You must have been living on Mars, or as a hermit, not to have heard that Queen Elizabeth II passed away last week. Here in the UK we are in a period of official mourning such as most of us have never experienced. Whether you are a fervent monarchist, staunch republican or (like me) somewhere on a scale between those two extremes, it’s hard not to be fascinated by the sense of history that surrounds us right now.
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Although August has been hot, mostly sunny and very dry, I can already sense that summer is closer to its end than its beginning. The lights are going on earlier each evening. The warmth of the sun is tempered by a cooling breeze. And a few showers, and one day of steady rain, have started to re-green the weary grass in our parks.
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June is often a lovely month in England. This year it has brought us a short heatwave (temperatures topping 30 degrees, very unusual so early in the year), and plenty of pleasanter sunny days. But typically for Britain, we started the month with a cool, sometimes wet weekend that coincided with a public holiday for the Platinum Jubilee.
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Anyone who has spent even five minutes exploring my blog will know that I love to travel. The world is full of wonderful places to explore! But I have to admit that there are some pretty wonderful places right on my doorstep too.
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We have had a cooler than average May, although not with many showers until the end of the month. But the flowers are here in abundance! It was time to get out and about with my camera.
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Brick Lane, in London’s East End, was once among the poorest slums in the capital. It takes its name from the 15th century brick and tile production based in this area. Like all poor city districts it became a magnet for various groups of immigrants over the centuries. First Jews, then French Huguenots, then Irish established communities here over the centuries, and later Bangladeshi-Sylheti immigrants settled here and made the street famous for its restaurants.
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April showers bring May flowers. This is supposed to console us on wet April days with the thought of better weather to come. It reminds us that we need the rain to help things grow. But what if it doesn’t rain?
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March has been a quiet month for photography, on the whole. It started slowly as I searched, sometimes in vain, for subjects that inspired me. Then halfway through the month spring started to arrive. Trees burst into blossom, shortly followed by my beloved magnolias.
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When Beatrix Potter adapted Aesop’s fable about the town mouse and the country mouse, in her picture book The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse, she concluded that tastes differ. Some of us seem born to city life, others are happiest in the country. I fall firmly into the first group.
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Keeping up my resolution of taking at least one photo a day was very easy in the first part of February and much less so towards the end of the month. For the first two weeks we were in Costa Rica and I was in travel photography heaven – and overload! When we got home however the weather was cold and I was jet-lagged. It was hard to get motivated to look for images among the familiar scenes of home after the novelties of travelling.
