A day of many halves.

As I type, the sky is a pale sepia, bordering on lemon yellow and the window pane is dashed with raindrops - another wet and wild day. Two storms in quick succession seem to be lingering like a dreaded lurgy no one can shake.

There are more puddles than a entire flotilla of ducks and my dog can deal with and they seem to multiply and grow by the hour. Some have been rumoured to have swallowed entire cars in one gulp (I may be exaggerating here but it is artist licence!)

Yet, yet, when the sun deigns to appear, a warm and fuzzy glow wraps around everything. The earth steams gently hinting at heat hazes along barely humid muddy tracks. I am still wrapped up like Nanook of the North and still very aware that there is a sharp nip (and ice-crackingly cold breeze) in the air. But ..... the sun - such a tease. 

Already full streams and ponds are bulging with surplus rainwater, fit to flood at one more cloud burst, swollen and sullen and noisy. 

Rain falls as hail and snow pellets on higher ground, crunching underfoot and looking like crystalline polystyrene balls as they roll across the moorland grasses - the wind lifting them and hurling them in to the air .... and my face.  

Every now and then, a small flash of colour, of promise and of hope give me ... hope .... hope that the weather calms down, that villages dry out, that the water recedes, that folk can get their homes back and that despite knowing that it is late winter and it is still some time off being warmer - that this driech and dreary weather will end. 

I have had quite enough walking a dilly dog whilst wearing what feels like every duvet I own and still being cold whilst leaning into a strong breeze when I trudge around the village struggling to find a reasonably passable pathway - I think I am ready for a bit of nicer weather - what do you think? Too much to ask?