Glorious Light! – 30 October 2023

Today was a much brighter and much colder day than yesterday.

We watched the Mexican GP and it was a fairly lively affair with the home boy, Perez going off at the first bend after attempting an overtaking manoeuvre that was always going to end in tears for somebody. After bouncing his car around on the run-off area, he took it back to the garage and said “It’s Broke!” In Mexican I presume. Of course the golden boy won the race as Scamp had predicted he would.

Today was Monday and Monday is a day for doing shopping. Nothing fancy, just the messages. The boring stuff like bread and cauliflower, rice and coffee, fruit and onions, essentials. Plus a bag of jam doughnuts and a couple of bottles of wine. Because man cannot live by bread alone, and neither can woman! Tesco shopping it was today. We talked about going to Morrisons or Waitrose, but neither of us were interested in travelling far afield. Sometimes it’s better to stay local.

When we got back it was lunch time and that meant the rest of the soup I made yesterday. It was thicker today and the taste was stronger. Just the thing with a slice of bread ‘dooked’ in it. When that was done I waited long enough to see what the weather was going to do later in the week. Then got my boots on and my jacket with the inner sleeve still damp from yesterday’s soaking and drove over to Fannyside where I thought I’d get some autumn colour from the trees. While I was off in the country, Scamp was brushing up the leaves in the garden, in the sunshine.

The light was nothing short of amazing today. After yesterday’s rain had cleared the air, you could see for miles. I was heading for the old ruin of Jawhill Farm. The farm wasn’t really the centre of attention today, it was the trees that were the stars. They were that lovely rusty gold colour that leaves get just before they fall and the sun was getting low in the sky picking out the textures in the farmers’ fields. Blue sky overhead with just enough broken clouds to give a bit of interest to the scene. These days don’t come often, so we have to make the most of them. It’s a pity the cold east wind was really cutting. I was glad I’d picked the heavy Bergy jacket, rather than my fleece.

On the way back to the car I passed three cattle, two cows and one bullock in a field. I just had to have a picture of the bullock. Its coat was almost the same colour as the leaves I’d been photographing and it only had one horn. I don’t know what the story was there. The farm house made PoD, but the bullock got second place.

Today the penultimate prompt for Inktober 2023 was Rush. I duplicated it and it became Rushes, Bull Rushes. I’ve been reading some comments about the prompts this year being a bit too obscure and I have to agree. There have to be better prompts than the ones we’ve been given recently. For the past few years these one word prompts stump a lot of people who then give up on the whole thing. Anyway, today’s sketch was done in fountain pen and a water wash to get some shading.

Tomorrow we have no plans, but the weather looks good, but cold again.