Sir Nigel Gresley

It was very different to 1997... I didn't bother to stay up all night... the choices yesterday felt less polarised somehow, but I'm glad to see the back of the old regime, and the new has made a pretty start: I did like Starmer's opening speech about service.

in truth Labour didn't so much win the election as the Conservatives lost it, with a fracture along the Blue line that sent sufficient of the electorate off to the Reform "party" to swing the vote to Labour or LibDem. Time will tell how that fracture heals, or if it heals, and that probably depends on how genuinely Labour deal with the country hereon-in.

Anyway, that was then and this is now, and today we thought we'd take a drizzly walk in the woodland at Westonbirt. They were gearing up for the summer festivals and the sound system was making the leaves fall from the trees! We gave up and came home just in time for me to get a text from a villager steam-head to say the Sir Nigel was due in fifteen minutes!

I grabbed the camera, and made it in time. The damp weather meant the steam was decent enough, but it would have been a better shot had I opportunity to stand further back from the track, and better if there had been a full coach rather than just the backstop. But hey, a blip is a blip.