Post 15/2024 Cornwall UK. The week’s sea of cloud and showers was eclipsed by a whole day of blue sky and sunshine on Friday. Even the day after, with clouds and sun, there’s a low chance of rain. Can this be a turning point? Sun cream eclipsing umbrellas?

No need to take a rain check on an invitation to a walk.

People in the UK, I’ve read, seldom use the term “rain check” as it relates to declining an offer or invitation. It’s mainly used in North American English, with the openness to accept the same at a later date. The UK version would be, “Can I think about it?” or “Can I get back to you on that?”

Of course, “rain check” can also mean just that. A look at the sky. Checking the rain gauge. Noting the precipitation level for the past week, month or year.

UK farmers, builders and gardeners, as well as the holiday industry have been severely impacted by the massive levels of rainfall over multiple months.

One farmer up country said he has not seen one of his fields since October. Worms will have died and nutrients leached out, adding time and expense to reclamation. A local farmer anxiously awaits a drying spell so he can get his barley crop planted–now two months late. Fields have been too wet to put cattle out to graze, though we passed one field of cattle on Thursday on the way to Penzance.

Random photos of the week

A few more photos

Finding this a prize book

I’m reading English Journey, by J. B. Priestley, an account of what he saw, heard, felt and thought during a journey through England during the fall of 1933.

In the Preface, Stuart Maconie says, “You have in your hand the finest book ever written about England and the English. . . . If, as a writer, J. B. Priestly had just been brilliant, humane, elegant, virile, intelligent, witty and technically dazzling, he’d be unarguably considered the pre-eminent British talent of his age. Sadly for him, though, he also laboured beneath the crushing burden of being accessible, engaging, crystal clear and enormously popular. The mandarins of the metropolitan elites like their ‘provincial’ voices to stay just that if possible, or at least have the decency to be faintly troubled and attractively doomed, , , ,”

I’m immensely enjoying the book. Even from the first 160 pages I can recommend it. This is one for more comment later.

Came across a new word in reading about the recent eclipse: umbraphile. A shadow lover, a person who often travels a long distance for eclipses. Eclipse chasing. Lots to learn about the cosmic order.

Time for a walk to Tesco to replenish our larder, also known as a half-size fridge/freezer and a few shelves.

Stay sunny and warm.

-John