The lamp

This lamp stands at the centre of a small park at the end of our crescent. There are park benches around it - a woman was sitting smoking on one this morning, an unusual enough sight these days to make me realise how rarely I smell cigarette smoke anywhere. For the first 35 years or so of our being here, the lamp standard was painted some nondescript municipal colour - perhaps a faded green? But in a recent(ish) refurbishment, some fanciful soul decided it should be jollier, so now it's black with its ornamental bits picked out in appropriate colours. My extra photo shows a couple of these - a benevolent lion and a swan swimming past some bulrushes. 

In the background to the left is the rear of the Burgh Hall where I was singing on Saturday night, and on the right the new blocks of flats built on the site of what was once St Cuthbert's Church - another place I've sung in my day. When you consider that just behind me as I tool this photo is another large church, of the same denomination, you can see that it was probably necessary that one of them had to go. 

And so to bed, as Samuel Pepys would say - today ended up being quite exhausting because of an adventure involving the descent of an unexpectedly frozen forest path after we'd climbed up a much rougher but entirely ice-free track to get there. We had to clamber cautiously over the edge of the forest, slithering on icy moss and dragged at by trees, to avoid the glassy surface of the path. There was the constant threat of falling into a flooded ditch or crashing down a gully ... enough to say that my thighs are screaming now. 

And you thought there was a thaw? So did I.