Outside now! After a freezing week, some snow has dumped itself on us! Friends waiting for snow. This is white and fluffy, I don’t know if you could ski on it and it might be gone in the morning? I don’t know the temperature but it must be below zero. Everything is hushed, apart from a gritting lorry which went by about half an hour again.
Your mind is muddled, thoughts roll over and through your mind. Repeating over and over the things that went wrong in the day. Things pop into your mind from years ago. This is never ending, you start watching your alarm clock as minutes or hours tick by….
Then you remember, someone told you think of the word ‘THE’ nothing else, just ‘the’… Think of it slowly, over and over again…
Why? I think it’s because the word ‘the’ has no connotations, nothing to cling onto, while you are thinking ‘the’ you can’t think of anything else. It helps block roiling thoughts, and you just drift off to sleep. Honestly, over the last two months it has really helped. I don’t even remember drifting off, but then I sleep quite well….
I’ve been keeping an eye out for thunderstorms and lightning after they were forecast for us for the weekend, but apart from some heavy-ish rain tonight, which caused one of the cats to come in looking like a bedraggled wet otter, there hasn’t been much in the way of storms or anything else.
I do check the weather forecast online and noticed as each day came and went the rain symbols dwindled. But I also look at a website called blitzortung.org which shows real time thunderstorms and tracks them with detectors so you can virtually see lightning strikes within seconds of them happening. The strikes are also colour coded so you can see strikes from two hours ago in red, changing to orange and yellow for more recent ones and finally white for the last twenty minutes. So you can actually track where they have been and what direction they are heading in. I think it’s interesting.
I just looked at the UK which was blank. Then Europe where there seems to be a big storm over the toe of Italy. Then I looked at the overview map of the whole world and saw many storms scattered across North America. I hope they are providing much needed rain and are not as severe as the ones that caused major flooding recently.
Have you ever seen curling? Curling 🥌 is a game on ice where two teams take it in turn to slide curling stones on an icy surface along to a target 🎯 area. The closest to the centre (button) wins its a game of strategy. Curling stones can be set to guard the target, preventing the other team from getting close to the centre. Curling stones can be sent gently down the ice, or hard, to knock the other teams stones out of the target area. Each team gets the ‘hammer’ in turn, which means going last in the end. An advantage as you may get a stone in the best position on the last curl of the end. There are different games using slightly different rules. I was watching the UK against Sweden at the Olympics today. And that’s where the trifle comes in. I had dome of it for lunch. Then noticed the bade of the dish has circles in it a bit like a curling target! Just a nice gentle lunch and bit of telly watching. X
Despite it being the start of January I am listening to a beautiful dawn chorus. It is either a Robin or a Blackbird. That’s because I’m struggling to sleep again. But hearing the liquid notes and swirling tunes is fascinating and lovely. I’m just sitting quietly and I can hear strong birdsong despite having double glazing. Each tune or snippet of song only lasts for a little while, then there is a short gap and the music starts again. There is no other sound out there. It’s too early for traffic or footsteps. Just a high series of tweets and whistles cascading from a small bird.
The weather forecast is for lower temperatures and snow rain and ice to return over the next few days. I shall make sure the birds in our garden have food and water. They deserve it for creating such beautiful song. I could not get a photo so excuse my drawing of the garden. Its full of trees and bushes. Now other birds are joining in. Excuse me while I listen… X
Today’s #bandofsketchers prompt is silence. I thought of drawing the universe (space is a vacuum and there is no sound in a vacuum) but this gentle idea came to mind. An old leaf floating in a puddle. Digital drawein photoshop.