Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness

Holy shit I actually got to see an aurora last night!

diffrentcolours drove us (and friends!) out to the middle of nowhere and I got out of the car thinking I wonder what I'll see....if anything and it was actually amazing. I am surprised I didn't cry.

What we saw didn't look like most of the photos I've seen: I was expecting green or purple sheets coming up from the horizon and what we saw was a band stretching l across the sky, with twisty dancing shapes almost straight up over our heads, like the jewel in a ring.

The shapes changed more quickly than I expected! What first looked like a pinch in a fabric seam was soon the Firebird logo, then something I first called a comet but quickly decided was a jellyfish... It was like looking at clouds and finding patterns in them, only better and more eerie.

One of the first shapes I saw was a bat. So that was good.

I have only these words, no photos: my phone camera just showed a black square when I pointed it at the sky. I know a lot of people had better results with their phone cameras than their eyes but this was maybe the first time my camera couldn't see a lot better than I can!

I was in bed at 1.59am, which isn't quite unprecedented for me but it is about five hours later than I've been going to bed lately. As a chronic insomniac specializing in sleep-maintenance insomnia, I'm used to waking up soon after that! I wouldn't care but I've signed up for my gym class tomorrow morning. But I thought that if in the morning I had to sleepily text the trainer and explain that I couldn't make it because I was up half the night looking at aurora, they'd probably be nice about it.

I didn't have to do that though. Despite waking up about eight minutes before I would ideally be ready to go, and D being mostly-asleep still, we did make it.

We got home, I had a shower, had lunch, then I wanted to mow the lawn because again it desperately needed it and it hasn't even been raining the last few days. It's properly warm today though; I caught the sun a little and I was so sweaty afterward that I'd already undone all the good work that the shower had accomplished.

But I had nice iced tea that I'd finally remembered to make yesterday. Green tea with spearmint, it's so tasty and refreshing.

It ended up being a busy day. The other two went to B&M while I dozed on the sofa, and then D and I went for a bike ride just in time to miss the official Cycle Fest, but there was still loud music and nice weather and food and drinks and lots of people, lots of little kids and dogs to smile at.

It's a short bike ride but on top of gym and lawn mowing which were both hard on my ankle, it was all the biking I'd be happy about doing anyway. I'm delighted at how much I've been able to do today though.

No Eurovision in this household tonight, which feels weird but I feel sick at the thought of pretending everything's okay in Gaza when it's not. So instead I finished a library book this evening (The Divorce Colony) and I think it's been months since I could say that!