a grey day

I looked this morning at the five day weather forecast for Colchester, and saw that we are supposed to have medium level cloud for the duration, except for two three-hour periods when it is forecast to be low level cloud, and one of drizzle.  The light today was quite depressing, grey and dull.  It doesn't feel like summer.  It is the kind of weather in which I tend to get lost, since my sense of direction only works when I can see the sun.  Given shadows I'm quite good.  No shadows and I easily wander off course.

I went to the dump (AKA household recycling centre), to offload the weeds that I don't want on the compost heap, tangled roots and seed heads of nettles and grasses, horsetail, sheep's sorrel, thistle stems and the like.  A well-conducted garden would not have such things, but the gunnera bed has ceased to be well-conducted.  I saw a pied wagtail while I was there.  I only ever seem to see these birds on man-made surfaces, and sometimes I think they must eat asphalt.  On the bird table at home was a rare visitor, a spotted woodpecker, so they must eat porridge oats soaked in lard.  Later on it was pecking at the electricity pole in the lettuce field.  I thought the poles were treated with wood preservative so that there wouldn't be anything in them for a bird to eat, and encouraged by the dismal light drifted off into a lettuce-picker electrocution disaster fantasy, in which the pole collapsed after being pecked through.

One of the cats was sick in the gravel, but the Systems Administrator had to clear it up as I was out at the time.  The sick apparently contained what initially appeared to be an enormous fur-ball, but turned out to be an entire shrew, swallowed whole.  On being told of this event I composed a short verse:

There was an old lady who swallowed a shrew
What an odd thing to do
To swallow a shrew
Perhaps she'll spew

It was that sort of day really.  I am now going to go and eat an artery-busting fry up with compensatory bean salad, and watch a documentary about canal restoration.