Guys, Where Are We?
I'm on holiday in Italy! Felt a bit perverse to be writing Lost fanfiction on the plane, if I'm honest.
The sky in Italy feels bigger than it does in England, somehow. It's a feeling I get in America, too; the sky seems huge. Maybe it's because being able to see far-off hills or mountains gives a sense of scale and distance, and much of England is relatively flat. Maybe it's just the awareness that you're standing on a huge continent, instead of a small island.
I played badminton with Joseph while the sun set over the hills in the background. We'd found a bucket of cheap falling-apart shuttlecocks, and our game was half actual playing and half just watching in fascination as the shuttlecocks increasingly disintegrated.
Lots of little lizards around the place, which are always exciting. Apparently the UK does have lizards, but I don't think I've ever seen one at home.
I saw a little glowing creature hiding in a crack in a wall! A firefly larva, maybe, or a glowworm? I'd never seen any luminescent creature outside an aquarium before and was so puzzled to see a little green light in the wall; I was very excited to realise it was a living thing, rather than, say, a camera spying on us. Extremely cool!
Later, Joseph pointed out that there were adult fireflies about! Little bright flashing lights moving through the dark! Again, I had never seen fireflies and actually seeing them in action is incredible. How can living things light up so brightly?
Lots of butterflies! Mainly species you'd see back in the UK - large and small whites, meadow browns, some beautiful little holly blues - but at one point I caught sight of a scarce swallowtail in flight. Some sort of lovely fritillary that wouldn't let me get close enough to get a good look, but maybe a Queen of Spain fritillary? There was also a butterfly I thought was a meadow brown until it opened its wings and I realised its oranges were much more exciting; looking it up, I think it was a small copper.
(When I last went to Thorpe Park with RD, I kept exclaiming over the birds and butterflies we saw there - a wagtail! a brimstone! - and eventually she demanded to know how I knew their names. The answer is mainly my dad; he likes being able to identify birds, and we'll sometimes go out butterfly-spotting in the summer.)
Some lovely jays and swallows, and a magnificent pheasant strutting across the road in front of us. My most striking bird sighting of late was actually the day before the holiday, though; I was watching a family of coots when a heron swept in, grabbed one of the babies and flew away with it. 'Oh, Jesus!' I exclaimed aloud, involuntarily. I was so torn between 'that was a cool moment of nature in action and I'm lucky I was there to see it' and 'that was awful and now I'm sad'.
The weather is variable, but that's no downside; it just means we can see the surrounding forested hills in different conditions. Right now, as I write these lines, I'm taking shelter from an intense downpour in the middle of bright sunshine, and it is astonishingly pretty.
Sometimes the rain falls so thickly it looks like static over the landscape, like we're in some sort of beautiful green Silent Hill. I very much hope we're not in Silent Hill, but, if we are, at least it looks good.
The sky in Italy feels bigger than it does in England, somehow. It's a feeling I get in America, too; the sky seems huge. Maybe it's because being able to see far-off hills or mountains gives a sense of scale and distance, and much of England is relatively flat. Maybe it's just the awareness that you're standing on a huge continent, instead of a small island.
I played badminton with Joseph while the sun set over the hills in the background. We'd found a bucket of cheap falling-apart shuttlecocks, and our game was half actual playing and half just watching in fascination as the shuttlecocks increasingly disintegrated.
Lots of little lizards around the place, which are always exciting. Apparently the UK does have lizards, but I don't think I've ever seen one at home.
I saw a little glowing creature hiding in a crack in a wall! A firefly larva, maybe, or a glowworm? I'd never seen any luminescent creature outside an aquarium before and was so puzzled to see a little green light in the wall; I was very excited to realise it was a living thing, rather than, say, a camera spying on us. Extremely cool!
Later, Joseph pointed out that there were adult fireflies about! Little bright flashing lights moving through the dark! Again, I had never seen fireflies and actually seeing them in action is incredible. How can living things light up so brightly?
Lots of butterflies! Mainly species you'd see back in the UK - large and small whites, meadow browns, some beautiful little holly blues - but at one point I caught sight of a scarce swallowtail in flight. Some sort of lovely fritillary that wouldn't let me get close enough to get a good look, but maybe a Queen of Spain fritillary? There was also a butterfly I thought was a meadow brown until it opened its wings and I realised its oranges were much more exciting; looking it up, I think it was a small copper.
(When I last went to Thorpe Park with RD, I kept exclaiming over the birds and butterflies we saw there - a wagtail! a brimstone! - and eventually she demanded to know how I knew their names. The answer is mainly my dad; he likes being able to identify birds, and we'll sometimes go out butterfly-spotting in the summer.)
Some lovely jays and swallows, and a magnificent pheasant strutting across the road in front of us. My most striking bird sighting of late was actually the day before the holiday, though; I was watching a family of coots when a heron swept in, grabbed one of the babies and flew away with it. 'Oh, Jesus!' I exclaimed aloud, involuntarily. I was so torn between 'that was a cool moment of nature in action and I'm lucky I was there to see it' and 'that was awful and now I'm sad'.
The weather is variable, but that's no downside; it just means we can see the surrounding forested hills in different conditions. Right now, as I write these lines, I'm taking shelter from an intense downpour in the middle of bright sunshine, and it is astonishingly pretty.
Sometimes the rain falls so thickly it looks like static over the landscape, like we're in some sort of beautiful green Silent Hill. I very much hope we're not in Silent Hill, but, if we are, at least it looks good.