Like a bird ...

More rain. To be sure it was more simply gloomy when I got up, gloomy but not raining for most of the morning - but then it rained again. I'm tired of rain; tired of its return every second day if we're lucky. I look at Wildwood's photos of California with its outdoor extravaganzas of Hallowe'en decorations and realise that surely our version of the festival has always been muted by darkness and weather - or, to be more precise, rain ...

So what did I do today? I got up late. I spent ages over breakfast, catching up on social media and being irritated by the radio without actually stirring myself to switch it off. I made what was intended to be a brief phone call to an old friend whom we haven't seen for years but which ended up lasting forty minutes. I made soup for lunch. And that was that.

The afternoon showed every sign of being just as passive, only I was seized with the usual irritation at myself and decided the only cure was a walk, in the rain or otherwise. It was actually dry when we left the house, dry for the start of our walk - and then the heavens opened as we rounded a bend into the wind at Toward and by the time we got back to the car we were drenched. Before this, however, I noticed the birds. If you're looking at this on a phone, you might not quite see them, but there's a great flock of them lined up on that wire across the fields, with a few - outcasts? superior sparrows? - on the other wire. The air was filled with cheeping. Just after I took the photo, they all rose into the air, circled madly, then settled back on the wires in a slightly different arrangement. And I went on my way, singing another Leonard Cohen favourite.

I can hear Himself downstairs changing the hour on the grandfather clock. I'm going to feel discombobulated for days - and the early dark isn't going to improve my mood. How long is it till Chri.... . . ?

Shhhh.