Peacock

Having worked myself to a standstill yesterday, I'd expected to be able to sit in the garden today in the promised warm sunshine, sipping an Aperol spritz and admiring my handiwork. Sadly it turned out to be overcast for much of the day, and though it was reasonably warm there was a fairly fierce wind blowing through the trench, which discouraged loafing about.

My ricked shoulder improved quite a bit overnight, but my back was still protesting about the abuse to which I subjected it yesterday, so gardening was also off the agenda, and in the end I frittered away much of the day doing very little of any substance. The highlight was definitely our now weekly Zoom meet-up with L, H and G, during which we all managed to produce at least some shareworthy news, and a new film was selected for Lockdown Family Film Club. Apart from that some reading was done, and some fighting with the Ocado on line ordering system to book a couple of grocery deliveries; some brain-teasing puzzles with R, a probably unhealthy amount of time perusing the socials, a brisk double circuit of the village, and quite a bit of meandering round the garden with the camera. It's not a lot to show for fifteen hours of my life, but apparently I'm a hero for not going out and having a barbecue on the beach, so that's nice.

This image wasn't, I confess, taken in the garden: the tree is growing on the verge opposite our house, and when I spotted a couple of Peacocks having a butterfly battle over there I grabbed the nearest camera and nipped across. By the time I'd stalked this specimen to a momentary standstill on the blossom several people had walked past, but I think we all managed to keep an appropriate distance apart. I was certainly more than two metres from the Peacock, which is why this is so heavily cropped - with hindsight I wish I'd taken the long lens instead of the macro.