Status-Q

I seem to be doing a lot of this at present. This was sunset over Fenstanton as I was setting out for the Sunday afternoon dog-walk. These days I regularly find myself in a pitch-black wood looking for a pitch-black dog, but it's usually a wood I know well. This, on the other hand, became a longish walk in a pitch-black wood that I'd never visited before.

Seemed quite nice, though. Must go back in daylight sometime and see what it actually looks like.

I was up a bit earlier than usual for a Saturday, but one of the good things about the year drawing on, for a somewhat lazy photographer like me, is that I'm much more likely to be up at sunrise in the winter than I am in the summer! This was a quick iPhone snap while walking Tilly.

It was beautiful at Holkham Beach today. Everyone was having fun...

Really wish I'd been the one in front of, instead of behind, the camera in some of these. I've never ridden in a place like this.

Those having fun included, of course, Tilly...

Click for larger versions.

...may want to install their lavatories elsewhere?

It's an embarrassingly long time since I last visited Cambridge Botanic Gardens. Probably measurable in decades.

And that's a pity, because it's walking distance from my house and, as I discovered again today, it's really a very pleasant spot.

I know, I keep taking photos of it, but, hey...

Pretty clouds today, stretching as far away across East Anglia as I could see.

They're filming the new season of Grantchester in, well, Grantchester, at the moment. I wrote last year about spotting a favourite tree in one of the episodes. Well, it must have been a good location, because they were setting up for filming there again this morning as Tilly & I walked past.

Were I a true paperazzo, of course, I would have had something better than a zoomed iPhone camera with which to take the picture.

More importantly, it would not have been back in my pocket when, a few minutes later, the stars (James Norton and Morven Christie), in full costume and beautifully lit by the early morning sun, smiled their thanks at me as I stepped aside to let their LandRover cross the cattle grid. :-)

Bird Hills, Ann Arbor, Michigan. This unusually-shaped tree changed its appearance completely as I walked around it, but this was my favourite angle. Click for larger image.

Having bought a large number of items on Amazon this week, I felt there was a certain irony about this sign at a bricks-and-mortar store...