Fairwell, my lovely

As the Open Golf Tournament starts tomorrow at St Andrew’s, I thought that it would be appropriate to have another of Dropscone’s east coast golf course pictures as the guest offering today.

The title of today’s post, which I stole from Raymond Chandler, explains why I had to get up at four o’clock this morning, a severe shock to my system.  Mrs Tootlepedal was going to Duxford near Cambridge to see her brother fly in a Spitfire.  In order to get there in time, she had to catch a very early train to London and as no buses run at that time in the morning, I drove her into Carlisle.

Her brother is a retired airline pilot and his family have given him a present of this flight in a two seater Spitfire and Mrs Tootlepedal wasn’t going to miss the event.  She is going on to stay with her mother for a few days while she is in the south.

If you have to drive to Carlisle at five o’clock in the morning, this was the day to do it.  It was a chilly 6°C when we set off but the sun was coming up as we went and the mist was rising from the river, giving our journey a most romantic feeling.

A Virgin Pendolino at Carlisle Station might not be quite as romantic as the Orient Express but it arrived on time and I waved Mrs Tootlepedal  on her way and drove back home.

I stopped twice on the way, once at the border to take a picture…..

…and once at Broomholmshiels to fill the Moorland feeders, as the regular feeder filler was on holiday.  By this time, the mist had nearly gone.

I didn’t stop as there was not enough light to photograph birds.

When I got home, I put a week of the newspaper index into the Archive database and did the crossword.  When I looked at the clock, it was showing my normal breakfast time.  This getting up early certainly allows you to pack a lot into your day but unfortunately, I was so tired that I couldn’t make full use of it.

I did pick myself up though and went outside and mowed  the drying green and the grass round the greenhouse.

The poppies were looking very bright in the morning sun…

…and the Turk’s Cap lilies had their dancing shoes on.

Sandy arrived for coffee with tales of an interesting fungus outbreak on a pile of wood chippings on the Castleholm which he had seen on an earlier walk.

We went to investigate.

It was an impressive outbreak.

I was taken on by a contrastingly delicate blackberry flower which I saw as we walked back to the car.

I didn’t have much time to admire the fungus, as I had an appointment at the Health Centre for a routine jab.  That passed painlessly and I got home fully intending to go for a cycle ride in the afternoon.  I spent some time first looking at roses.

Some were rather crumpled after the wet weather

But others looked pretty good

I liked the small creamy yellow bud on a Goldfinch….

…and  I am still trying to work out why they start yellow and end up white.

It’s hard to believe that they are the same rose.

As I had the mower out, I was tempted into mowing the front lawn after lunch and then I took the other mower out and mowed the middle lawn too.  It seemed a pity not to take advantage of a dry day to get things done.  Then I started to turn the compost from Bin B into Bin A.  Then I went in and instead of going for a bike ride myself, sat and let the professionals in the Tour de France do the pedalling for me.  It was very relaxing.

When the stage had finished, I went out again and finished turning the compost.  It is rotting down well and turning really helps the process to speed up.   Mrs Tootlepedal’s tidying up has produced a lot of garden material and I needed to get the bin turned before she comes back and starts filling the next one up.

She rang me up from Duxford to let me hear the roar of the Spitfire’s engine over her phone as her brother came down the runway to take off.  The sound took me instantly back to my childhood.  For one reason or another, the flight had been quite delayed and perhaps we didn’t need to have got up quite so early in the morning.

My new keyboard has arrived and I am using it to type this post.  It lets me sit in a better position than using the laptop does and it has the letters clearly marked on the keys which is very helpful but, sadly, I still seem to produce a lot of typos.   It will take time to get used to it.

I have also connected my laptop to a better screen so that I can look up rather than down when I am processing the pictures.

The screen is very good but saturates the colours on my photos a lot more than the laptop does so I have no idea what they will look like to the readers.  I would be very interested if you can see a difference from previous posts and, if you can see a difference, whether you think is an improvement or not.

The flying bird of the day is a sparrow.