GEESE IN THE MORNING

I was driving to work a few mornings ago on another misty morning just after sunrise and, as I hurtled along the road with someone in another car hanging onto my back bumper and trying to force me into hurrying along, I dipped down into the valley somewhere near to where the Noridel Zeus shop continues to crumble and noticed a flock of Canada Geese launching themselves into the sky, crossing the road right in front of me like a fleet of heavy bombers heading off on a dawn raid.

It was a rather spectacular, emotional and beautiful sight to see as an momentary escape from the drudgery of the commute, and a vivid reminder of the turning of the seasons which even momentarily managed to take my mind quite off the belligerent idiot behind me. I imagine that these geese had just taken off from an overnight stop on the water at Etherow Country Park somewhere beyond the factories to my right, and, as they were immediately followed by a second wave following their path, it had a definite air of one of nature’s more organised events about it and I’m sure that they had a long way to go that morning and, for a moment, I wished that I was free to join them on their journey to warmer climes.

Naturally, because I was driving, I didn’t have the chance to stop and take their picture, which is a bit of a shame (the attached is someone else’s used merely to illustrate the idea), but it is probably better than ending up with my own picture in the paper following the inevitable pile-up if I had tried to get my phone out of my pocket and point and shoot it at the sky whilst I still had that idiot behind me. Anyway, I suspect that even if I had decided to try and do that, by the time I’d pulled up, got out the phone, switched it on, waited for the network and so on, the moment would have passed.

Sometimes I really wish that I had some kind of an eyeball (or iBall) based camera which I could click to preserve those moments which happen far too fast and far too unexpectedly or at just the most inconvenient moments for me to successfully “capture” them.

Instead I had a fond memory to carry with me through my day and beyond, and yet another image to file away in that mental folder of “the pictures that got away” of which there are far too many, but it makes up a rather tragically long list.

Anyway, thanks for the memory wherever you are guys, and, although I know that it’s extremely unlikely that any geese would ever get to read or understand this (few enough humans do, to be perfectly honest with you…), I hope you had a safe journey to wherever it is you are now, and I hope it’s warm enough for you.

See you in the spring, I hope.