November

I visited the site of a prospective design commission this afternoon, a few miles outside Oxford, on the very edge of a village with views across the nearby countryside.  A beautiful site, waiting for a house to be built and the landscape to be developed accordingly.  

A misty day, even by early afternoon the sun had not penetrated the cold fog, and the scene was quiet and enclosed in the unique way that fog alone can manage.  Distant sounds are muffled, yet the dripping of water from nearby branches is undimmed.  Most magical of all, out of the quiet the rhythmic whistle of swan flight - a pair of mute swans approaching unseen in the fog were preceded by the rasp of their wing beats, reaching a crescendo as they passed overhead, their forms softened by the Gaussian blur of the mist.

Paul Ridley Design