Avoiding A Baptism Of Ire

Today was the usual food shop followed by our customary pint at The Horseshoes and on the way back home we decided to reactivate our churchyard tour - after all it's been a whole week without an ecclesiastical blip!
This time we stopped off at St John The Baptist in Wateringbury. It's rather ungraciously described on a Kent Churches website as having "an uncompromising exterior of render, 19th Century stonework and a thundering road (which) do not fill the visitor with glee" to which it adds the faintest of praise "However, the church is worthy of a visit and is usually open". Charming!
I found it a very handsome church with the lovely grounds populated by fabulous mature trees which were casting glorious shadows across the churchyard on such a sunny day. It's hardly its fault that it has a busy road in front of it. I felt quite affronted on its behalf over that description so I wanted to capture an image that depicted its attributes. Unfortunately, I was failing quite miserably in my efforts and was starting to get quite annoyed with myself but I quelled my self inflicted ire and just embraced being in what I found such a lovely tranquil space despite the best efforts of that busy road. In fact that proved to be the 'inspiration' for my image - I was looking back towards the church's lychgate when I saw the wonderfully bright yellow blooms with the black and white looking stripes of a half timbered house across the road just as a red van sped past. At the very least it has a diverse colour palette!

It's the footballing hope that kills you - after a creditable 1 - 1 draw with Switzerland a few days ago Scotland became one of the first teams out of the Euros with the heart wrenching concession of a sucker punch 100th minute goal agains Hungary. We'd had a lack of spark for almost the entire game, failed to register a shot on target and had what appeared to be a stonewall penalty turned down. Did we deserve to progress? The garnering of one point across three games answers that question in the negative and the final nail in the coffin of that last second goal almost felt like the perfect downbeat denouement. Despite no lack of effort we just weren't good enough. Gutted! :-((