{"id":1280,"date":"2013-11-17T19:58:59","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T20:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=1280"},"modified":"2013-11-17T20:15:10","modified_gmt":"2013-11-17T21:15:10","slug":"red-sky-at-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/?p=1280","title":{"rendered":"Red sky at night……"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>
\"Red<\/a>
Red sky at night: from the lay-by near the Longhaven cliffs, November 2013<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last Friday I experienced one of those wonderful winter skies.\u00a0 The sun had just gone down and I was driving back to Hatton from Peterhead.\u00a0 The sky was on fire, the texture of the clouds picked out in reds and orange.\u00a0\u00a0 It was one of those days when you just had to stop the car and take it all in.\u00a0 It was also one of those days I wished I had taken my camera with me.\u00a0\u00a0 But the camea on my mobile phone turned up trumps.\u00a0 I stopped at the lay-by over looking the Longhaven cliffs and rested my phone on the top of a rubbish bin.\u00a0 The result is better than I had hoped for.\u00a0 You can even see the headlights of the cars heading for Boddam.<\/p>\n

That sky brought to mind two other pictures I look a long time ago.\u00a0 I was working at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary at the time.\u00a0 My office looked east and at this time of the year from time to time I would see one of those red skies in the morning.\u00a0\u00a0 Digging through my old photographs I came across the pictures, taken long before the days of digital cameras.\u00a0\u00a0 Film was all there was then, and you had to wait to see the results when the pictures came back from being developed.<\/p>\n

The first one was taken in the mid 1990s on a snowy morning, looking out of my office window, with the spire of Beechgrove church silhouetted against the blazing sky.\u00a0 I have always loved that picture.<\/p>\n

\"Beechgrove<\/a>
Beechgrove Church spire, Aberdeen on a snowy morning in the mid 1970s<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The other photograph was taken on the morning of 31 December 1999 and I call it the “Millennium Dawn”.\u00a0 It reminds me of the panic there was at that time: would all the computers stop working when the Millennium arrived?\u00a0 The hospital, like the rest of the country was on red alert and all sorts of emergency plans were being prepared.\u00a0\u00a0 But that hogmanay morning all that was forgotten as people admired the wonderful dawn.\u00a0 and of course the so called Millennium Bug was a damp squib – nothing happened!<\/p>\n

\""Millennium<\/a>
“Millennium Dawn” – Sunrise sky from Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, 31 December 1999. If you look closely you will see the Beechgrove Church spire again.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Since I am thinking about skies, just a few more pictures of Cruden country skies.\u00a0 We are so lucky having such a variety in our skies, from the fluffy cumulus clouds of summer to the streaks of sunlight breaking through the grey.<\/p>\n

\"Looking<\/a>
Looking towards Cruden Bay from Gallows Hill.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Summer<\/a>
Summer evening sky at Cruden Bay. August 2012<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Sun<\/a>
Sun breaks through the clouds. Looking over the Longhaven Cliffs, November 2013<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Dramatic<\/a>
Dramatic clouds over the Hatton field. March 2912<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And just one last sky, a little further away again.\u00a0 On the shores of the Cromarty Firth, a couple of years ago on a winter walk with the dog.\u00a0 You can see the lights of Invergordon across the water.\u00a0\u00a0 Again a picture captured by the mobile phone.\u00a0\u00a0 What did we do before they were invented?<\/p>\n

\"Winter<\/a>
Winter evening looking across the Cromarty Firth to Invergordon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Friday I experienced one of those wonderful winter skies.\u00a0 The sun had just gone down and I was driving back to Hatton from Peterhead.\u00a0 The sky was on fire, the texture of the clouds picked out in reds and orange.\u00a0\u00a0 It was one of those days when you just had to stop the car…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crudencountry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1298,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions\/1298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.couttsweb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}