My day in Manchester was OK but I had a greatly extended journey home for reasons that are too ridiculous to report here. But it was nice to come home to a beautiful evening. This is the tree in our allotment garden, which actually I keep wanting to get cut down, but we’ll give it its due credit tonight. So nice to still have light in the sky at this time of night, as well.
There’s a lot of it about… particularly among the ewe population of northern England.
Those who know their ice-cream, know why.
Spring has definitely sprung. These geese — pictured from about 15 feet up — were enjoying it as much as everyone else today. Particularly those of us who are having a week off work (though I’d like to get over the jet lag please).
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.
Being 42 