The heat is beginning to seep out of the day now, and in response everything slowly stills like the final ripples weakening ripples pushed out by a rock tossed into a pond. The cats doze in the shadows, voices have disappeared from the surrounding streets and the dynamo thrum of traffic gently hums toward a halt. All, that is, except for an upturn in activity at around six o’ clock.
Shift change. Although it only employs around twenty per cent of the workforce it supported in its heyday, the steelworks still carries a workforce of thousands., a number of whom live in these streets. For decades, the blast furnaces have stood over Port Talbot as monolithic pipeworked clefs that call the tune to which the town still dances. Still, it struggles on, the workforce slowly dwindling as another, slightly more ironic, shift gradually takes place around it, the world sliding ever further toward an agenda of sustainability and green eco-awareness.
Change; transition; these words are all around us now as the dog days of summer wag their tail-end. All is gathering in. A crisp white slice of moon dominates the sky above the hills, its thin profile waning, ready for its cycle of renewal. Slightly to its left, the sky is neatly halved by the contrails of a returning passenger plane heading up toward one of the northern airports, fetching the last of the holidaymakers back to our shores.
In a few days America will be marking the end of their summer break with ‘Labor Day’, but there’s nothing quite so definite here, only the slightly tangible. It seems that the Emperor has new clothes – August has been trying on a few cooler dawns and nights just to see what autumn feels like, allowing me, just about, to see my breath at times rather than just feeling and hearing it. Still, the weather will probably revert back to the warmer stuff for a burst of Indian summer over the next few weeks, muddying the waters further still.
Despite the slightly chilly start to the morning the year isn’t quite ready to wind down yet. The calendar says that the equinox – the time when darkness is equal to light again before the scale tips back into shadow – is a few weeks off and so, while there’s still time and half a bottle of wine left, I think we’ll sit awhile longer and watch the last shift in the gears of today.
It began early, with the emergence of the flying ants. First one, then a handful of them began to scurry like little black ellipses, a prelude to what was soon to follow. Before too long they were swarming, the growing heat at the approach of midday coaxing them into full flight, wave after wave, zipping across the gardens, flicking into faces, crawling across book pages and landing in drinks, driving us indoors for a period of respite.
An hour later, I popped my head out into the garden to see whether we could reclaim our spot and was met by a scene that could have been lifted from Hitchcock’s The Birds. The air above the garden, and all the other gardens along our row, was in the process of being neatly sliced into ribbons as swallow after swallow darted through the air, their breath-taking precision turns and swooping curves a wonder to behold as ant after ant was deftly taken on the wing, leaving only a tiny, unoccupied space in the sky where they had been a millisecond before. Above them, even the gulls tried to muscle in on the action, blundering around the sky in slow circles as they snatched and grabbed at what they could while the razor-edge carnage continued below them.
Rachel and I watched on while this continued, through the heat of the day and on toward dusk, where we now sit waiting for – there! And here, above our heads! And again, over there! Here comes the final shift of the day, bang on cue.
The bats, lithe, shadowy and every bit as nimble as the swallows in these tight spaces, are taking over proceedings at the close of day. It seems somehow fitting that the quietness of the evening should be marshalled by them. Lovely little creatures to watch in action, they will keep us entertained and craning our necks, oohing and aaahing at their acrobatics as though at fireworks as the last of the light, and the wine, finally give out.
