Exercise Pictures

Walking around the village, with Ann looking for bees to photograph.  Ronnie and Christine Ward's identical headstones look very smart.  The natural and cut flowers in the churchyard are very bright and cheerful.

Ann's Insects

This is the larger of her two Phasmids, and now has wings.  They were very hard to photograph because they seemed to turn the wrong way every time we moved the bramble perch.  And they resemble leaves!

Ancestor Respect

Sadie went to the churchyard in Toft to clean up the gravestone of her great grandparents John and Edith Grady and to install one of her hedgehogs as a guardian.

Flora Comes to Visit

She brought her half-sister Isla with her, and much fun was had by all.

Pasque Flowers

To Therfield Heath, busier than usual.  The Pasque flowers were out, quite small.  Lots of classic and supercars out, plus big bikes, on a dry sunny day when a car is the best form of social isolation and fun there is.

Paxton Pits

We went to the Pits to be interviewed about being volunteers in the visitor centre.  After that we did some photography.  Not sure whether the raptor was a Sprawk or a Gos.  It was the first time I'd seen cormorants stripping green branches off trees for their nests.  All the birds were carrying branches with fresh blossom on, so it wasn't just one bird.  

Loo Rolls

I bought a whole pack of loo rolls this afternoon.  Whoopee!

Fitzbillies Without the Cakes

After a morning at the Cambridge Botanic Gardens, we visited the Fitzwilliam Museum.   I got all arty the moment I saw the window light.  The Roman head is of Antinous, a lover of the emperor Hadrian, who drowned in Egypt in mysterious circumstances aged about twenty.  Einstein was sculpted in 1933 by Jacob Epstein; Albert was then in an army camp near Cromer as a refugee from Nazi Germany - he and Jacob were the same age.  The second bust is of the actress Oriel Ross (real name Muriel Mary Swinhead) who was one of Epstein's menage of wives, mistresses and camp followers.  Finally there is Stanley Spencer's 1935 self-portrait, looking very like Paul McCartney.  Spencer had resigned from the Royal Academy after a difference of opinion with the Hanging Committee and painted this portrait to assert the fact that he was still an artist, defending himself with his palette (a shield) and his brush (a sword).   He rejoined the R.A. in 1950 and was quickly elected an Academician.