When Algy woke up on Wednesday morning, he found that everything was still shrouded in Scotch mist. Just like yesterday and several days before that, the world of the West Highlands was without colour; everything was either grey or brown, and much of it was simply lost in the mist.

Algy was beginning to get a wee bit fed up with all this gloom, so he decided to do something about it. Luckily for him, Algy had been following the work of his good friend seagirl49, and the recent photo posts of his kind and helpful friend tvoom, so he had a good idea of what to do. In no time at all the world seemed very much brighter 🙂

Algy suggests that if you are finding the world too gloomy, take inspiration from your creative friends on Tumblr and brighten things up for yourself xoxo

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In the West Highland winter, the sun is very rarely seen, and the sky can remain heavy and grey for months on end. Such conditions are not for the faint-hearted, but Algy knew that from time to time the sun would manage to break through a gap in the clouds. As he leaned back against a sheltering rock on top of the moor, with the fleeting silvery rays illuminating the Sound in the distance, he thought of those of his friends experiencing dark times, and remembered a poem:

          I have seen the sun break through
          to illuminate a small field
          for a while, and gone my way
          and forgotten it. But that was the
          pearl of great price, the one field that had
          treasure in it. I realise now
          that I must give all that I have
          to possess it. Life is not hurrying

          on to a receding future, nor hankering after
          an imagined past. It is the turning
          aside like Moses to the miracle
          of the lit bush, to a brightness
          that seemed as transitory as your youth
          once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

This post is dedicated especially to Algy’s friends seagirl49 and seoulsearching97 and to all those experiencing times of darkness xoxo

[ Algy is quoting the poem The Bright Field by the 20th century Welsh poet and Anglican priest R. S. Thomas. ]

Being suddenly transported to the other side of a rainbow is apt to leave a fluffy bird feeling rather peckish, so Algy turned his back on the loch and set off in search of food. The lower slopes of the hillside were covered in a rich woodland of Atlantic oak and birch trees, which usually provide a well-stocked larder for their feathered friends – especially in the autumn months. So it wasn’t long before Algy discovered an ideal lunchtime treat… Of course it was actually October, but as he munched the juicy berries, Algy inevitably thought:

           I love to go out in late September
           among the fat, overripe, icy, black blackberries
           to eat blackberries for breakfast,
           the stalks very prickly, a penalty
           they earn for knowing the black art
           of blackberry-making; and as I stand among them
           lifting the stalks to my mouth, the ripest berries
           fall almost unbidden to my tongue,
           as words sometimes do, certain peculiar words
           like strengths or squinched,
           many-lettered, one-syllabled lumps,
           which I squeeze, squinch open, and splurge well
           in the silent, startled, icy, black language
           of blackberry-eating in late September.

This post is especially dedicated to Algy’s new food-loving friend whenislunch, for obvious reasons, and to Algy’s special friend seagirl49, for her wonderfully inspiring work in the world of colour :-))

[Algy is quoting the poem Blackberry Eating by the contemporary American poet Galway Kinnell.]