Our first outing - with tweet

Prompted by a neighbour, we had our first outing by car since March this morning, driving up to Epsom Downs. Tea hut open. Ice cream van present.

Plenty of these little capsules about, so one supposes that this hilltop car park is the scene of youth action after dark. The same sort of capsules as those noticed in town centre, at reference 1, before it all kicked off. Not being quite sure what might be in them, I asked Bing about nitrous oxide and he turned up the snap following on ebay.

So at more the £10 each, dearer than I thought enough marijuana for a smoke would be - but perhaps these capsules have the advantage of being more or less legal. Perhaps they were completely legal in the days of ether parties, for which see reference 2. Perhaps furloughed hospitality staff have gone into the whipped cream business, something most of the places which used to sell food would have used.

Then over onto the downs, where it was sunny and warm, with a light warm breeze - and where there were a few people, but nowhere near enough to be a problem. So a good destination, at least for weekday mornings.

My shoes and a corner of my sunglasses bottom left, BH right. Looking north west, vaguely towards Heathrow. No aeroplanes on this occasion, which must be a first. One can see them landing from some points.

The grass had been mown fairly recently and it all looked a bit parched - despite the recent rain. Except the race course itself, which was looking very lush and green. The work of what turned out to be a specialised boom sprinkler, mounted on the back of a small lorry and connected to the mains supply by means of what looked very much like a fire hose on a large reel. From which we deduced that there must be water hydrants at intervals all along the two miles course.

The first tweet was what we eventually decided was a buzzard, which started off quite close, maybe 25 yards away, and which then headed north, gradually gaining height.

The second tweet was a handful of what we eventually decided were swifts.

The third partial tweet was the sound of what might well have been skylarks, but we failed to make visual contact.

A very pleasant outing. And no harm done to anyone, ourselves or others.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/trolley-413.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-staff-of-life.html.