I have occasionally had some moments in my life to look back upon the good stuff.   Tonight the train home to Fife was delayed for ages (ooh, at least 30 minutes) by a points failure at Dalmeny.  So, I was forced to sit in a comfy double seat by myself,  reading a very good book (Bearded Tit by Rory McGrath – he knows from whence all the Latin and Greek bird names derive, and he tells a mean funny story) occasionally looking out to the gentle countryside around Turnhouse.   Once we moved off, I  crossed the Forth Bridge, 150 feet up in the dappled evening sunshine, looking at the traffic tootling over the road bridge, the tiny yachts noising up the behemoth tankers in the river below, and a passing helicopter which was no doubt carrying home some rich dude from a day’s golf at St Andrews.  Eventually came home to our house in our street, in a country which at present is not subject to martial law or famine, or both.

The poem below always chimes in my head when I cross the river, no surprises as to the ornithological content but it’s a reminder of a master at work.

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring’d with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

 

The Eagle, Alfred, Lord Tennyson