Staycation round two, day nine

I woke up half an hour before sunrise to a bright blue cloudless sky. It lifted my spirit, and moved me to take my Sony Alpha 68 to the loft and shoot a series of photos as the sun emerged from behind the roof line of the terraced houses beyond the garden. For a fleeting moment I glimpsed a flock of starlings as the made their way from the night time urban shelter towards the countryside to the west. I often hear them in the late afternoon, but seldom see dozens in the sky together. Inevitably, after an early breakfast I fell asleep again during morning prayer. Thank heavens I don't have a schedule to keep these days.

Early results in the U.S. election indicate that Joe Biden didn't get an overwhelming number of votes. It's too close to anticipate a result while votes are still being counted. How long will it take I wonder before enough are counted and legitimized to be sure who won? Again the opinion polls have been wrong, Not enough people are yet sick of political populism and a bullying head of state to declare against him. 

The country seems evenly divided, on the basis of voting turnout said to be the largest in a century. No good can come from all Trump's lies and deceits, until enough people give up on  all illusory promises that end up dividing in order to rule. The world needs consensus and united action in order to survive pandemic and climate change, and at the moment we have neither.

I had to forego exercising in the garden today despite the sunshine. Clare took advantage of the weather to fill the washing line which runs along the path, so all my walking was indoors, listening to Radio 3. When I did pop outdoors, I noticed that the hawthorn tree in next door's garden, now stripped of leaves was hosting a large family of sparrows, nearly a dozen I think, and another family visited but seemed unable to find enough room to cohabit. 

Last week, and on other occasions this autumn, a solitary sparrow perched in that tree, cheeped loudly for ages then flew off. I wonder if it was advertising the space available? Before this tree was drastically pruned about five years ago, it was often hosted a large group of sparrows. Then there were none. This year they've nested in the hedge next door on the other side, and are hanging around much more.

Having taken such a lot of photos of four different cameras since the end of summer, I thought I'd add them to my PC's hard drive archive. It took me longer than expected to file them away in the correct folders this afternoon. Then, for amusement I processed ten sunrise photos into a video clip to send to the family. It's something I rarely do, so it took a while to figure it out first.

The surgeon's administrator at the hospital rang at tea time to check me out, wanting to confirm that my covid-19 test had been booked, and asking if I was well, really wanting to check I wasn't poorly and going down with some sort of sickness - possible even in quarantine I guess, if you ate something that gave you a tummy bug. So far so good, anyway.