Grandad's anvil...

How about this for a bank of clouds? How magnificent. Just look at that huge anvil shaped cloud on the horizon, an anvil cloud. It’s called an anvil cloud because of its shape, narrow at the bottom and spreading out broadly at the top – just like a blacksmith’s anvil - this one really looks like an anvil, blunt at the back, sharp at the front.

Anvil clouds, which are mostly ice, form in the upper part of thunderstorms. They get their anvil shape from the fact that the rising air in thunderstorms expand and spread out as the air bumps up against the bottom of the stratosphere. You’ll often see streaks of snow falling at the edges of anvil clouds, and a light dusting of snow fell not long after I took this photograph.

And here’s a picture of one of my Grandfather’s anvils that used to sit in the forge at Langton, the small anvil. I can smell that forge now, hot iron, burning charcoal coke, oil, a smell of electricity in the air. I can hear him hammering the red hot iron and the rumble of the bellows like thunder. I can see the red flecks of dulling metal falling onto the dirt floor like hot snow.

I can smell, hear and see the forge but I can’t feel it because it’s gone, except in my head, up in the clouds, where I started from. I wish I could touch that anvil, I wish I could talk to my Grandad.