Every year around this time there will be some new shoots on one south-facing window sill or other, getting ready for the moment when, like good parents, we decide they can be let out into the outside world. Usually, they survive.
Harry is the companion of my friend Claire with whom I lodged last night. She lives in the City of London itself (for non-initiates — the very centre, and certainly the financial centre, of this vast metropolis) and so her cat is a defiantly urban creature, as I hope this shot reflects.
I’d just like to say a big thank you to the duck at this point.
Spring continues to try to struggle through the general atmosphere of chill and damp. Taken by the Stubbing Holme lock on the canal, heavy with water thanks to the snow melt from Thursday’s unexpected fall.
Always nice to have some kind of memento of a good day out. In five and a half years of tramping the fells of the Lake District on a regular basis, I have come across six intact sheep’s skulls including this one from yesterday: but none of the others had horns as spectacular as this one. I think I’ll hang this one from the front door to deter canvassers.
I’ve known various feline flirts in my time but Mathilda is up there with the best of them, and — sat in the same place as last time — she thus becomes only the fourth animal to definitely appear more than once on this blog. How do I know she is called Mathilda? She told me.
On quiet days spent working at home, at least the ducks down by the river in town usually provide a photo opportunity. This one gave it up for the camera but definitely was after something in return, like food, mainly.
Sometimes these photos are planned. When Joe (birthday yesterday) was born the ground was strewn with crocuses (croci?) like these and my mum-in-law predicted the flowers would become a symbol of this event in our lives. She was right. I passed these growing plants in the Sackville Street gardens in Manchester yesterday (home of the Alan Turing statue) but there was no time to get a shot. Repeating the walk to work today though I spent a few minutes there to see what I could do to mark this sign of spring.
Pictured by the canal this afternoon. The one on the right is flexing his/her muscles, or giving its wings a stretch. I don’t know if these are males or females — unlike with mallards it seems rather difficult to tell.
As captured in Leeds’ Meanwood Valley Urban Farm, which is why I could get close enough to this beast, for long enough, to be able to get the shot. But semi-tame animals can still look good, if I had eyelashes like that I’d pull big style.
Being 42 