Autumn Evening

I love these autumn evenings. I am on the patio enjoying a glass of wine and the whole ambience of the day's closure. As the sun sinks below the horizon there are no clouds this evening to be lit up with brilliant colours but the whole western sky is golden and gradually fades away to semi darkness. Although they say it was 36 today, the temperature soon dropped to the mid twenties as the sun as the sun went down. The trees are quite motionless, not stirred today by the sea breeze which often drifts in from the coast 40 miles away about this time of day. Earlier various kinds of honey eaters were having their last fill up of nectar for the day. Now they have all disappeaed with the fading daylight. Some of my magpie friends were here on the patio to eats a few food scraps I had put out for them. They too have gone home- all except for one. He seems to be a reborn Jonathon Livingston Seagull who has discovered that flight is not just useful but also fun. Over and over he powered up to a reasonable height and then swooped down in a graceful arc, with wings outstretched and drawn by gravity back towards earth . Then using all his accumulated momentum he turns upwards and lands with zero velocity on a tree branch. I love this kind of motion. Watching the maggies fly in to the patio is a great delight. Perhaps simulated flight is one of the appeals of ballet. Although their motion is entirely opposite, I like watching the big jets as they fly over my house on their way into Perth airport from the Eastern States. No fun aerobatics for them. They fly straight as a die purposly towards their destination. The reduced power of their engines as they lose altitude reminds me of the thrill of approaching our destination when travelling.
Sunset brings back other memories. Like stretching out on huge rocks at the waters edge, soaking up the last of the warmth that they have absorbed from the sun all day. Suddenly I think of walking through the dusk with my mates, fire flies flashing all round, headed for the open air pictures (aka movies) in Borneo after the war. It was just a screen and a projector box with upturned drums in between for seats. No matter what was on we enjoyed it.
Well it is dinner time now, I guess I had better go inside and perhaps afterwards type this up on Word.