Low and Slow

I heard a plane going over fairly low this afternoon but couldn't see it, so looked it up on my Flightradar app to see what it was.  I wasn't tracking it as such but a little while later I looked at my iPad and realised I'd left the app open and saw the plane had done a loop and was heading back to fly directly over the house.  I quickly grabbed my camera and dashed outside just as it passed, and got this shot.

I looked up the details as it looked quite interesting.  It's one of two ex-FedEx Boeing 727's that were bought by a company called 'Oil Spill Response' to do just that.  They are fitted with tanks of dispersant which can be sprayed onto any oil spills using a specially designed boom on the back of the plane.  If you look carefully, you can see the boom below the engines, painted in red and white stripes.  They seem to be based at Southend Airport and as I'm certainly not aware of any oil spills around here, I can only hope and assume it was just a training flight!

We thoroughly enjoyed the opening ceremony of the Olympics last night from Paris.  There were one or two times when it was a bit slow and a couple of things that didn't work as well as it might have done but overall, I thought it was superb.  The lady who sang 'La Marseillaise' from a rooftop had a wonderful voice and I have to confess to a damp eye when Celine Dion did a perfect rendition of 'L'Hymne à l'amour' that was equal to any I've heard by Édith Piaf.