Another very pleasant day to round off the weekend. We should all aspire to the level of relaxation evident in these gulls, even if the ‘lake’ they are on is an old gravel pit, or something (now a nature reserve in Heysham, Lancashire).
And so, after two days of photographing monuments — and, y’know, doing a bit of work — I head home again. My colleague and I were wondering how these pigeons got into the Sheremetyevo airport buildings, but maybe they don’t even bother leaving; I should imagine there is more than enough here to feed and shelter them, rather like that Tom Hanks character in The Terminal. Warmer than a Moscow winter, anyway.
This mallard and I were both watching the world go by, above the Hebden Water on this Sunday afternoon…. the first real bite of autumn, I think. Wonder what he thinks about it all.
Strimming the long grass on the allotment today I think I inadvertently took out this spider’s web: the remnants of it are visible to the left. It then had to put up with me sticking my camera in its personal space immediately afterward. I’m sure it’ll get over the difficulties; spiders have been on this planet a lot longer than us, and I’m sure will outlive us, too.
The six years I’ve been doing this blog have overlapped with the eight years I’ve been regularly going to the Lake District to get my walking fix. It’s been long enough for locations to recur, as I intend to cover the whole place twice. Back in October 2011, quite early on in this blog (day 64), the cover star was a sheep on the summit of Rannerdale Knotts, a small but perfectly-formed peak near Buttermere. I returned there today, and the local sheep-life continued to seem rather chilled out and happy with their lot in life. So let’s picture them again. (Rannerdale Knotts is the green stuff we’re all standing on at this point — the dark mass in the background is Grasmoor.)
There haven’t been many animals on here lately so let’s rectify that. If anyone living toward the top of Highfield Crescent was getting any reception problems with their satellite signal this afternoon, here’s why.
Our leeks in the garden have attained considerable girth. What we did this year that has proved so successful I have no idea, they usually grow but have never been particularly big in the past. I’m not complaining though…
Ah yes, some good old Impatiens glandulifera, a.k.a. Himalayan balsam, our friendly local invasive weed which has taken over entire swathes of northern England; if you see this bastard growing anywhere near you, you should kill it — though apparently ripping it up just makes things worse, which is helpful. So don’t ask me how, maybe nobody knows which is why, soon, it will have taken over the entire island and I guess we’re just going to have to learn to eat it.
The cat looks slightly worried, as if the guy is a devious catnapper that has been terrorising Hebden Bridge’s felines for the last few years. Perhaps he’s trying to sneak him in the bag: or the green waste bins are calling ‘feed me a cat…’ (like in American Psycho).
I sympathise. I’m sure we’ve all been there.
Being 42 