online: 18 may 2006
modified: 18 may 2006

18 may 2006 the air on these islands


19:20 at the Vale of Health pond, partly sheltered from fast winds from the southwest which are making sweeping patterns of dark and light reflection on the water surface... green flies (each a millimetre or two long) keep appearing on my clothes... the leaves are nearly in full bloom, it's the beginning of summer... the lower clouds (detached pieces of cumulus) are moving very fast beneath the higher ones (wispy and thin)... the air is fresh and cold - the typical air on these islands, more like that on a ship than a continent... and I feel refreshed after a dull and unproductive day indoors.

19:45...i moved to the seat overlooking a wooded (now leafy) valley to escape raindrops which were falling from a grey cloud but still a few drops fall on the screen... most of the trees are in sunshine and are swaying in the gusty wind...

...the wind speed decreases and i look about, enjoying the stillness...

...and then i walked to the station along a narrow path through a meadow of tall white-flowering plants, and nettles, which are almost obscuring the path - i enjoy ducking underneath low branches of willows and other trees or bushes and i remember how, in the army, i enjoyed having to creep along the ground or to walk crouched in the undergrowth so as to approach an imaginary enemy waiting to shoot... it wasn't the war game but the earthiness, and the adaptiveness to it, that i liked... throughout my life i've enjoyed thinking of myself as an aboriginal, living close to nature... but i much like artificiality also (such as the highly cultured and delicious strawberries that i bought at a supermarket on the way home)...





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