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cloud drawing (coming up to 9 a.m.)

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Bands - no swathes - of cirrocumulus - looks high up - stretching far out across the city & overhead. A decisive line of jet stream* like a minimalist rainbow running from the roof of the apartment & arching over behind the roof of newt door. As I write it's beginning to dissolve, a slow white bleed into blue. In places the cirrocumulus is more weft-like - as if partially erased, suspended second thoughts, a hasty gesture of start again. Scrubbings out - where the eraser is the cloud itself. Self cancellation in mid-air.

& leaving the pool, I looked up & saw wefts : pulled apart fragments of Swiffer dusters. Looking in the book this might be cirrocumulus lacunosus?

* & I learn a new word: contrail for this phenomenon

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For once the publishing cliche - "a book that will change your life" - is true. This is a precious volume. I'd heard about it from the Cloud Appreciation Society website but assumed (wrongly) that it was only available to members. In fact, a geographer colleague had a copy & graciously passed it on to me to read. I can't recommend it highly enough - well, up to at least 40,000 feet (round about the top of an angry cumulonimbus).

It's learned - but wears its learning lightly. There are lovely asides and digressions which make it clear we're talking about more than clouds: it's a way of looking and thinking about life. Taking time, changing the direction of vision, lifting the eyes above street level and mundane preoccupations. (And I notice that Pretor-Pinney is involved with The Idler).

The implications of this volume stretch far, far across the horizon. Simply look up and there they are - and you don't need an App.. How good is that?