Soup for breakfast

2nd December 2012.

Out at 6am again. Very cold. A robin was singing by the light of a street lamp, a slightly melancholy tune.

Went north, with on my left shoulder, the gibbous Moon, Betelgeuse below and Capella and Jupiter pointing the way. On my right shoulder, my Moon shadow, Venus and the horizon the colour of a blood-orange. While you were tucked up in bed, I witnessed a perfect starlit morning!

Didn't need to turn on my head-torch until under the trees at Oxen Hoath. Then I went through Hurst Woods.

Breakfast of soup (of course!) and coffee, was on Doris's bench with the Sun behind the trees and the Moon in the blue sky in front of me. My hands froze - minus 3 degrees up here! I got the hand warmers out. Picked a few apples - there are still some to be had, but the Fieldfare (the orchards are full of them) have pecked at most. My hands didn't really warm up until my second break at Yopps Green on a bench in the Sun.

A pair of Buzzards at Basted Mill in the trees calling to each other. This pair we've seen all summer. I hope they survive the winter and breed next spring; we'll have our very own colony of Buzzards!

I followed the River Bourne and the warming Sun, home south.