going nowhere

 I write in a somewhat pensive mood, I can hear the birds singing outside and the mind rushes to Thomas Hardy's poem.

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

At breakfast I listened to carols sung in a sombre tone, 'Snow on Snow making me smile, because the weather forecast predicted snow for Christmas day.

We have a magnificent Xmas tree, bought from our friendly Asian store, Lidl had run out by the weekend.  Yesterday, which was Solstice day, the great turning of the year or at least the sun and I wondered if our prehistoric ancestors knew the exact date (if indeed there is one;).  These stone monuments, written like clocks upon the Earth.  Did the sun rise between the stones at the Stonehenge Sunrise before the thousands of people who had come to witness the event.

I turned to the Modern Antiquarian but there was no mention of Solstice, the young men, since grown into middle-age, who had hunted down the stones so ferociously were not giving in to the silly soft romance of the caboodle of Neodruidism.  Shame, an added spark to life never comes amiss.

There had been a role call of old members, and we had come forward somewhat reluctantly,  I am no longer a stone seeker, too old but still interested.  The Flintstones somewhat marred the seriousness of prehistoric people, and yet the development of the human race was the exploration of the world around them by these first homo sapiens and of course the Neanderthals'.  I am not saying there was direct lineage but some of us definitely have a smattering of Neanderthals in us.  Gosh I am pottering but it is cheering me up.