A bloody battle remembered

A £35 million retail and entertainment centre redevelopment which will include a multi-screen cinema complex and six new restaurants as well as additional retail outlets, is now under way in Ipswich behind screens and scaffolding which make it difficult to photograph.

I had an unexpected opportunity to see it yesterday, thanks to a neighbour who kindly escorted me on the bus, and looking for a "different" shot with a real story to tell, the red glow on the breast of this gull outside the site in Arras Square reminded me that the centenary of the bloody Battle of the Somme in World War I ("The Great War") is being marked this year with ceremonies in the UK and France in memory of the 158,000 UK and Commonwealth soldiers who died near Arras, the French town now twinned with Ipswich, many of whose men of The Suffolk Regiment were among the dead.

War and Peace ! -- Not a dove with an olive branch but a pure white gull to remind us of so much blood spilt so that we might survive.