Ghosting

Ondine

Trying out the "boat tent" for next weekend

Afloat with friends

Sailability

Thermal

Just watched a buzzard circling in a the thermal from the heat rising
off the road running along Chalford Valley, just beyond Sixpence's
hawthorn. I love buzzards. I used to fly gliders, before I returned to
sailing. The two disciplines have much in common, and, in a purely
viscreal sense, offer similar gratification.

The photo above was from an early winter flight, November 2005, just
north of the airfield at Aston Down where the gliding club was
conveniently based (just over the side of the valley from here - I still
see the gliders from my office window during the summer when the wind is
in the south)

I remember once, quite vividly, sharing a thermal with a buzzard.
Sentimenal fool that I am, I found it an especially moving experience.
It's been years since I last strapped myself into a sailplane. I still
miss it, far more than I'll ever miss smoking, which I quit just before
I stopped flying. But whilst I never intended to quit gliding forever,
only pause a small while, I couldn't now give up sailing to return to it.

And even I am a realist enough to recognise there's really not room in
my life for both. At least not at the moment.

The words below were written about six months before the above picture
was taken, following that flight where I met the buzzard. The poem sits
in a dusty corner of an old, all but forgotten website I set up pretty
much at the dawn of the Internet, along with a collection of other
scribblings. A handy place to keep such things.

Part of the charm of a photograph, for me, is that I can take in hand
nearly any picture I've ever taken, and the second I look at the image,
I'm immediately returned in vivid detail to the moment of capture. My
memory can otherwise be pretty shakey in many respects, history and
sequence tends to blur if not totally fade through my obsessionwith the
present and whatever's in front of me now. But when looking at a photo
I've taken, the moment of its creation and the situation surrounding
seems to always returns in crystaline, gorgeous clarity.

Before the very recent dawn of digital photography, when film was too
prohibitively expensive for me and photographs too delicate and easy to
loose, poetry and songwriting served much the same purpose, I think, and
still have the same effect of recall.

==========

The Buzzard

Passing two thousand.

My palm sweats, my arm aches
The perspex filtered sun sears my brow,
Then falls shaded by the cloud once again
As my thermalling turn carries me round.

Two five.

Turbulent core; breathe, remember to breathe
As I trim out the ache in my arm; my arm aches
With the strain. Then the sun breaks, again
Spilling out from the shadow of clouds.

Passing three thousand.

Keep my look out, glance up, scan around,
But the sucking sky seems alone mine. Circling still
I guide the sailplane up through the thermic rise
In an epiphany of solitude and rushing air. Ecstatic am I
Don't stir the stick, damn you! coordinate and fly;
For me the bubbling sky is alive.

Passing four thousand.

Almost there now; the heavens are kind
My wing-tip dipping the glowering clouds down reaching.
And the sun momentarily breaks through a veil of haze from behind
Framing the buzzard, outstretched and effortless, a silhouette soaring.

Four five.

My palm sweats, my arm aches
The rudder pedals clumsy beneath my feet; the stick stirring.
He glances at me across our mutual circle, an indifferent avian eye
Not judging and yet in grace am I found wanting; but I do not mind.

This heaven is his kingdom, his bubbling sky;
And I, however familiar or frequent a privileged stranger
Am and shall remain but a stranger,
A flattered guest in his airy domain.

Block commentary

Forget teaching the world to sing in prefect harmony. I'd just dearly love to teach the multitude the beauty and coherence of a well formed paragraph.

Said window

And the view from my desk. Yes, that is a chart of the estuary acting as an unintentional table cloth beneath the errant pile of paperwork that I've still not filed.

I like it there. Keeps me reminded of other ambitions beyond these four walls.

Frosted

There was me, saying yesterday I hadn't seen Sixpence in the hawthorn since it had come into leaf. And here I find him this morning through the window as I walk into my office, sitting fat and happy on a blossom-frosted bough, enjoying the spring sunshine.

Blossom

Sixpence's hawthorn has erupted with blossom over the last few days. Haven't seen him sat in it since the tree first came into leaf, but do regularly see him through the day foraging for worms on the grass in front of the Mill.

I presume this is because he has the demands of feeding a young family to meet.

Good for him.

Sailing was a blast yesterday. Both races saw me make appalling starts, and I mean appalling; of the kind of quality not seen from me in years.

Survived both though, and managed not to fall out of the boat during the penalty turns that followed, though did get dizzy. Didn't actually hit anyone, at least I don't think I did, but did end up being fended off from the committee boat by a bemused Race Committee in the second race. Not one of my more glorious moments!

The starts were reflected in our results, to which I'll never again make further reference.

The sailing was brilliant though, and despite the odds, we didn't tip in. Though plenty of others did.

[edit: fixed typo that originally read "Sailing was a boat yesterday", blasted predictive text on my mobile chipping in to help!]

Home at last

Exhausted, but a good night's work. A short while to wind down with a book and a glass or two, then bed.

Haven't checked the latest forecast. Think I'll just look out the window in the morning.

Break

First set done. Lovely, friendly folks in the crowd. It's apparently not a 60th Birthday, but an end of 50's party. The birthday girl, Anne, is 60 tomorrow, and clearly young with it.

As I kind of expected, I'm feeling better now than I have all day. The bite was only my fault, by the way. Jack and Digger are both lovely creatures, they just have a few small issues with each other. I knew that, but let my attention slip for a second.

I should know better. A slip of a second is all it takes.

I should perhaps go dose up on some more ibuprofen. But I feel fine for the moment, and never really feel the pain when I'm playing. Think I'll save it for later. I shall probably need it later.

Then again, I have three quarters of a bottle of red wine waiting for me when I get home.

Looking forward to racing tomorrow. This morning I actually thought I might have to call it. But like gigging, the pain is always muted when I'm sailing. Think it's going to be fine.