I’m writing this on Sunday. The unexpected gale-force wind is battering the house. Temperatures have dropped thirteen degrees in the middle of the night – I know, because I woke up at four, fought wakefulness for half an hour (it may have been the bright moon), then gave in and let the collie out for a wee, to find I was too cold to photograph the startling moon without dashing back in to don a coat…

This in a spring so warm you could have gone out in beach shorts for most of the days and nights of the previous two weeks. Not the norm for Cumbria!

The beautiful spring moon is unrelated to the rest of this post, but why waste it!. There weren’t…