Friday 23 July 2010

spirit in the sky

There was distant rumbling of thunder. So I popped up onto the roof.

The storm was moving in from Somerset. Against the great heap of dark cloud was a wheeling cloud of seagulls. More were flying in from all points of the compass. The whole sky across the city became one great seagull party. There was a terrific crash of thunder, and an almost instantaneous flash. Then the rain started, and I dived through the skylight.

Sometimes you just see something and you have no idea what's going on, but just have to gawp and admire. Like the bobbing gannets in the Bay of Biscay, or the night off the Ebro delta, when I was leaning out of an after hatch on the ship during a thunderstorm, and every flash of lightning caught innumerable fish, poised mid-leap in the air.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural...

...as Louis Macneice said.

7 comments:

  1. That's a wonderful picture Dru. Thanks for sharing the moment with us.

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  2. It is a great picture. I have to say I am so jealous that you have a roof terrace to get these great shots :)

    Stace

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  4. (Oops, first comment was riddled with typos).
    Superb photograph Dru. You've captured the drama so well. I assume this wasn't taken on your phone! I have seen lenticular clouds over Suilven in N. Scotland- an improbable sight for a natural phenomenon. The advantages of living on islands in the North Atlantic are the crazy sky and improbable clouds that we experience.
    They can also be incorribly pluvial too!

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  5. You have a very keen eye for the beauty and wonder of nature.

    How cool that you can access your roof through a skylight! I have a skylight, but unfortunately all it's good for, is letting the rain in.

    Melissa XX

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  6. I love that photo. It suggests a trinity. As well as lots of rain. The sky here is mostly a monotonous blue, which is okay, but I'd prefer to be able to sit out under it.

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  7. Thank you, everyone! -sorry I didn't reply earlier; got distracted by school hols stuff. I like the idea of 'incorrigibly pluvial' Claire...

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