Blinded by the light

Last night, around sunset I shot this photo. The setting sun was low over the main road that runs through our village. The intense yellow light was really blinding. 

The evening sky was spectacular. Several shades of blue intermingling with lace-like clouds and dissolving plane tracks. The photo doesn't do it justice. I wonder what it would look like in an open field, without the buildings blocking the view.

Maybe I should have cropped it differently? Like this ...

Or this ...

But then you would have missed the patch of blue ...

I was glad not to be in my car driving into the sunset. I noticed that most of the cars driving up to road were slowing down at a point where they usually start picking up speed.

Today is sunny and warm. Our weatherman Frank thinks that we will break an all-time temperature record. Never before temperatures up to 20°C have been recorded on All Saints' Day, November 1st. I remember the 60-ties and 70-ties, going to the cemetery with my cousins to visit the tombs of our grandparents, in freezing cold temperatures. We wore heavy winter coats, boots, bonnets, scarves and gloves ... and yet, we still felt cold. 

The best part was coming back home where my mother and her brother where baking pancakes for us youngsters. The aromas coming from the small kitchen in the tiny flat where my parents and I lived in those days, was utterly delicious. The six of us, my five cousins and myself squeezed around the small dining room table to gobble down the piles of pancakes that miraculously appeared from the kitchen ... Today there won't be pancakes. I think we'll have ice cream instead!