Mixed feelings when you have to go to work and all you can see is the trees at the bottom of the garden bendiing over in the wind and grey clouds scudding in off the Irish Sea.
With good tides this week and a force six to seven (according to my salty seadog friends on the shipping forecast this a.m) this is a perfect morning for seawatching.
Break out the grog, get your galoshes on and start talking like a pirate _ they all help in the search for enigmatic wanderers that will be scooting past Formby Point, Heysham and New Brighton today, while I'll be getting my suit on and talking like a grown up in front of a Mac all day.
Roseate tern, that most elegant of birds flew past Formby yesterday amongst the arctic terns that show particularly well there at this time of year.
Arctic skuas were passing too, always the opportunist when it comes to robbing the terns of any food.
We're a little early for the first leach's petrels of the year just yet, but if the NWlies continue you never know...and there's still the chance of a few stormies after the dramatic passage a week or so ago.
Great skuas were further north yesterday, so they could well be lurking in Liverpool bay by high tide today _ don't always expect to see them flying by, sometimes these brutes can be found loafing around on the swell just offshore, waiting for dinner to come flapping by.
Red throated divers, scoters, rb mergs and squadrons of cormorants are likely too, not counting the gulls and waders that'll be passing us on the high tide.
So don't just sit there, dig out your copy of Laver's, check the tide times and get down to the coast, you know you want to.
I am reliably informed that sandblasting is good for the skin, but usually by fellow sea watchers who all have faces like sun dried tomatoes by the time we finish a session.
Pass the moisturiser Tarquin...and don't forget my column in the Liverpool Daily Post every Saturday (I have no shame).
This week we will be discussing the lure of the sea, and lesser black back gulls...
Eyes to the skies everyone, eyes to the skies.
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Saw a couple of magpies on the way to work this morning and got to thinking about the rhyme - so one for sorrow, two for joy, but then???