Pre-Nostalgia

I'm full of good feeling this evening, after another lovely walk through the park. The sun was out, going down in the west (surprise!). There were...

...evening shadows and the distant column of (I can't remember his name -- some aristo-militarist -- the Duke of Marlborough? -- who won the battle of Blenheim, giving him the right to manufacture fags in red and white packets)...



There were...

...squirrels in and around the trees, whose trunks were dappled in the evening light...



One of the squirrels said "Your cameraphone's not too hot in high contrast conditions, is it?" Pretty perspicacious, for a mammal with a brain the size of a walnut.

In this country, I think we're all supposed to be disdainful of grey squirrels, on account of how they have almost completely displaced the 'native' red squirrels from their former ranges. It's as if the greys are thought of as rapacious marauders, 'coming over here' and eating our nuts, ruining the neighbourhood for the indigenous stock. I can't dislike them: they're just doing what their natures make them do -- it's hardly their fault if we introduced them and altered the previous ecological niche balance, is it? And they have such cute, delicate twitchy noses, and Disneyesque eyes...

Down by the lake's wriggling offshoot, there was...

...a blackberry shoot with a nursery of dozens of tiny yellow-striped spiders in a globular cluster, strapped in place with sheaths of web...



One of the spiders said "Your cameraphone's not really up to close work, is it?" Arachnid sarcasm at its best.

On the lakelet, baby coots tried to muscle their way past incipient lily pads, while their parent dove and bobbed, bringing up glistening morsels that caught the sun as they were passed from beak to tiny beak. Insects salsa'd over the surface, backlit, making tremors on the water that expanded as sunlit ripples. Midges bit my head and neck. A heron sat on a jetty rail on the other side of the lake, caught in a shaft of sunlight between the trees. Dark shapes moved in the water and, once, one of the fish leapt. The air smelled of warm, mown grass, and there were the scents of blossom, suggestive of honeysuckle and magnolia.

And all the while I'm drinking this in, there's a bit of me that's already feeling sad and wistful about when I don't live here any more. I wish I could live in the moment more...