Winter came

Amazing transformation which the weather guys had been banging on about. The first cold blast of the year. Down to 7c on the Consuma and stuck at 11c here with a brisk nne wind - the tramontana/bora drilling down from the Arctic circle - ish.

I swept the chimney, external checks on the flue pipe. Plenty ash but not much soot. Had a wee panic about an mot cert but Covid had given a 10-month grace period. Went and got it done anyway. Always seems v cursory compared to the banging and inspecting accompanying a UK cert. 10 minutes and €66.88 later I was on the road to Florence.

We lit the fire this evening. Bizarre after fretting and struggling to keep the house cool. As the guy in the Agricola stores said as I went to order a pallet (pancale) of 75 x 15kg bags of pellets, ‘It was summer yesterday. Today it’s winter.’ He gave me a ten cent discount on the bag price of €5.10.

It’s like ships passing in the night on the Met Office isobar charts: a big northerly flow of cold air to Italy and a big southerly flow of sub tropical air to the Uk. Maybe that happens as the Azores and Saharan high pressure centres weaken. https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/maps-and-charts/surface-pressure

The Hobbies

I’d also meant to say I saw our hobby hawks a couple of days ago. Or rather heard them crying first and then saw them way up in the sky. Coming together talons to talons. And then dropping like falling scythes to the big pine tree.

We’ve not seen them much this year but this felt like a salute, a fly-by; they knew the NNE gale was coming that would sweep them south; that they had survived the torrid summer that presages worse to come; before throwing themselves to the migration they checked their bearings, their fixed points one last time before riding the wind in the stormy night to come.