I didn’t post yesterday, initially the whole purpose of posting these ramblings was to illustrate something I’d done or seen during the day and photographed as a result, however, yesterday just didn’t appeal during the day. I did plan to get out but I knew it would be late, hopefully late enough to capture what there might be in the way of a sunset but too late to sit, edit photo’s and concoct something worth reading ( if any of this is worth reading ). Most people would have gone to bed before I’d managed to get anything off the keyboard and onto this platform. So, today, you may get a double helping, ‘ Oh! How lucky’ I can hear you saying right now! yesterday was another of those long, hot, sultry days. I’d started fairly early and popped an elderly fisherman out to the local carp lakes which often generate a photo or two but by the time I’d got out there yesterday it seemed that the best had already gone, it was already far too hot and far too bright, that seemed to be the order of the day. The only bonus was that there were signs of a little more cloud forming, I was hopeful that the day wouldn’t burn it off before the sun dipped and coloured those clouds at the end of the day. Frustrating though when you’re waiting and watching, the day was an endless stretch, a very long, endless stretch as, at this time of year, the sun hangs in the sky until quite late at night. As it was I did manage to get out, though it was gone 8pm before I set out, the light was dimming, there was some cloud high in the sky and the heat had gone out of the day as I wandered down to the river. An hour on the river bank and the ridge above was probably, if not definitely, the best hour of the day, watching the day close, listening to lambs bleating and pheasants calling across the meadows in the dusk as the sun set in the west and the darkness fell more than made up for the long wait.

Today’s been a strange day. A day for doing ‘the necessary’, things that have to be done for the orderly, straightforward, comfortable lives we all look forward to. The weekly food shop, washing up, sorting bins, all the mundane things that need attending to just to keep the proverbial wheel on. Thank goodness I don’t have to add ‘work’ to the list anymore, though perhaps I’ve just swapped one set of necessary actions for another, slightly different one. That said, nowadays, in the main, I can pick and choose which tasks I do and which I’ll leave until tomorrow….or the day after that! There is an implied air of freedom attached to being retired, it’s not always the case, but in general there’s no-one dictating the pace of life other than oneself. Other than a couple of hours on a Monday morning and the odd prearranged meeting I come and go as I please, do what I want when I want, mix with and give my time to those who I value and who value me and avoid others like the plague. Retirement isn’t always ‘Racy in Red’ neither is it, as Henry Ford said ‘ Any colour you like as long as it’s black’, it’s a vast multi-coloured rainbow of things to be enjoyed at every opportunity.

Something that’s been well and truly shattered today, wherever we’ve been. The usual serenity of our favourite coffee haunt in the town was disturbed by a raucous foursome dressed in day-glo orange, one of whom regaled his colleagues with a social media video and soundtrack at a decibel level requiring the use of ear defenders on the grounds of Health and Safety. He should definitely have come with a health warning, he was certainly injurious to my equilibrium and certainly took the edge off my morning cuppa. Why on earth a fully grown, day-glo clad, man should wish to regale the entire cafe with the contents of his mobile phone heaven only knows but he did. There are moments when I despair of my fellow man/woman, there are moments where animals are distinctly favourable. Returning home hasn’t helped matters, the neighbours are having their hedge trimmed, though fortunately not by the day-glo four, and in all fairness they did warn us that there would be some noise. They have a very long length of hedge of a very dense configuration and their contractor has the chipper from hell. To say that my ears are ringing is an understatement, though at the moment there has been a temporary halt in proceedings, either they’ve gone for lunch or the dense hedge has proved terminal to the chipper from hell. My fingers are very firmly crossed for the latter! This afternoon I shall make it my mission in life to find the most secluded spot on the riverbank that I can find, just to sit and listen to the breeze in the treetops, the birds singing in the meadow and watch cotton wool clouds scud across the wide blue sky.

” collector definition: 1. someone who collects objects because they are beautiful, valuable, or interesting:  ”

Following on from the weekend’s visit to the car show I got to thinking about those ” enthusiasts who collect”, I’ve known, and know, one or two and I have to say I admire them greatly. I have never been able to commit to ” collecting ” anything in my life, I have never been blessed or graced with the single mindedness required to pursue and amass a collection of anything save a few meagre LP records and even less ” singles”. I am not a ” collector”. As I said earlier, collecting requires a certain single mindedness and. often, deep pockets, as a youth, when I should have begun any worthwhile collection I neither had the conviction or the wherewithal. While several of my contemporaries were investing firstly their pocket money and then their wages into collectibles I was happily frittering away my new found wealth, such that it was, indulging in the freedoms that ready cash brings, sampling as many and varied experiences as my 40 hour working week’s wages would allow me. While others committed to ” an artist” or ” a genre” I was happy to dip in and out and then move on to the next thing, flitting from one thing to another much as a butterfly moves between flowers, ” no staying power”, ” lacks motivation”, reads very much like my school reports of the day. On reflection perhaps, the only thing I have successfully collected ( in my own mind ) would be images, captured on film and, subsequently with the passage of time, digitally, moments in time reflecting people, places and events. Fleeting moments of a life reasonably well lived to date, a window into the soul of the photographer whose fads, fancies and passions were captured in the blink of an eye, perhaps recorded for posterity at a shutter speed of 1/125th of a second at F8, ISO 200. Perhaps I am a collector after all.

This morning, at the suggestion of a friend, we attended a classic and custom car event on The Quay at Christchurch, although, given my proclivity to procrastination I almost talked myself out of going. I was glad that common sense prevailed over the arguments regarding packed venues on the coast in summer, lack of parking, overpriced facilities, etc, etc because the event was a veritable blast! I love a good classic or custom car, not from the engineering prospective but from the nostalgia angle, classics nowadays are those cars that I grew up with, unlike vintage, which, although fascinating, are just a little too far back in motoring history to have any significance on a personal basis. Classic’s are those cars that parents, relations, older siblings and eventually ourselves owned at some stage or another, or dreamt of owning given that motoring has never really been cheap. Today’s event was full of such exotica, a regular trip down memory lane. The colours, trims, wheels, even the smell of some of the interiors, all taking one’s memory back to places and people, many of whom are still with us but, sadly, some of whom are long gone. The first car I ever had, the second, the third and possibly the fourth are all now classed as classics, from the humble Mini upwards to a Rolls Royce, though I hasten to add that neither my parents or any of my relatives owned a Rolls Royce, that was a little out of our pockets and our social standing. In addition to the Classics was a healthy smattering of Customs and a generous helping of Americana, glorious, gargantuan beasts, all candy and chrome, whitewalls and fins, products of the late 50’s and 60’s influenced by the space race and America’s aspirations to set foot on the moon. I don’t think I could afford to put the petrol in one let alone afford the running costs that must be associated with keeping such great leviathans on the road and in tip top condition as these appeared to be. I’m just grateful that there are people out there who make it their mission in life to preserve a little bit of my youth for me to enjoy on an ad-hoc basis. A thoroughly good day was had by all I hope, I know I certainly did.

I wish! For the third day running the hot sun, delightful as it is, has made it’s presence very clearly felt. So much so that today not even the river could tempt me. A Saturday morning wander into town and a couple of cups of coffee early on only confirmed what the weatherman had forecast, it was going to be a hot one, and the best place to be would be at home in the cool. The downside is that, in order to be a little creative, I had to think outside the box, a quick wander round the garden revealed one or two small blooms and a seed head which were then plunged into cold water and thrown into the freezer for an hour or so. Two of the blooms were a dismal failure and the seed head only retained a fragment of ice but it proved sufficient enough to provide a glimmer of hope and a photograph or two. So, todays offering is ‘ Love-in -A Mist ‘ either ‘Ice Cold’ or, like a great many of us, ‘ Perspiring ‘ slightly. They say the forecast for tomorrow is slightly cooler….thank goodness.

This weather’s only fit for flowers and insects, and even the flowers are having a hard time of it. Two successive days of very warm weather and constant sunshine are taking their toll on things, well, certainly on me. That said, I still couldn’t leave well alone and again this afternoon I wandered off in search of inspiration down along the riverbank, mainly because I felt I’d be guaranteed a cooling breeze if nothing else. I wasn’t wrong, the quality of the breeze was second to none thank goodness and the flora and fauna offered me some artistic opportunity for my endeavours. Armed with a mid range lens I’d hoped to capture some more shots of the Demoiselles down on the riverbank, there were some but not the numbers I’d hoped for and those that were about stayed irritatingly just that bit too far out of range to capture anything of real note. I sat on the bank with the slow old river almost flat calm and mirror like, watching the damselflies flitting here and there, interspersed with the odd dazzling flash of blue as one or two dragonflies almost as big as small sparrows raced up and down, swooping low over the water, revelling in the warm, sunny weather. I wandered on and out into the meadow between the main channel of the river and the run off, following the path trod by others through the often chest high grasses disturbing painted lady butterflies at every other footfall, no-one else in sight or sound, only the breeze and the birdsong for company, the leaves on trees along the riverbank rustling noisily in the wind. I came across a small stand of thistles in flower, their purple heads bleached pink in the strong sunlight, beset by a good number of butterflies vying for nectar and I stopped to see if I could capture some of the action. Squat down in the dry grass, out of the breeze, intent on focusing on the flowering thistles and fluttering butterflies I soon became all too aware of the heat being generated by the relentless sun, thank heavens for a liberal wash of suncream applied before setting out, being prepared isn’t the sole province of boy scouts I can tell you.

Or so it seems. I know I shouldn’t complain, especially after the recent poor weather, but today’s incredibly bright sunshine and impending afternoon heat is a pain in the proverbial bottom. I’ve never coped particularly well with the heat, the shade is far more preferable I find, though it seems churlish to moan and groan about the weather it’s an entirely British phenomenon so they say. Whilst I’m no great fan of the scorching sun and bright skies it’s also fair to say that I don’t enjoy the incessant rain we’ve seemed to endure either,there’s really no pleasing some folk is there? It’s at times like these that I really miss a little cloud cover to provide some interest as well as a welcome relief, however, I have ventured out, what is it that they say ‘mad dog’s and Englishmen’? All I can say is that I’m glad to be back in now, on the one hand the weather’s too nice to confine yourself to home and on the other it’s so warm that I now feel like a wrung out rag, thank heavens for the breeze along the riverbank.

Believe me , I didn’t come up on the down train, despite what others might say. Another colloquial saying from my childhood, I’m not sure whether or not folk use it down here. Several others spring to mind, some more apt in print than others, particularly in todays sensitively ‘correct’ society, but in general terms roughly translated as I may not be the sharpest knife in the box but I’m nobody’s fool. There are any number of these old adages ascribed by our Victorian, and sometimes earlier, forbearers which still have, and often, carry resonance today. They are an antiquated observation on the human psyche and humanity itself it seems. Not that the title and opening lines of today’s musings bear any great relevance to today’s photo, it merely provides a link to the illustration. I’ve never graced the inside of a railway signalman’s signal box before this last weekend but had the opportunity at the local steam preservation society’s open day. I thought I had an impression, and understanding, of pressure at work, however, here was a world set aside. The province of one mere mortal whose skills and knowledge quite literally kept the wheels on. No-one to turn to if things got sticky, sometimes stuck out in the middle of nowhere at all times of day and night and in all weathers and conditions, undoubtedly blissful on warm, summers days and and an absolute hellhole on a dark, stormy winters night with a gale blowing. Mind, once you’d mastered the mechanics I’ve no doubt you could get a good few books read, you’d certainly have to enjoy your own company. Nice to see that he had his priorities right though, that bright , shiny kettle had obviously seen some serious action in it’s lifetime. After all, keep calm and drink tea is another adage that bears weight and resonance, at least with me.

The alarm went off at 06:00 this morning, no chance of a lie in, up and away was the order of the day as one family member had an appointment at the hospital for 08:00. As if to compound the misery of the early morning alarm the weather contrived to add it’s ten pence worth by lashing it down with rain as well….almost all the way to Dorchester. No great views over open, expansive farmland under immense, rolling skies, nothing but grey, hill fog and then more grey, how delightful. Four hours later and on the return journey the rain had stopped and things had begun to dry out, hope at last, maybe even a little sunshine this afternoon might be on the horizon. Sadly it wasn’t to be, despite the temperature the sun steadfastly refused to show it’s face, instead the cloud cover held the heat and the humidity was rather on the crushing side. A walk through the cattle in the upper meadows and down to the mill at Fiddleford and The Lavender Project left me feeling somewhat like a wrung out towel, damp and wrinkly, and no great effort expended either. Several photo’s of the mill pond, very green and overgrown, later I wandered onto the field at the Lavender Project only to find that, sadly, there was no lavender for whatever reason, such a shame as last years display was a sight to behold. Still, all was not lost, I wandered on a little further and was treated to the sight of a young squirrel treading tentatively across the concrete apron of a ripening cornfield at a spot I’d stood and photographed a month ago. The grain on the stalk at that time was knee high and green but today it had risen to waist high and was beginning to turn colour under the dark and moody sky. A little further on I stood on the river bridge where the old railway track bed crosses the river Stour and exchanged pleasantries with an angler while watching the Demoiselles, Damsel flies and, today, my first sightings of the Dragon Flies cruising low over the water and the lily pads. Still the clouds threatened and the humidity made what wind there was along the river meadows nothing more than a warm breeze, certainly no relief from the heat of the afternoon. Returning to the high meadow it appeared that the temperature was even to much for the milking herd, where they had been strung out contentedly chewing the cud as I set out on my wandering they were now all lay down, heavy, doe eyed in all their bovine nonchalance, lazily blinking and batting away an incessant army of flies with their tails whilst still chewing the cud. I stood and watched a buzzard rise from the tree line, it circled lazily, flapping large wings and gaining height, circling and searching for enough height to engage a thermal and once there it rose, continuing to circle, each circuit taking it higher but no effort expended, no flapping of wings just the trimming of feathers as it cruised ever higher. I watched until I couldn’t see it anymore as it passed over the tree lined horizon of Piddles Wood before turning back along the path for home.