Solidarity.
Down to London ... and back. The weather at both ends of the journey bright and sunny. Every hotel room is taken. Americans have discovered that the £ has collapsed and are making the most of the opportunity to visit while it's ' so cheap'. There are queues of earnest visitors everywhere. There's even a long line of cheerful Minnesotan pensioners waiting to go for a tour of the Supreme Court.
Angus is surprised to see that all the Ministry buildings along Whitehall are flying the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag as a sign of solidarity.
The military staff who organized the funeral of the late Queen are having their photograph taken on bleachers that have been set up on the parade ground .
Back at home there is an emotional reunion with Sophie. You'd think I'd been gone for a month. We sit out in the garden and watch the sun drift lower in the sky. A bottle of champagne is opened. The excuse for popping a cork is my safe return. Every so often Angus is despatched indoors to bring out another layer of clothing. By the time we're two thirds of the way through the bottle we look like eskimos. We've got to an age where the only thing we can drink a bottle of without 'repercussions' is champagne. A large flock of geese fly by, circle back and land in a hooting mass in the field by the gate. There must be two or three hundred of them. Sophie instinctively knows that chasing geese is perhaps not the wisest thing to do. Seagulls yes, geese ( en masse ), no. With the sun reflecting off the underside of their wings the arrival of a large flock of geese is a wonderful way to end the day.
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8 comments:
It looks like a fine day in London. Sophie in the stubble is looking even finer. I think we saw those same geese flying over Aberdeenshire yesterday! On visits to Nottingham, Bertie, in his 'unwise' phase, loved to unsettle the large flocks of geese that stopped off on the flat fields beside the river Trent at this time of year.
Interesting list of airlines. I'm wondering, did Angus travel to London by train or plane?
Cheers, Gail.
Hari OM
Washing machine conditions outside the Hutch's windows today, so these shots of sunshine remind one there is blue sky up above this lot... YAM xx
Any absence of flock must be investigated. Does the new venue make visits to London easier?
The sky, from my window, looks the same shade of blue as the sky in the last photo. Sunny, but with a quite chilly breeze and 24ºC at this time of day is quite rare, it's normally at least 4º warmer.
I'm not quite sure how Inca would deal with geese she's never seen any. She just ignores seagulls, pigeons and doesn't even bother the garden C-A-T-S!
Any evening is a good excuse to open a bottle of champagne!
Your airline list shows no US airline even in the top 20! At least BA made it to #11.
BTW here on the eastern shore of MD, tell Sophie she can visit here and delight in all the Canada geese that enjoy the leftover corn harvest in the fields.
Thank you for the photos of London, and the one of dear Sophie. A Reverend will be blessing the animals in the apartment building I live in on Monday October 3rd. While I do not have a pet at this time, I look forward to being surrounded by the animals in our gardens, as they are blessed!
Kippy has been to The Blessing of the Animals at our neighborhood church. The last time the usually friendly Kippy barked and snarled at a sweet little old lady. So, we have not gone to this event since.
Your writing today read like poetry. Thank you so much for your stories.
Years ago when our cat was slightly past being a kitten, he ran to see what the hubbub was in the next yard. We had seen it was a large flock of Canadian geese so had the door wide open for him when he flew through the hedge headed for said door. Had we not had the door open, he'd have crashed through it or pancaked himself into it. We couldn't stop laughing but definitely Birdzillas had made an unforgettable impression him. Sophie is wiser than he was.
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