Fallen leaves

It's been an odd few days, the air cold and still and cushioned with quiet - it has felt we were waiting for something, and yet nothing quite happens. Perhaps we are still waiting...

The wide skies have been so grey and heavy and all that cloud has brought early darkness so that yesterday as early as 3 o'clock the rooks were swarming up at the top road - gathering in the fields around the crossroads, in the trees, lining the telephone wires, swooping and diving and playing. Then suddenly taking a more serious tone as they fall still and quiet before boiling up into the sky and heading for the trees in Church Wood to roost. I expect something to hae happened by the time they have gone, but no - the air remains still, and quiet apart from their calls, and still somehow expecting.

It hasn't really rained as such, but the air has been so wet that FB and I have gotten soaked on even our shorter excursions. He discovered the joys of fallen leaves in a rather big way after a short walk with his grandaddy where he filled a paper bag with fallen leaves. We dried them and made tree pictures, but then the leaves were all gone so he wanted more. A short walk up the back lane with his basket produced a fine new crop for drying, which later made a beautiful crown. FB, King of Autumn.

He's been unhappy today, which has meant he's not been easy company - he's been firey and angry and beligerant and defiant (so much like his mother!). And I'm worn from full-up sinuses and headaches and snot and lack of sleep, and so much less well resourced to deal positively with it, but I do notice how shocking it is to have a day like this - one where it feels like the trolls have been in the night and stolen my boy, replacing him with one of their troll children... It has been a very, very long time, and so even in the midst of what has been admittedly a pretty grim day, I have been reflecting on what it means that it is so shocking to find a day like this because they are so uncommon. And I hate the feeling that nothing is good enough, that I can never be or do or say the right thing in these moments, but I am thrilled to realise that these days used to be regular, if infrequent - we have turned a corner somewhere, and whilst our general content can make days like this seem harder, it is also our content that keeps these days at bay, or helps carry us through when they do come... I'll make another corvid analagy - generally, FB and I are rooks - social, chatty, resolutely communal and collaberative. Occasionally, we are each more like crows - solitary scavengers, taking whatever we can and begrudging company and certainly disinterested in any sort of co-operation.

So, one way or another, we have both been off-kilter today, which has meant that my plans for baking bread and biscuits never came to fruition. That means two things - one is that we can't have toast for breakfast, but the other is that, chances are, tomorrow afternoon will find a mother and her boy licking dribbles of butter off our fingers and wiping biscuit crumbs from cheek and lap... Definately something to look forward to.