Dislegsia

Today’s guest picture comes from our son Tony in East Wemyss. He wondered for a moment today if he was seeing a comet streaking across the sky, but it was nothing more exciting than an aeroplane catching the evening light.

We had another ten-ten morning here today, 10°C inside the house and -10° outside. A blackbird at breakfast time was obviously feeling the cold too.

In an effort to generate some much needed hot air, we invited Dropscone, Sandy and Margaret all to come for coffee, and they warmed the day up for us. We may think that we are hard done by with no central heating or hot water, but Dropscone had a sadder story to tell. His boiler had suffered from the same fault as ours, and when he had got it repaired and restored the heat to his house, it was revealed that a pipe in his attic had frozen while the boiler was off and had split. He discovered this when the heat returned, the pipe unfroze, and water flooded through his ceiling. He was remarkably cheerful, all things considered.

After coffee, I had a look at the birds. A shy blue tit turned away from the camera . . .

. . . while many greenfinches and some sparrows and chaffinches bustled about.

As it was another lovely sunny day, I had a frosty walk round the garden . . .

. . . found some sparrows round a small patch of open water in the frozen dam . . .

. . . sawed up some of the walnut branches for firewood, and then went back inside for lunch.

Mrs Tootlepedal had made a warming ham broth which went down well.

After lunch, I had another look at the birds . . .

. . . and then went for a walk. Mrs Tootlepedal was going to go to a sewing meeting in a warm place but got a message at the last minute to say that the warm place had got no heating either. She stayed in and did more work on her minutes.

I decided that getting up into the sunshine was a priority so I headed up the Kirk Wynd towards the monument. I was very happy to get out of the shadows of the valley and on to the open hill.

I didn’t go straight up the hill to the monument, thinking that the easier diagonal route along the old road . . .

. . . and then up the track to the summit would be preferable. Once again, the going was generally good but there were icy patches . . .

. . . which had to be treated with respect.

When I got to the track up to the monument, I found that that tall fellow was following me about again.

It was a very clear day, and I could look behind me down into the nearby Ewes’s valley . . .

. . . and I could also look thirty miles ahead, right across the Solwaybank wind farm and most of eastern Dumfriesshire, to Criffel on the far side of the Nith estuary.

When I got to the monument . . .

I had a look around . . .

Across the moor

Over the hills

Commercial forestry in action

The Lake District hill and the Gretna wind farm in the mist

. . . and then I came down the hill by way of the mountain bike track.

This was not the best idea that I have had this week. I was descending into the setting sun which made looking ahead tricky at times. The track was very icy in parts and I had to make diversions through the heather, and even where the track was not icy, it was frosty and uneven and care needed to be taken. All this was too much for my legs after quite a bit of recent walking, and they made it clear that the sooner that I got to the bottom of the hill, the better it would be from their point of view.

Even when I got to the new forestry track . . .

. . .it seemed steeper than it was when I went down it a few days ago, and it really was much more icy at the bottom. I was very pleased when I finally reached tarmac and a level surface back to the town.

I fancied that an illuminated Santa was laughing at me ghoulishly when I passed . . .

. . . and even the Parish Church was sighing as I neared home.

A cup of tea and a ginger biscuit were never more welcome than when I got home today. I did manage to summon up some energy afterwards to put a week of the newspaper index into the Archive Group database before our evening meal.

The forecast suggests that after another cold night, the temperature might finally creep above zero tomorrow, though there is a chance of us getting some snow as it does so. It will be the end of our sunny spell too, so even if my legs were complaining a bit, I am very pleased to have made good use of the lovely weather today.

The flying bird of the day is a sparrow.