Smile

Oh what a tough choice of blip picture today!

I went walkabout in Stroud town centre, as I like to do on a sunny summer Saturday morning.

I went there on the canal towpath from close to my home and took a photo of the resident swan, who was in a good mood for a change. I think he/she was expecting me to feed him/her despite the abundance of swan goodies in and around the canel.

I then walked under the railway arches and took a shot of a series of archways disappearing into the distance.

After arriving in town I noticed, to my delight, Cuban flags flying in the forecourt of the town's main public public.

They were adorning a stand belonging to the Cuban Solidarity Campaign. I've seen it before and it always makes me stop in my tracks because of the incongruity of flags for communist Cuba and T-shirts bearing Che Guevara portraits in the middle of a rural English market town.

That's not a political comment, by the way, more a remark on the remarkable eclecticism of Stroud.

Then after taking a photo there and buying a new pair of shoes, I spotted the guy pictured.

Now he really did make me take notice. What a wonderful, happy face - and he was making superb, cheerful reggae music.

'You're not gonna use my picture in a bad way, are you?' he asked, as I dropped a coin into his guitar case.

No, out of all the potential blip pictures, this had to be the one - even though the head of his guitar is frustratingly obscured.

And I'm gonna use it in a good way.