Courting Swans

Route: Yard - Portsmouth - Newport, Isle of Wight - Southampton - Yard
KM: 144
Hours: 02.30 - 09.35
Listening: Huey Morgan on Radio 2 then Jack FM
Reading: Faultlines by Nancy Huston
Wildlife: Lots of gulls, 2 swans courting

Today is Saturday and I got up at 12.30 in the morning to go to work. However, the 2.30 start time is pretty much the only bad thing about this duty (despite being pretty rubbish hours, it does not qualify for the highest rate of pay either).

It is the Isle of Wight run. The ferry leaves at 5am and the passengers are almost exclusively truckers, with the occasional party goer on the way home, often falling asleep slumped in a chair.

This morning I watched the sunrise from the ferry. Dawn is happening around the 6am mark at the moment although the clocks are changing tonight so it will get later again for a while. I love watching the sunrise.

This is also spring. It has been freezing cold for months, and especially the last couple of weeks when it has really felt as if spring ought to be springing but it isn't. The trees are not in leaf, some are still not even in bud. Even the magnolia aren't out yet and they are normally the first.

The birds have started their courtship and nesting rituals though. The woodlands, even the lines of trees between houses, are alive with birdsong (some of which I can recognise this year for the first time!) and you don't have to wait long before you start to see aerial flirting, some successful, often not.

There is a stretch of the M27 between Portsmouth and Southampton which goes over a small waterway. A house stands right next to the motorway which looks like it was originally a mill house. The waterway is lined with concrete so is probably a canalised stretch of what was a natural stream. The water is normally bare but today there were two swans swimming in perfect parallel, their necks leaning in towards each other. Swans are dedicated parents and mate for life. These may have been getting it together for the first time or they may have been reaffirming their commitment to each other at the beginning of a new breeding season.

Either way, it's delightful to see and I ended up singing "Love is in the air" the rest of the way back.

Full Moon

Route - Yard Portsmouth NDC Bournemouth x2
Km - 587
Hours - 18.10-06.13
Listening - Radio 2, Mark Radcliffe, Jo Wiley, Stuart Maconie's Peoples' Songs on Brimfull of Asha by Cornershop. Billy Idol while Frank Renton on. Janice Long, Beethoven's Violin Concerto (Gidon Kremer soloist).
Reading at break - Guardian Review from couple of weeks ago.
Sunset - 18.29
Sunrise - 05.50ish.

Tonight I saw the full moon for the whole night. It rose orange behind me in my right hand mirror as I left Portsmouth and was still visible in the bright blue sky of daytime when I finished. For much of the night the gentle cloud covering it made it seem as if I was looking at it through tracing paper.

It was beautiful.

It is in the presence of such wonders of the natural world that my thoughts turn to God. Or maybe such wonders of the natural world are God.

So what do I mean by God? God to me is an it, it is a conglomeration of different conceptions, any number of which might fit at any time. Godness, the Holy Spirit, Mother Nature, God the paternalistic Christian God, source, Godness as made manifest in nature or in art. They are all there in that great big ball of loveliness I call God.

God is a feeling, of humility, of joy at the beauty of life and gratitude at my being able to experience it and express it, of love. Not necessarily even love for something or someone. It is just love.

You wouldn't have maybe thought that there would be much link between trucking and God but to me it's quite the opposite. I drive through the night, I see the birds in the day and the stars at night and I get to see the sun rise throughout the year.

That's God that is.