Further To Fly

The first person to see this blip will be viewer number 1001, as my "total views" counter just ticked over into four figures as I posted this. I feel quite pleased, as if I've passed a kind of landmark, even though it's a largely meaningless one. It's all the more sweet given the utter nightmare I've had trying to find blippable material today.

I've heard about long-time blippers hitting "the wall", suddenly losing all inspiration and struggling to find something to post up on here. I've heard about people taking shots of radiators or ketchup bottles in their desperation to blip something, anything, rather than have a gap in their journal. It hasn't quite been that bad with me, but Christ, I've been on a photographic odyssey today.

I began by making the fatal mistake of trusting BBC Weather this afternoon, and embarking on a walk up to Scotforth in what was forecast to be lovely sunshine. I was about halfway there when the heavens opened, and with no other cover around, I had to dart under the nearest tree. I quickly realised how monumentally pointless sheltering under a tree in a rainstorm is. You may as well wear a colander on your head for all the difference it makes. I had to abort the walk with nothing more to show for it than a few snaps of wet leaves and umbrella-wielding passers-by, and returned home looking like I'd been thrown out of the fire exit of a submarine.

A bit dissatisfied with the day's pitiful crop of pictures, I waited till the weather cleared this evening, and decided to head out to Aldcliffe via Weeping Corner. At the corner there was a field of sheep, but the buggers went into a mass-panic at the mere sight of my camera. So I trudged onward, until I found a load of small birds nesting in a hedge on the eastern edge of Aldcliffe. I counted as many as a dozen perched on various branches at one point, and managed to get a few captures. However, using a bog-standard camera, I couldn't get any clear close-ups, which was a bit frustrating after such a great find.

On my way back, I found that the sheep at Weeping Corner had been abruptly replaced by cows. They were a lot more willing to be photographed than the fields previous denizens, and I managed to grab a few black-and-white shots of them, before one large specimen wandered clear of the herd with an odd expression on its face, and proceeded to have an energetic and somewhat explosive bout of diarrhoea. While it is genuinely spectacular to see a cow's rear-end go off like a water-cannon (and the radius of its splatter was positively Olympic), I doubted that I'd win the respect or admiration of my fellow blippers by sharing that magical moment with them in photographic form.

So, returning home with a weary sigh, I went through the day's images, and concluded that this was probably the best of the lot. Four of the nesting birds of Aldcliffe enjoy a bit of peace and quiet, and who can blame them? I daresay there's a lot of hardship ahead of them, and as this is only my twentieth blip, I daresay there's a lot ahead of me. Hopefully my inspiration won't go on holiday too often; like me, it's got a job to do.