It was blowing a gale again, and the sea was getting very agitated. Algy clung onto a rock, watching March go out like a lion with a huge mane of sea spray… just the way that it had come in.

Although it was spectacular, Algy felt that maybe it would make a nice change to experience some different kinds of weather, for the sake of variety if nothing else…  some calm, warm, sunny weather perhaps. The sea just laughed at him 🙂

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Although there was a little watery sunshine in the early morning, the massive clouds rapidly descended, and Algy knew that the rest of the day would be wet again. He leaned back on the damp seaweed as the soft drizzle started, watching the ebb and flow of the water around the rocks and singing to the rain. He was singing his own setting of a poem by Shelley, and wishing that at least some of the rain clouds would blow around the world to visit his friends in those places where the rain was so badly needed:

I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
        From the seas and the streams;
I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
        In their noonday dreams.
From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
        The sweet buds every one,
When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast,
        As she dances about the sun.
I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
        And whiten the green plains under,
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
        And laugh as I pass in thunder.

  I sift the snow on the mountains below,
        And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night ‘tis my pillow white,
        While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
        Lightning my pilot sits;
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
        It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
        This pilot is guiding me,
Lured by the love of the genii that move
        In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
        Over the lakes and the plains,
Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
        The Spirit he loves remains;
And I all the while bask in Heaven’s blue smile,
        Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

Algy hopes that you all have a wonderful Sunday, and that those who need rain will receive some of his! xoxo

[Algy is singing the first two verses of The Cloud by the early 19th century English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. ]

Everything was utterly wet. The sea was wet, of course, but also the rocks were wet, the creatures on the rocks were wet, the seaweed was wet, the sand was wet, and the air was wet. There was nothing in Algy’s world that was not wet. The wind had come and gone (for the moment), and left nothing but wetness behind. It had started to rain again the moment that it stopped blowing, and it was unlikely to stop in a hurry…

But as Algy perched on the the wet, seaweedy rock, he reflected that it was a great deal better to have an abundance of water than to have too little, and he felt desperately sorry for those parts of the world which so urgently needed the water he could not send them. Algy hopes and prays that your parched lands will receive at least some of the wetness which is so plentiful here in the West Highlands of Scotland. xoxo

Uh-Oh! More stormy weather ahead…

Algy hopes that your weekend won’t be as stormy as his is forecast to be 🙂
Have a lovely weekend, everyone xoxo

Algy was feeling very tired. It had been such a long, dreary, stormy winter, and it seemed like years since he had last felt warm. He was thankful that he had not had to cope with months of snow, like some of his unfortunate friends, but that bitter wind just wouldn’t stop blowing and – despite the occasional bursts of sunshine – there was still no warmth in the air at all.

But as he leaned back wearily on the damp sand, watching the strange backwards rippling action of the burn as it trickled across the beach to the sea, he suddenly heard a wonderful sound. A skylark was singing overhead, ascending over the sand dunes. The first lark of spring! It might not look or feel like spring, but the lark knew that it was, and his beautiful, trilling song lifted Algy’s spirits right out of the dumps and up, up into the sky 🙂

It was a north wind day, which meant that the view to the islands was fine, and the sea was a deep, deep blue, but the air was raw and cold. Algy flew up onto the headland in the late afternoon, when the shadows were growing long, and perched in a special place he knew, where an old tree stood framed in a gap looking out towards the isles. He was thinking of friends far away, whose lives were also full of shadows at this time, and he remembered a poem by Walter de la Mare:

          Sweep thy faint strings, Musician,
            With thy long, lean hand;
          Downward the starry tapers burn,
            Sinks soft the waning sand;
          The old hound whimpers couched in sleep,
            The embers smoulder low;
          Across the wall the shadows
                 Come, and go.

          Sweep softly thy strings, Musician,
             The minutes mount to hours;
          Frost on the windless casement weaves
             A labyrinth of flowers;
          Ghosts linger in the darkening air,
             Hearken at the opening door;
          Music hath called them, dreaming,
                 Home once more.

[ Algy is quoting the poem The Song of Shadows by the early 20th century English poet Walter de la Mare. ]

Sometimes Algy sits and thinks, and sometimes he just sits… 🙂 And very often, by the sea, he finds that thinking is uncalled for. There is more than enough to occupy the mind just watching the sea and listening to its sounds.

Some of Algy’s friends are facing sad challenges at the moment, with family members very ill or recently lost, and Algy dedicates this post – as well as the video clip which his assisant has just posted on her own blog – especially to those people. Algy hopes that the sight and sounds of the sea will help bring peace and calm into lives that are troubled or sad. He sends you all some very special fluffy hugs xoxo

Algy had been larking about in the sand, supposedly posing for the illustrations for his forthcoming book – although to the uninformed observer it looked very much as though he was just having fun playing on the beach…

So when he found that he needed to ask his assistant to help him remove the sticky sand from his feathers, Algy tried to
adopt his best penitent expression, but unfortunately he couldn’t help
giggling at the same time, which rather undermined the effect…

Have
a lovely Sunday, everyone, and if you get yourself into a mess and need help getting out of it, remember not to giggle when you try to look contrite and appealing 🙂

[Tribute to the tradition of Sunday selfies.]

Although the morning was bright and sunny, the sky had clouded over entirely by the time Algy flew out upon the rocks, and the sea had grown moody and sullen. But it was fun to watch the incoming tide, even in dull weather, and Algy spent a happy hour or so watching the waves. As the spray flew up and the water surged through all the wee gullies between the rocks, Algy thought of one of his favourite sea poems:

          The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
          And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
          I heard the first wave of the rising tide
          Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;
          A voice out of the silence of the deep,
          A sound mysteriously multiplied
          As of a cataract from the mountain’s side,
          Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.
          So comes to us at times, from the unknown
          And inaccessible solitudes of being,
          The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
          And inspirations, that we deem our own,
          Are some divine of foreshadowing and foreseeing
          Of things beyond our reason or control.

Watch a short video clip of this incoming tide on the rocks…

[Algy is quoting the poem The Sound of the Sea by the 19th century American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.]

On Friday morning, Algy woke to the sound of the robin singing a joyful song, and remembered that it was the International Day of Happiness! As the morning advanced, a strong wind started to blow from the north, and very soon it had cleared most of the grey clouds away. So Algy flew up to a high point on the headland, and perched on a prominent rock, with the bitter wind whistling through his feathers. The air was bitingly cold, but the view of the ocean was magnificent. Algy lifted up his head and started to sing his own song of happiness, to the words of one of his favourite happy poems:

          I will be the gladdest thing
            Under the sun!
          I will touch a hundred flowers
            And not pick one.

          I will look at cliffs and clouds
            With quiet eyes,
          Watch the wind bow down the grass,
            And the grass rise.

Have a wonderful day of happiness, everyone, and a happy weekend ahead xoxo

[Algy is singing the first two verses of the poem Afternoon on a Hill by the 20th century American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.]