The clouds caught fire

My second morning staying with S at her mother's. Again an early morning run, when there was total cloud cover and not quite rain. Later the day was persistently wet with rain, especially during my drive back to Auckland this morning. Mother-in-law is really only able to be out of bed for 30 - 60 minutes before she gets too short of breath and weak to cope. And then only once a day at most. Fortunately, her brain remains sharp.

This morning I headed out into the countryside from Snells Beach towards the end of the peninsula. Not long after I started out I noticed that the clouds well above the horizon were showing red from the rising sun. Just below the band of darker cloud in this picture, and still substantially above the horizon, there is what seems to me to be the lower part of the (red) orb of the sun.

Whatever that redness indicates, I really like the touch of colour in these dark clouds, which were moving rapidly. Just before I took this picture,the red was fully obscured, as it was within 20 seconds of taking it, not to be seen again.

Early this afternoon, I watched the game between Tonga and France. S' brother had organised to have their mother's TV reception improved and we were able to watch the game on the Maori channel; it is the only channel to show all the games in full free to air, and even if most of the pool matches have been shown after the fact, that doesn't matter to me.

The French team appeared to want to be anywhere but playing the Tongans, and if the latter had been better at finishing off their great plays, France would have been munted rather than just beaten. Superb viewing.

S' brother joined us later in the day, and we both enjoyed an error ridden All Black display against Canada; I think a lot of the errors were because of the high quality Canadian play forcing the errors. Colin Slade is no Dan Carter, but the outside backs are without peer in this competition so far.

Because we have no internet access at MIL's I have had to backblip for yesterday.