitzgerald ever enjoyed was east Suffolk: living happily- and pretty idly - in and around my lovely Woodbridge. Often messing around with boats. Or poetry.

The bird of time flew for seventy odd years for him - and he seemed to have enjoyed every moment of it.

Woodbridge, on this drizzly grey May day is sharp and clear monochrome with little splashes of colour under the flat grey vastness of an East Anglian sky.

Forget the Sultan's Turret, and all the rest of the Rubaiyat's rich Persian imagery of the east. This here is the east coast. It could have been painted by Breughel.

OK, so maybe not Hunters in the Snow, but how about Boatmen in the Mud?