Golden hour

The Cardiff crew managed to depart the Shire at lunchtime, despite multiple delaying tactics by the Boy Wonder. His word of the day is "alleyway", which he learned this morning when R and I walked over to the Airbnb and collected him to allow his parents to pack in relative peace. "Would you like to go the usual way, by the road?" I asked as we set off back to our house, "or down the secret alleyway?" Naturally the secret alleyway (a narrow cut between two cottages, leading from the pub car park to the green) was the more enticing option, so that's the way we went. 

Later, with everyone at our house grabbing a scratch lunch (bar H, who has gone down with a gastric bug that I'm desperate to believe has nothing at all to do with my cooking), the Boy got bored and fractious, and his father took him off for a walk - only to return twenty minutes later in uproar and disarray, because "IT WAS THE WRONG ALLEYWAY!" "But I only know one alleyway," said G, reasonably. Because, of course, the other one is a secret. So R and I offered a second alleyway walk to retrieve the situation, and by the time we got back with a satisfied child the car was packed and the family was ready to go. All that was then needed was fifteen minutes of negotiation over loo visits, chocolate, and car snacks, and they were gone.

Feeling slightly wrung out, R and I then took ourselves off to Stratford for coffee and a walk. The churchyard birds let me down today, but I managed to catch the last of the golden hour reflections on the river before the sun dipped behind the theatre. I used to be in a camera club with a guy who asserted that no-one has ever taken an interesting photo of a swan - a position from which he never wavered despite multiple attempts by me to prove him wrong. I'm sure he'd curl his lip at this one as well, but mad as those reflections are, I rather like it.