Breezy

The Boy Wonder took his mother back to Wales straight after breakfast this morning, leaving R and me in our normal conflicted state: traumatised at being deprived of our Best Boy, yet simultaneously relieved that he'd gone. We know by now that there's only one cure for finding yourself in a suddenly Boy-free house, and that's to quickly tidy away all evidence of the small hurricane having passed through it, and then go out for cake. So that's what we did.

The bird count in Stratford was low: there were no Tufted Ducks or Goosanders, and even the Mute Swans were mostly out of the river, grazing on the rec'. The light was also patchy, which is well illustrated by this shot, in which the Black-headed Gull is in shadow but the river around it is throwing back some wildly contrasty reflections. The pink comes from the bricks of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, but I'm not sure about the blue and white - I think probably a passing boat, though I didn't notice one at the time. It was also, as you can see, quite breezy, and the water surface was choppy.

I'm honestly not sure whether I like the image or not, but it is at least a bit different to my usual shtick. For today at least, different feels good enough.