A change in the weather

Today’s guest picture comes from my sister Mary. At a loose end on a grey afternoon, she went down to the river today and was struck by the sight of the railway bridge into Canon Street Station as the light faded

The change in temperature from the -10°C which welcomed us on several mornings last week to twenty degrees warmer at +11°C today was quite remarkable. It wasn’t quite as welcome as it might have been though, as it turned out to be a very grey, sometimes wet and often windy day. Ironically, it was a less attractive day for leaving the house than any of the recent very cold days.

Fortunately, Sandy was made of sterner stuff than me and came down to join me for a cup of coffee in the morning. He very kindly took away three weeks of the backlog of the newspaper index which I should have been putting into the Archive Group database. I have put some weeks in lately, and I did a bit more today, but I haven’t been nearly as hard working as I ought to have been. As we are still waiting for a suitable lens for our new microfiche reader to arrive, at least the data miners are not currently piling up more work for us.

After he left, I peered through the gloom to see if I could find any birds on the bird feeder. The light really was very poor but I managed to make out a chaffinch picking up fallen seed on the drive outside the window . . .

. . . and I found a moment when four different birds, a greenfinch, a siskin, a sparrow, and a chaffinch came together on the feeder up above

A siskin demonstrated why there is so much seed lying on the ground beneath the feeder.

Perhaps because of their very small size, they just can’t cope with the sunflower kernels. They are always very messy eaters.

The feeder was quite busy. . .

. . . but I didn’t take a lot of photographs as the light remained very poor

Instead, I made another small gingerbread cake, and then after lunch, I went shopping at the Co-op in the car. I thought it was probably a good idea for the car to have the opportunity to stretch its legs after sitting silently under a blanket of frost for a week.

While I was at the Co-op, some raspberries secretly insinuated their way into my shopping basket, and there was nothing for it when I got home but to convert them into three pots of raspberry jam.

There is nothing like some freshly made raspberry jam on home baked bread to cheer up a dark winter’s day. I (or my bread machine) had made a loaf of wheat, spelt and rye bread earlier in the day.

We are getting very near to the shortest day of the year, so it is probably quite appropriate to have a very short post today to mark the late mornings and the early evening. The temperature is already heading downwards again, but it should stay well above freezing tomorrow, and we may even see some sun. I have reckless thoughts of cycling swirling round my head.

The flying bird of the day is a greenfinch.