job's an orange tapered root vegetable

Busy, busy. I went along to a meeting to discuss Bristol's contribution to LGBT History Month next year, to see if there was anything useful I could do, after pointing out the shortcomings in the LGBTHM reading list earlier this year- more an inadvertent omission rather than an active exclusion. So that's one thing. Ideas for other stuff gratefully accepted.

And then to the Harbour. I was hunting cormorants, as I have an idea for a picture involving them. They're often sitting around on pontoons or buoys, wings spread in benediction. But there weren't any today. Though there was a nice crop of poppies on Phoenix Quay.

Heading for St Nicholas Market, I saw a peregrine falcon spiralling up in a thermal, high above the spire of Christ Church. I tried, and failed, to get a good photo of it, by which time it was a tiny dot in the sky. A chap with a stall full of very fresh carrots asked if the photography was a hobby.

"It's more a project," I said.

"Would you like some carrots?" he asked, brandishing a bunch.

"I'm afraid I've already got some at home," I said.

He wordlessly handed me a single carrot anyway. I was charmed. It's not often that sort of thing happens to me. It was very cheerful, the carrot, with its green frondy stuff waving out of my bike pannier.

So I wrote a crap poem. Which can be more fun than writing a good one.

What profits it the peregrine, if, lofting on the summer breeze,
Above the busy Bristol street where veg is sold and people fret,
And farmers proudly hand out carrots fresh from Somerset,
With green fronds on the top... and higher still he goes, so high that he's
Now almost lost in cloud, become a dot?
I've got the carrot; he has not.

eating a pigeon

The local sparrowhawk has been busy. I put a pan of water on the stove because I was making penne al'arrabiata for dinner; then I peeped out of the window to see what was going on, and there it was, already eating its dinner. It was there for over half an hour; after it had eaten all the soft stuff it could get at from this stance, it rolled the pigeon over and resumed its eating. Then it flew heavily to the wall, carrying the remains with it; and after a short while it flew off to the local ash tree to relax, if sparrowhawks relax.

And yesterday I was at Clevedon with Jules, dropping off some books at Sealey's, the excellent bookshop on Hill Road. Then we took a walk around Poets Walk, looking for somewhere to eat our ham and bread roll, while rain storms swept by to the east. It was a dramatic scene.


There was a sound unlike one that I'd heard before; if you put a cat and a bolshy baby into a tumble dryer together and turned it on (don't try this at home, gentle reader) ....it wouldn't sound like that either, but it would have the flavour of it.

I gazed around, and saw that a peregrine falcon had 'bounced' a black-backed gull.

They sailed off to the east, circling each other, the gull looking pretty annoyed and the falcon radiating insouciance. Then the falcon caught an updraft and spiralled swiftly up and away.