Last Wednesday was a busy day astronomically speaking. There was the eclipse, of course, which we travelled to North Walsham to watch with friends. It was amazing, as they always are. The thing that surprised me the most was the sudden chill as it reached its peak. The photo below was taken by my sister, who was lucky enough to see the eclipse in France, but I loved the effect of it seen thought a colander, also shown below. There was also an amazing show of shooting stars as the Perseid meteor shower was also peaking – on the drive home from North Walsham my daughter kept saying ‘ooh another one’ in quite a distracting way. I spent some time in the garden before going to bed watching them falling through the Milky Way which was right above our heads. The final event, harder to spot unless you have the wonderful Startracker app, was all the planets aligning in a tidy row. Fun.
If we were Bronze Age people, we might have been quite alarmed by all these things happening together and seen it all as sign of impending doom. As it is, it has just been fun for those of us who are a little bit nerdy about astronomy.
Last Sunday I went to have my morning coffee in the garden and was astonished to find it full of swallows, swirling around, shrieking and drinking from the long pond that we built at the beginning of the year. There must have been up to a hundred of them. They have not quite gone – our usual eight are still around – but it felt as though they were giving us a final show before they head off back to Africa for the winter.
I have decided to take all these signs as a (to me) welcome relief that our long hot summer might be drawing towards its end. Others seem to be feeling the same. We are getting more people in the shop who are beginning to think about their winter knitting. Mandy and I have been able to contemplate garments in Aran weight wool for example and my thoughts are turning back towards that gansey that I feel as though I have been planning for a long time now. The works to repair our roof and gutters in the shop are finally happening which means that Shane upstairs will no longer have water coming through his ceiling when it rains. All in all I find myself thinking about September with a slight sense of excitement. Apart from anything else, all this gallivanting that I have been doing this summer and still have to do next week and the week after, while lovely, has been a massive distraction from the business and I am looking forward to getting my head back into work again.
Here in the shop, we will be celebrating the end of our summer with a Cream Tea on Saturday 29 August, why not come and join us!
