I got quite a lot of posts out of the walks, particularly the
night ones I was in the habit of taking through several winters. I particularly
remember the cascade of pulsating blue lights around somebody’s fir tree at
Christmas, and the ghostly appearance of the Lady B’s cottage one night when it
was both misty and moonlit. And then there were the strange noises which were
difficult to identify even when they were obviously close by.
The leg issue also prevents me making my trips to the city
centres of Stoke and Derby, since the distances involved are too great to
countenance while the leg is being denied its proper blood flow. Nowadays, in
an environmental sense at least, I’m restricted to my house, my garden, and the
little market towns of Ashbourne and Uttoxeter. All other meanderings have to
be done in my mind, and the effort of wringing something out of them for the blog is
becoming tedious.
I did go out briefly tonight, though, to let next door’s
cats in and feed them. As I was coming back, and it being a clear, starlit
night, I looked for my old friend Orion whose presence used to offer some curious
comfort on the longer nocturnal perambulations. Orion wasn’t there.
I thought back to the night walks, and was sure that Orion
was always in the southern sky at this time of year and that time of night. But
a scan of the clear view from east around to north-west by way of south revealed
no sign of him.
Can this be so? Can Orion really have gone AWOL? I very much
doubt it, but I don’t know what else to conclude. So if you happen to be out at
night and catch sight of him, would you please pass on the message that I miss
him and the southern sky just isn’t the same these days. This is what he looks
like in case you don’t know:
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