Lichens are the main food source for a variety of animal species from small mites and insects to the remarkably large reindeer. They tend to be protein-poor but may be rich in carbohydrates.
Image 130 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
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Lichens are amazing. They’re always small, they grow in slowly expanding colonies, and they consist of cooperating fungi and algae. A number of different species of fungi can grow like this, combined with various yeasts and bacteria. The assemblage often looks like a simple plant, often almost flat, but sometimes filamentous, branching or in the form of flakes. Circular forms like the one in the image are common. The Wikipedia article listed below has photos of a range of different forms.
The grey colony in the photo has grown out from the centre ‘cleaning’ other life forms from the surface of the underlying limestone and spreading out further around the perimeter. The black lichen was destroyed as the grey lichen crossed over it, but new colonies of the black lichen have established on the clean rock left behind. The situation is dynamic, but very slow. Return for another photo a month later and little will have changed.
Lichens are the main food source for a variety of animal species from small mites and insects to the remarkably large reindeer. They tend to be protein-poor but may be rich in carbohydrates.
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Getting enough sleep is important of course, but the quality of our sleeping matters too. Good exercise, diet and quiet, undisturbed surroundings are helpful factors.
Welcome to a new feature on JHM, a series of articles on science and technology. I’ve posted articles like this before, but not as a regular series. From now on science and technology articles will be easier to find and browse with their own index.
This time, we look at the topic of sleep.
Sleeping well
Why sleep matters
Sleeping well is clearly important. We all know that lack of sleep makes us tired, perhaps a bit grumpy, and affects our ability to focus. We’re more inclined to doze off, and microsleeps lasting a second or so can be absolutely deadly (quite literally) for someone trying to drive or use heavy machinery.
But there are longer term health effects too (see the Nature article listed below).
Improving your sleep
The New Scientist articles cover many aspects of sleep. Getting enough sleep is important of course, but the quality of our sleeping matters too. Good exercise, diet and quiet, undisturbed surroundings are helpful factors. It’s useful to consider how our time awake will affect our sleep. There are hormonal effects affecting both falling asleep and waking up – melatonin and cortisol – so we need to consider those as well.
In terms of practical advice, useful tips include – using bright lighting in the morning (especially in wintertime), and dim lighting in the evenings – keeping the bedroom cool and dark – avoid eating and drinking late in the evening and be wary of late caffeine intake – avoid stress near bedtime if possible.
Surprisingly, perhaps, your gut microbiome is another factor, and it works both ways. Sleep patterns can affect the microbiome, but a healthy microbiome helps provide better sleep.
Going deeper
The links below provide further reading. The New Scientist link will give you an overview with introductions to all the articles, though if you want the full text you’ll need a subscription or access to the printed version Many libraries will have a copy.
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July 2024 (6 months before publishing this article)
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Here’s a touch of July during chilly January! Last year we decided to buy a greenhouse for overwintering house plants, growing cuttings, and extending the season for things like tomatoes. The kit of parts arrived some time ago, and finally it was being installed on the base prepared earlier.
We were in Yorkshire on 1st, stayed with Debbie and Steve for the night, visited Beth and Paz on 2nd, and then drove home in the afternoon.
Later in the month I made good progress scanning old photos; this is a great memory jogger, helping me piece together some of my life and that of those around me. There’s nothing better than documentary information, whether that’s photographic, video, sound, or in written form. Some of the results appear in these Blast from the past posts.
The image shows an original transparency alongside the scanned version. The colour match looks pretty good.
We had some crisp, frosty conditions during January that made the countryside look really beautiful.
Towards the end of the month I discovered some reddish bumps on my left shoulder, mostly at the front with a few at the back. I had various thoughts about what it might be, and in the end found out it was shingles. I had no discomfort or pain, just the rash, and the GP prescribed a course of antivirals and antihistamine.
It was strange to think that the virus had been inactive in some nerve cells since I was a child!
I visited my friend Stephen in Gloucester Hospital, and he seemed in good spirits and to be doing well, he was looking forward to getting back home as soon as possible after his surgery.
I managed to get some video of our cat, Erin, chasing her tail. Cats and dogs both do this sometimes, especially when they are young. And I was trying different methods of making still images from my old VHS videos that I had on my laptop as ISO images. The VLC media player seemed the way to go and I was pleased with some of the results I was getting.
I was tracking the progress of several space missions; Dawn was closing in on the minor planet Ceres in the Asteroid Belt, while New Horizons was beginning the science phase of its mission to Pluto and Charon, and there was hope that the Philae Lander would soon wake up.
I had a new driving licence through the post from DVLA. Unlike my current licence, this one proudly displayed the EU emblem in the upper left. Like almost half the voters in the referendum, I voted to remain in the EU. Leaving was a terrible mistake.
The demolition of the building where I first worked on joining Unilever was almost complete. And the very last piece still standing contained the ground-floor corner window where my desk had been! It seemed strange to see the old Knowledge Systems Group office (KSG) vanish! By the end of January there was nothing left.
Office still life
The photo (right) shows items on my desk on 24th, including a mug of tea, a Conference pear, my Samsung Steel phone, notebook, roller pen – and a piece of the old building rescued from the cleared site!
I was busy with some decorating in the hall, stairs and landing of our house in St Neots, there were cracks that became very wide when I scraped out the loose plaster, so those had to be filled and sanded down before I could begin to apply paint. But by the end of the month things were looking a lot better and we preferred the new colour to the pale yellow we had used before.
Unilever was restructuring the computing departments within research and this affected the Web Team where I was working. It seemed we would survive as a group, and with a similar remit, but within a very different organisational structure and changed leadership. We were in the process of understanding how we’d be affected going forward.
On Sunday 23rd I flew to Boston with my boss, Pete Keeley. We were picked up from home by a Unilever car and driven to Heathrow for a business class flight, then from the airport by cab to our rooms in the Boston Park Plaza. We were attending a Sun Microsystems conference on their Java Development Tools and the various uses for Java. There was a heavy snowfall while we were in Boston and we tried walking through it to explore the city before flying home; that was quite an experience!
At home, I walked some of the nearby streets and footpaths around the old A1 at Crosshall on the edge of St Neots. Although I’d got my bearings pretty much for the main streets in the town, some of the smaller footpaths were still new to me.
Judy had recovered well from surgery and an issue with chemotherapy for her bowel cancer and returned to work at Cotham Grammar School teaching biology. She very much wanted to teach until June to see her students through their exams. Debbie, Beth and I supported her as best we could, but teaching is a tough, stressful, tiring career and I think we all wondered if it might be too much. Nevertheless, she got off to a great start with her usual determination.
World events: Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the European Union; and Valeri Polyakov completed a year aboard the Mir space station, a duration record.
I began designing the LARS System configuration for the PCs at work. It would be beneficial to have all the research station’s machines set up the same way so staff would have a familiar environment wherever they were working.
Judy ordered some double-glazed windows to replace the worst of the house’s original decaying wooden window frames. This was a much needed improvement.
A severe storm caused damage to trees and buildings overnight on 25th January at the Research Station. Trees fell or had branches torn off and roofs were damaged.
World events: Commercial customers first had access to the internet in the USA and the Netherlands; and the Morris Worm caused issues on Unix computers.
I was the Computer Representative for the Plant Science Division at Long Ashton Research Station. This involved liaising between the Computing Group at Rothamsted and the research staff at LARS. Desktop personal computers were just beginning to appear, but computing at Long Ashton depended on the Research Council’s VAX/VMS systems.
Judy was teaching Biology at Cotham Grammar School in Bristol. Debbie was nine-years-old and Beth was six, they were collected from school every day by a friend and then Judy picked them up on her way home.
World events: The Internet’s Domain Name System was created; and Ronald Reagan was sworn in for a second term as US President.
One of our research papers appeared in January, based on work done in 1978, here are the details:
Williams RR, Arnold GM, Flook VA, Jefferies CJ. The effect of picking date on blossoming and fruit set in the following year for the apple cv Bramley’s Seedling. Journal of Horticultural Science. 1980 Jan 1;55(4):359-62.
I enjoyed the scientific work while it lasted. We didn’t know it at the time, but the Research Station was to close 23 years later and is now a housing estate.
World events:GPS time began on 6th January; and Andrei Sakharov was arrested in Moscow.
During this period I had gathered and processed information for my master’s thesis on plum flower and fruit development. The experimental work was complete, a lot of photographic processing was behind me and I had just had copies of the thesis bound and submitted in December. Now it was a matter of waiting for the viva and a decision by Bristol University.
Judy was expecting a baby in March and she had made a basketwork cane crib as well as knitting various baby clothes – all in non-committal yellow and white as we had no idea whether to expect a boy or a girl.
World events: Guilty verdicts were returned over Watergate; and work on the Channel Tunnel was abandoned.
My final year project at Bath University was an experiment in propagation of Bergenia, and I needed to go in over the holidays to take measurements. After New Year, but before our new terms began, Judy was able to come to Bath with me on one of these occasions.
I began my second term in the lower sixth at Cirencester Grammar School, studying chemistry, biology and physics and additional maths.
I was finding A Level Chemistry tougher than I’d expected. It was one of my favourite subjects at O Level when everything had seemed very logical and precise, but organic chemistry was new and seemed more flexible and varied. Physics was OK, but getting more mathematical, and biology was completely new as I had not been able to do all three at O Level.
In January it was back to school for my second term in the First Form at Cirencester Grammar School. We were all properly in our stride by now while my sister, Cindy was in her fourth year at Querns School, and Ruth and Rachael were at home with Mummy, not at school at all yet. I was eleven-years-old, Cindy was eight, Ruth four, and Rachael three.
The page from my maths exercise book suggests I was pretty good at adding decimals!
World events: Construction of the Aswan Dam began in Egypt; and Jacques Piccard and Don Walsh descended almost 11 km into the Mariana Trench in the bathyscaphe Trieste.
I was six and in my second year at Querns School, starting the second term.
Daddy worked at Watermoor Nursery as the foreman assisted by Miss Brown. They took cuttings, split larger herbaceous plants, and kept the rows hoed and watered. They would have had extra help at busy times. The recipe for John Innes compost would have been used by them around this time.
World events:USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine began sea trials; and the Soviet Union announced the end of the war between the USSR and Germany.
I was eighteen-months-old at the end of January, walking and talking no doubt. We must have been getting settled in our new council house, 17 Queen Anne’s Road on the Beeches Estate. I imagine we had mostly second-hand furniture or cheap utility items.
This is the cover of a seed catalogue of the period, rescued I believe by my father from the office of my Uncle, R W Jefferies after his death. He was in charge of the seed department and had great stacks of documents on his desk, recent items on top and older material buried further down. It all had to be cleared, of course, but Dad and his brother Bob kept some of the more interesting items.
Mum and Dad wrote often to one another, a phone call was possible, but didn’t always go through, was difficult, and not very private.
On radar, Dad mentions tracking a group of 5 V1 cruise missiles (‘Buzz Bombs’) on 3rd January, and a group of more than two hundred German aircraft on 16th. He heard on 17th that Warsaw had been taken by the Russians.
On Wednesday 24th he travelled to Cirencester by train on leave, returning on duty in early February.
World events: The Soviet Union began the East Prussian Offensive, to eliminate German forces there; and Adolf Hitler made his last public speech on radio.
Mike (aka ‘Tigger’ and later my Dad) was thirteen-years-old and starting a new term at either Cirencester Grammar School, or Rendcomb College. Lilias (later my Mum) would have been eleven, living in Coagh, County Tyrone with her mother Selina and little sister, Annabelle (about two). Lilias would also have have been starting a new school term, in her case at the village school.
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The tree was topped, the branches trimmed off, and [the sculptor] was asked to work on the standing trunk in situ. He rose to this challenge and came up trumps, the photo shows some of the detail.
Image 124 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
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We have a skilled sculptor in Cirencester who specialises in carving large pieces of timber. He was called in work on a tree that had died in Cirencester Park. But instead of felling the tree and then asking him to work on the horizontal trunk (something he’s done to great effect in the past), this time the tree was topped, the branches trimmed off, and he was asked to work on the standing trunk in situ. He rose to this challenge and came up trumps, the photo shows some of the detail.
I never cease to be astonished at the way an artist can imagine a finished work before it exists and bring it to life in any medium – oil paint, watercolour, wood, stone. It’s a kind of magic. The human brain is so creative. People have been doing this kind of thing for many generations; think of Michelangelo, or the stone and bronze artists of Greece and Rome. No animal is capable of converting material into an image like this, or even imagining that such a thing is possible.
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We had the right gear for staying dry in rain, mud and heavily dripping vegetation, so we were warm and comfortable amid the fragrance of wet grass and decaying leaves.
Image 121 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
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There is a saying amongst the walking fraternity, that ‘There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad kit’. Here are two of my friends, the three of us were out for a lovely walk in wet weather in the Cotswolds. We had the right gear for staying dry in rain, mud and heavily dripping vegetation, so we were warm and comfortable amid the fragrance of wet grass and decaying leaves.
Perhaps this not not everyone’s favourite activity, but we loved it! Damp October days like this one are good for spotting early autumn colour on the trees as well as mushrooms and toadstools amongst the fallen leaves and blades of grass. There is so much to see everywhere you look.
When: 19th October 2023 Where: Near Edgeworth, Cotswolds
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Image 120 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
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Firethorn (botanical name Pyracantha) is a widely-grown garden shrub with small white flowers in the spring and glorious, usually red or orange fruit that often persist into January or later. They are eaten by birds however, and in a hard winter the fruit may all be consumed before Christmas. The fruit are pomes with the same structure as very tiny apples (they make excellent ‘apples’ for the fruit bowl in a dolls house). The flesh is edible but is mealy and bland, the seeds are slightly poisonous though a small number are very unlikely to be harmful.
The example in the photo was growing in Waitrose car park in Cirencester, pretty much on the line of the Roman City wall. As you walk into the car park from Sheep Street, look to your right as you pass the outdoor seating and tables and you’ll spot a low, stone wall. This was built directly above the Roman wall to show where it was and its alignment, there’s a piece of Roman stone on top of it and an explanatory sign, with further historical information on the wall of the supermarket nearby.
The road to Aquae Sulis (Roman Bath) left Corinium through a gateway nearby and later became the old Tetbury Road for a couple of miles. The Roman route continues across what is now Cotswold Airport.
When: 25th October 2023 Where: Sheep Street, Cirencester
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These plants are easy to look after, almost indestructible really. They grow quite happily indoors or out in a British summer, and they flower easily and abundantly around November.
Image 114 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
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This is our Christmas cactus, Schlumbergera spp. We’ve had it for quite a few years now, probably around fifteen at a guess. These plants are easy to look after, almost indestructible really. They grow quite happily indoors or out in a British summer, and they flower easily and abundantly around November; despite the name, you might need to work quite hard to hold them back to flower over Christmas.
They’re also very easy to propagate. At any time of year, break off a mature pad by twisting it round and round until it separates. Rest it against the side of a small pot nearly full of compost ( the base of the pad can be pushed a millimetre or two into the compost). Keep the compost moist until the cutting has rooted, and as it grows, repot it into a larger container. A good plan is to root three or four pads in one pot, evenly spaced around the rim. You’ll get more balanced growth that way.
If you produce new plants in January or February, and give them plenty of warmth and light (but not too much full sun), they may flower the same year. If they don’t, they’ll certainly flower the following year and every year after that; the plant in the photo is about six-years-old. These Christmas cacti make lovely little gifts for friends and family.
When: 27th November 2023 Where: At home, Cirencester
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Image 107 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
Larger view
Winter storms occasionally bring down mature trees, even if they are healthy. That happened on the road between Stratton and Cirencester on 21st December 2023. The picture shows the clearing up afterwards. The car driver had a very frightening experience and a lucky escape; the tree trunk crushed the right hand side of the bonnet and I imagine the car was a write-off. Amazingly the windscreen was undamaged and the driver presumably shaken but unhurt.
The road was completely blocked by the trunk and branches of this large, mature lime tree, but the team worked quickly and it was clear again later the same day.
Life is full of unexpected events, most of them entirely harmless, some of them inconvenient, and occasionally something that shakes us up and makes us think about life in a different way, at least for a time. It’s probably good for us to face these think-about-life-differently events once in a while. It helps us to realise that some things are important, that we should do the things that matter most right away, that we should not fritter away our time, that life really is precious, and that we should be sympathetic to those who have suffered unexpectedly in life.
I suppose in the end the important thing is to love others regardless of whether they are close family, complete strangers, or somewhere in between. Everybody matters!
When: 21st December 2023 Where: Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Cirencester
For convenience, here’s a list of all the Cirencester area images:
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We spent Christmas Day in Cheltenham with Judy’s Mum and Dad. We had the usual fun, a great Christmas dinner, lots of presents to unwrap, and a gas fire that kept the room as hot as a sauna! (1989)
June 2024 (6 months before publishing this article)
Click to enlarge
I’ve decided to include an even more recent section from now on, as that will allow us to enjoy a summer photo when it’s winter, and a winter photo when it’s summer.
This is from a walk I did on 11th June, along the towpath of the Stroudwater Canal on the edge of Stonehouse. This restored section of canal has a newly built railway bridge, and the canal stretches out to include a small lake called ‘The Ocean’, home to all manner of wildlife.
I enjoy a long walk now and then, perhaps ten or twelve miles; I still find this quite easy and very relaxing as well as interesting. I’ll continue as long as I can.
Erin, our cat, had come to the end of her life, the tumour was very large, she was no longer responding to steroid treatment, so we took her to the vet on 1st December and buried her in the garden on 2nd.
Donna was acting as a ‘guinea pig’ for a trial her brother, Paul, was running at the University of Bath. We drove over there and I sat in the car in heavy rain reading while Donna and Paul were working away in the lab. And throughout the month I scanned and organised a fair number of old 35 mm transparencies, mostly Judy’s but some of mine too.
We visited the family in Yorkshire over New Year having had Christmas at our house with Isobel, Paul and Vanessa.
We listened to Handel’s Messiah in Gloucester Cathedral, two of our friends were singing in the choir and it was a great performance.
There was a memorial service at Cirencester Baptist Church for my friend Stephen and a gathering later at the Corinium Hotel. I shall always remember the long conversations he and I had, it was a privilege to have known him.
We visited the family in Yorkshire in the middle of the month and had a great time with all sorts of different things to see and do, including a visit to Fairfax House in York.
Tony’s Parkinson’s was making him confused now, he’d been puzzled about there being two Donna’s.
We voted in the General Election and stayed up to watch the initial results coming in, but felt disappointed as it became clear the Conservatives had won again.
And we visited York just before Christmas, including going to an ice-hockey match in Hull with Debbie, Steve, Aidan and Sara. That was great fun, lots of action, fast and furious.
I’d had an ankle injury in 2013, and it was now feeling much improved, more comfortable than at any time since before I damaged it. We visited Anglesey Abbey around the middle of the month and enjoyed the garden there. Donna was struggling with too much to do; she was busy with teacher training, helping out at the Food Bank and finding church life and the small group unsatisfactory and time consuming as well.
We spent Christmas in York this year staying first with Debbie, then with Beth and Paz, the photo was taken at Debbie’s. Then after Christmas we visited Paul and Vanessa in Weston. A busy end to the year, but a very satisfactory one!
JHM:Simple Church went on sale. World events: Japan launched a sample return spacecraft to Ryugu ; and The Pakistani Taliban killed at least 145 people, mostly schoolchildren in Peshawar.
The building in the picture was where I worked when I started my employment at Unilever in April 1998. And here it is nearly eleven years later, being demolished in December 2009! Needless to say, our department had already been moved to alternative offices on the same site. I wrote in my journal,
‘The demolition has started in earnest now, they’re breaking up the concrete cladding and exposing the reinforced columns and floors. Quite a few of the familiar interiors are visible now; it’s weird to see.’
Play Doh!
We visited York on 20th December to see my daughters and their families, having the usual great time, this year at Beth and Paz’s home in Fulford. Meredith and Aidan enjoyed the Play Doh Factory.
We were on holiday in Thailand from 26th November until 10th December. On 26th December a huge tsunami hit the beach where we’d been staying (Khao Lak). Possibly as many as 10 000 people died on this part of the coastline, the worst hit part of Thailand; it felt like a very narrow escape!
We spent Christmas Day with Donna’s Mum and Dad in High Wycombe, then travelled west to Cirencester. And on Boxing Day we visited Cindy and Paul’s home at Bibury, a few miles east of Ciren. In the photo you can see Paz, Cindy and Beth all looking happy.
We’d also had pre-Christmas meals with Unilever colleagues earlier in the month.
Truffles (our new cat) had settled in well by this time. She was a young adult, not a kitten, and had struggled at first with a cat flap, but once she got the hang of it I think she really appreciated the freedom it gave her.
World events:Tori Murden became the first woman to row the Atlantic Ocean alone; and Boris Yeltsin resigned leaving Vladimir Putin as acting president of Russia.
Judy’s Mum and Dad came to visit us for Christmas dinner this year. Judy was almost back to normal, having made a good recovery following an operation to remove a bowel tumour, and then further illness caused by failed chemotherapy. Despite all this she had now bounced back really well.
This December we spent Christmas Day in Cheltenham with Judy’s Mum and Dad. We had the usual fun, a great Christmas dinner, lots of presents to unwrap, and a gas fire that kept the room as hot as a sauna!
We might have visited Cirencester later in the day to see my Mum and Dad before heading back home to Yatton.
At this time I was still working in my spare time on educational Sinclair Spectrum games for the Clever Clogs series from Computer Tutor, while employed at Long Ashton Research Station in their Plant Science Division.
World events: The Bhopal disaster in India killed 23 000+ people and injured over half a million; and the networking company Cisco Systems was formed.
At this time I was still studying pollen tube development in apple and pear cultivars at Long Ashton Research Station. Judy was at home working hard at managing the house and looking after the chilren; Debbie was four-years-old and Beth was just seven months.
I was working for Ken Stott at Long Ashton Research Station, partly on willow and poplar growth rates, but also helping Ray Williams in the Pomology Group doing interesting studies on apple pollination. Judy was working on human erythrocyte membrane proteins in the Biochemistry Lab in Woodland Road, Bristol.
Judy and I were living in a rented flat in Belmont Road, still saving for a deposit for a house but now in the knowledge we’d secured a mortgage. We began considering where we might find a house we could afford.
World events:Cyclone Tracy caused severe damage to Darwin, Australia; and Malta became a republic.
Judy and I were both in our final year at University, in Judy’s case at Aberystwyth where she celebrated an early Christmas party with friends (from left – Little Mary, Maggs, Big Mary, Jan, and two faces I know but can’t put names to. Judy isn’t in the picture as she took the photo).
This was the final Christmas before we were married, and 1970 would also be our graduation year.
World events: The Boeing 747 jumbo jet made its first passenger flight; and oil was discovered in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea.
I was lucky enough to be able to go on a School Cruise on an old troopship, the ‘Dunera’. We travelled by coach to London, then train to Dover, ferry to Calais, and train all the way to Venice where we boarded the ship. The route took us past Corfu and we visited Athens, Rhodes, and Istanbul. The photo shows the party looking at Lindos from above before boarding the coach again to walk through the village streets and make our way up the Acropolis.
World events:Martin Luther King Jr. was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; and the US F-111 supersonic attack aircraft made its first flight.
My first term at Cirencester Grammar School came to an end and we enjoyed our Christmas holidays. I think I felt settled in by this time, and knew most of the other children in my class well enough.
I was in my second year at Querns School, and the end of the first term was approaching. We were still living on the Beeches Estate in Cirencester – Daddy, Mummy, me and little Cindy who was just three-years-old.
Mummy, Daddy and I moved house! We had been lodging with my grandparents in Victoria Road, Cirencester. But on 5th December we were able to move into a newly built council house on the Beeches Estate just the other side of the river. I had a change of address on my identity card (see whole card).
I don’t remember any of this, though, I was less than a year and a half old!
World events: The government of China moved to Taiwan; and UHF TV was broadcast daily for the first time.
Dad said goodbye to his friend Joe at the railway station on 4th of December; Joe was posted elsewhere. Mum and Dad were both annoyed by Dad’s CO lecturing him about their relationship.
On 9th, Dad travelled to Belfast by bus, then train to Larne, and boat to Stranraer reaching Carlisle at 01:15 on 10th. He was posted to Skendleby in Lincolnshire, another radar station, finally arriving there on 11th December. Mum and Dad began writing frequent letters to one another and Dad spent Christmas and New Year at Skendleby.
World events: The Soviet Union changed Turkish place names in Crimea to Russian; and Glenn Miller‘s plane was lost over the Channel en route to Paris.
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One of the joys of these walks is the sky. Sometimes it’s grey and overcast, sometimes it’s blue from horizon to horizon, but sometimes it’s full of interesting cloud formations at various heights.
Image 103 – What’s in an image? Sometimes quite a lot, more than meets the eye. I’m posting an image every day or so.
Larger view
Traditional Cotswold fields were quite small, but as in many parts of the UK, farmers have removed hedgerows to combine small fields into larger ones that can be more efficiently cultivated, planted, and managed. Although this has some deleterious effects on wildlife and biodiversity, it does create some big skies. Here is an example.
This field is an easy walk west from Stratton where I live, along a permitted route along a stony track. I come out this way from time to time to enjoy the wide open spaces, to look at the nearby polo fields, to listen to the larks that nest here in considerable numbers, and to watch them rise higher and higher before plummeting down to land.
And one of the joys of these walks is the sky. Sometimes it’s grey and overcast, sometimes it’s blue from horizon to horizon, but sometimes it’s full of interesting cloud formations at various heights.
This wonderful world is full of beauty in big skies and also in tiny details. And it’s always different, no two days are alike.
When: 19th January 2024 Where: North-west of Cirencester
Favourites
For convenience, here’s a list of my favourite images:
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Journeys of Heart and Mind 
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