Morning Has Broken!

Well, not yet it hasn't. Not now we are on the downward path to Winter here in the seat of Empire.

Dark at nine, larks still a-bed at five. What is this Summer icumen in to? Lhoude sing Thunder and then all of a sudden, we're on the slippery slope through to Autumn. Though that means the larks will give way to those gorgeous flights of swallows so beloved of BBC Nature-Watch. Not much wrong with a flight of passerines.

I suppose I should not complain about the Tess-like movement from bloom to overbloom. I have not had an English tan for some years. Maybe it was good that I arose from my death-bed and summoned forth the trusty steed this year?

I have a confession. On behalf of the larks. They aren't larks, they're crows. Imitating larks. I thought something was up when they served me very black tea and cawed loudly, not melodiously.

However, to each cloud there maybe a silver lining. Having lost my troop of baboons down in Essex when their garage was repo'd, I may now have a slightly more avian aggressive group of friends. You may remember from your schooldays that the collective noun for crows is a 'murder'. Oh! How sweet!

I am now arranging for my Murder to meet my wild-running Troop: if I can find the warty-bottomed buggers. My Troop are chacmas, the biggest and nastiest, and probably the furthest away. Breakfast looks like being tea, fruit and windscreen-wipers. Maybe windscreens.

Quickly to the credits, should I miss a large corvus or papio ursinus passing the house. Strange, indeed, that the chacma is linked to the bear in Linnaean classification.

No-one knows who wrote 'Sumer is icumen in' but the cuckoo still sings loud 750 years later.

The soundtrack tonight was Stevie the Greek Cat, now known as Yusuf. All credit to him for a beautiful rendition of a hymn written by Eleanor Farjeon. A timid woman who wrote wonderfully for children, as indeed did Hilaire Belloc.  I am having an Edwardian moment. It'll pass...as shall I, eventually. Though I may well return to Belloc before the cremation.

Never a fan of Hardy, but the theme within Tess of the d'Urbs was ripening and burgeoning beyond fruition.
Sup up! And keep up - you'll need to do some research this time if you wish to learn les nuances.