Roaming in the gloaming

Just back from an evening drive. After a sunny week it had been a strangely cold and overcast June day and the evening was no brighter. But as we drove through the premature gloaming of a country lane canopied with trees we came to a beautiful old humpbacked bridge. The walls of the bridge were too high to see much of the river from the car, so I pulled over and we walked back for a better view. And what a sight we were rewarded with. Framed by the trees like a painting by Constable of an England long gone, the wide, lazy river - so slow moving as to be filled with lily pads like an ornamental pond - meandered through meadows rendered with a golden haze of buttercups. In the distance, pale in the evening mist and barely glimpsed through a copse of trees, the roof of some enormous stately home straight out of a costume drama. And in the foreground, at the water’s edge, lowing at the unusual sight of passing humans in this place that time forgot, a herd of ruddy cattle with ghostly woolly white faces.
On the bridge we stood, breathing the cool, clean air and soaking up the relaxing scene.
Who needs television?

Twitter

What a perfect mellow summer evening it was last night.
9pm. Cool and still after a hot sunny day. The sun a red dot dipping low across the fields from a cloudless sky. The air perfumed with hawthorn blossom that hung like snow on the dark green branches. And in the air just one sound - well, actually a multitude of sounds - a veritable roar of competing tweets, chirps, trills, warbles and whistles as the massed choir of unseen birds shouted their happiness from the treetops.
For the longest time I just stood in the gathering gloaming and listened to the only Twitter I’ll ever need.