Bomble reversing back down the tree

I didn't get home until it was getting dark this afternoon having been helping to prepare for the public event tomorrow. About thirty of my pictures will be used as visual resources to show details about the townscape and I have been preparing the prints amongst other things today.

The sun was just setting over Rodborough Common high up above the far side of the valley when I went down to the bottom of the garden to look out over another valley towards The Heavens. The landscape is now looking rather grey and only the oak tree leaves have strong autumnal colour. As I pointed my camera to the tops of the trees, outlined against the meadows on the far side of the valley behind Oakey Grove, I heard a rustling and saw Bomble walking past me and out along the hillside.

I hadn't been here at the bottom of the garden for quite a while and I always like it when he joins me. My day was made when he suddenly took off at a running pace, making a special gurgling noise, which he often does when excited, and leapt up at the trunk of a tree which he then dashed up about twenty feet. When he got to the branches he walked along them for a short way, stopped looked at me and then as usual decided to come down.

But I think he now recognises he is getting old, as he hesitated before running back down the trunk and instead started to reverse down the trunk, as you can see. Just after I took this picture he then leapt off the tree onto the ground and ran away back into the garden, repeating his noises before stopping again to look back at me. When I started to photograph him again he accelerated and took off up the garden leaping over various small obstacles on the way. I do like to see that he feels like playing again, and perhaps the arthritis pills we are giving him are finally making him feel better. Now he is sitting on my knee while I try to write this journal on my laptop using one finger, gathered together in the sitting room with the BBC news on. I wish I had as much energy as he seems to draw upon. I'm going to need it tomorrow.