stop me and buy one

I had a large order of greetings cards to drop off at Harvest Wholefoods in Bath, and while I was at it I thought I'd do a stop-me-and-buy-one with the calendars as I went along.

Canal towpath trips always take ages, because you're always meeting friends. I also bumped some nice folk from Devon who'd moored up on the Widcombe flight in Bath, who'd recently bought few of my things online, and it was nice to meet them in real life too.

And here's Sebastien and Louise above the top lock at Widcombe, with their new book of canal life in photographs, 'An Uneasy Paradise'. I was uneasy in town all right; it was thronging with people, shopping like there's no tomorrow. So I did my essential drop, and scarpered home

 

some weird tribal shit in Conkwell woods, where you're always being WATCHED

Billy rocks the contre-jour look at Diggers

winter flocks in Pewsey Vale

Over to Devizles to drop off more calendars at the bookshop. Then along the Vale of Pewsey to the Barge inn at Honeystreet, to deliver canal maps and see Peter on Grey Hare, and Weasel, his newly adopted dog. 

There was a chill mist hanging on the Downs, and where it thinned the quality of the light was really quite something. But, like a starling flock, it's best just experienced. So I failed to capture it on camera.

We did trudge around a big muddy field where some extremely photogenic sunflowers were growing back in the summer, trying to get dramatic views of the starlings who were fossicking in the stubble. But they refused to perform, the dark rogues.

There were also redwings and fieldfares, stripping the hawthorns on the track to the All Cannings long barrow, built not by druids but by Mrs Beynon's Billy.

this is a redwing. Coming over here, taking our berries...

all along the hedge are redwings and fieldfares

the starlings reluctantly move along as I approach

the melancholy remnants of the sunflower crop