Autumnal pang

The swallows usually arrive here about 1st May and leave around the end of August. This year they came in mid-April, following the insects, and we thought, ooh, a good summer perhaps. Well that was wrong, wasn't it?

I was parking the car outside the house and had to stop suddenly as a swarm of swallows surrounded us, flying ultra low to match and catch the insects. Were they flying more than crazily than usual, or did it just seem like that? Wingtip turns as they shot through tiny gaps between car and harl.

We sat transfixed. It was impossible to count them, so many were there, in all directions around us, but we guessed a couple of hundred. One second there might be fifty or more on the telephone* wire, the next instant they were all airborne. This went on for fully half an hour.

Then suddenly they were gone. En route for Africa. And now the sky feels empty. The world, diminished.

* Telephone wire I say, but it carries our internet too, which is why our broadband is only thinband.