Large flight (about 200) of storks or cranes passing over. Large white birds, apparently with black edges to their wings. Flying northward, but probably merely circling around to find a place to settle, as they must be migrants from Europe.
Very fine, clear & chilly. No wind.
Two eggs.
Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 
The weather reports are interesting, too. What might “Very fine, clear & chilly. No wind.” actually mean? As the sun comes up in Marrakech today in 2008, 50F/10C, clear, wind 4 mph from east. That seems about right. GO seems to be writing in the evening, though, with the cranes looking for a place to spend the night.
Not sure if this has been linked to before but this essay seems to be a distillation of his time in Marrakech:
http://www.george-orwell.org/Marrakech/0.html
Zamboge~~
Thank you * 10000
As a fan of Orwell’s sometimes mundane/sometimes cryptic posts to this blog, my entertainment has come from attempting to form logical (objective) mental images of a parallel time zone.
I can’t help but marvel at how that essay shows Orwell doing much the same thing as he examines the inside of Eric Blair’s skull. There is, of course, the contextual difference between George and myself; for one thing, he’s doing it in Real Time. For another, he’s not using his imagination.
Many commentators (myself included) have a prominent question addressed in a paragraph which begins:
:shock:
I have to wonder, why storks, *then* the eggs? In previous posts the eggs were usually the first entry. Could his interest in eggs be, at last, waning?
Perhaps the eggs, given his health, are sometimes the only thing he notices. Not so much the only thing he’s interested in, but the only thing that – on that day – he sees.
I would speculate that George sees the Storks while enjoying morning tea or perhaps on his way to collect the eggs. He jots down what is fresh in his mind and thus the eggs are a side note as it were. Previous posts would indicate pondering the days events and formulating their context.
A flight of white birds
Reminds of those other times:
Migration outward
Wow. The Marrakech essay is just amazing. I wonder how long it took him to summon the energy to write it, or if it just popped out one day, like an egg. Does anyone know when he wrote it?
It is much warmer here, where I am today, than it is over there right now.
George Orwell: ‘Marrakech’
First published: New Writing. — GB, London. — Christmas 1939.
Reprinted:
— ‘Such, Such Were the Joys’. — 1953.
— ‘England Your England and Other Essays’. — 1953.
— ‘A Collection of Essays’. — 1954.
— ‘Collected Essays’. — 1961.
— ‘The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell’. — 1968.
“As the corpse went past the flies left the restaurant table in a cloud
and rushed after it, but they came back a few minutes later.”
Zamboge, thank you.