A huge white cloud, grey beneath, moves eastward on the southern horizon as aircraft, heading for Heathrow, fly westward in clear blue sky above it. About one plane (containing say 300 people) a minute = about 1000 people in 3 minutes, or 20,000 an hour = about half a million a day... I remain astonished by this number of people - able to fly as a routine activity. Yes it's done for profit but that's not the whole story. It's a part of natural evolution, become conscious and deliberate, as well as semi-accidental. And now, every day, a proportion of us are aloft - we have begun to leave the earth in large numbers.
There are fairly prosperous looking young people here today - a few with children but mostly without (the older ones are inside). There are mostly in groups of 3, 4 or 5, each person talking or laughing - or sitting back to listen.
My tea has gone cold, the sky has cleared, and I'm thinking of moving.
...negotiating muddy slippery ground, I half-slipped, half-fell, twice or thrice, as I found my way along a path that last summer became blocked by fast-growing undergrowth but has now become open again... large grey and pink clouds lit by the sunset, a grand evening to be out... ...I'm feeling much exercised and refreshed by a walk that, at the beginning, seemed too much for me. But I was wrong. My body changed (as if to become another body) after the first mile, as it often does, and then the other 2 or 3 miles became easy.
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