Wednesday 21st August 2019

Four months before the shortest day.

Just so you know.

I love the summer, I really do. As least when it doesn't get too hot. Warm enough to feel the sun on your back, but you can walk about and do tasks without drowning in your own sweat, you know.

And for now, summer is pleasant, warm enough to bring swarms of butterflies out to feed, giving me something to chase round the garden with my camera.

Gives me something to do.

Apart from work.

Oh yes, work.

Anyway. Up with the larks, though I sleep through the alarm and Jools getting up. But I hear the kettle on and soon can smell coffee brewing.

As soon as she is ready and left for work, I sigh and go up the spare room for another session on the cross trainer. I have to be sharpish as I have a meeting at eight, and another one at half past.

Once I have pumped lard, I sit down to get my breath back, and something diverts me, and I realise I don't have time for a shower before the meeting. Still, its not a video conference, so no one will know.

Somehow I squeeze in a shower, make breakfast and brew more coffee through the morning, and attend and participate in the planned meetings, and say some sensible things. On occasion.

For lunch I warm up more curry and make some spicy rice, mix them in a frying pan and pour the sludge onto a plate.

A beer would be perfect, of course, but not at half eleven.

Not on a school day.

And back to work, meetings, documents, phone calls.

And at four, I go out on another butterfly hunt. I mean, why not?

I take my new camera and the big boy lens, as I feel that my quarry, a Fritillary might keep in the treetops.

As soon as I set out across the field, I see a harvester in the filed next to it, busily getting the barley in. I mean, whisky waits for no man.

I get shots.

Over the fields then, to the glade, where I scour the trees and bushes for a flash of orange whilst gliding.

I see none. Sadly.

But there are butterflies and moths everywhere, and none in what would be macro range, so just as well I brought the big bad boy.

Above, dragonflies are cruising, looking for their next meal. I follow one with my sniper eyes, and see it land. So, I creep closer and try to get a shot as best I can, and it came out none to bad. At least one out of the 50 I took was OK.

My legs did get torn to shreds on the brambles though.

Just a flesh wound.

A Darter (a small dragonfly) lands on a teasel seedhead near me. I creep closer and closer and get something close to an acceptable shot out of the 75 shots I took.

Hooray for digital. I will keep them all though, no idea why.

I walk back home, over the fields, and it is now beyond warm, nearly hot.

So, once home I pop one of the small bottles of Belgian beer and sip on that as I check the work inbox before logging off for the day.

Done.

I plant the last of the black-eyed-Susans after building another wigwam of bamboo poles. Heck, I could do this on a desert island, I would survive.

Maybe.

Jools is fasting again, so I toast more bagels and then smother them with cream cheese.

Mmmm, cheese.

And that is it.

There is football to watch, Preston v Stoke, and the radio to listen to at the same time.

I too can multitask.

And another day draws to an end.

Phew.