Sunday was one of the best days so far this year. We
had blue skies, mild temperatures and a noticeable lack of wind, rain and cold.
My photographer friend and I decided it was time to take our cameras out for a
bit of a photo session. I’m not sure why but we decided to go to the war
memorial park.
Even though the memorial is in the town and easily accessible, I’ve only visited a couple of times before. The war memorial stands at the top
of a little hill just as you enter the town from where the views of the coastline are spectacular. For the first time I stopped in front
of the memorial and took a good look at it.
I don’t know exactly how many
individual names are there, I didn’t think to work it out at the time; all I could
think of was the apparent abundance of names for such a small town. The entire
population of the town (men women and children) was no more than about 20,000 back
then and the list of dead must have been between around 2000. To me that seemed like a lot of dead men from
one small town. And then I began
thinking how the wars go on. We are frequently told that thanks to the nuclear
deterrent, we have all lived war free since the end of WW2; what a load of
rubbish. People have been killed in conflict somewhere in the world every day
since then. Somewhere in the world, men women and children are being killed in
conflict right now. As I sit here in the comfort and safety of my own home,
writing this, someone else, somewhere else, is dying in a war. And it hasn’t
all happened in far off distant lands where we can pretend it’s nothing to do
with us. Some of the worse conflicts have been right here in Europe, in Bosnia, in Kosovo, in Serbia to name but a few. All I
could think as I stood in front of the memorial with that long list of names was how
bloody pointless it all is. It never ends.
Anyway, I dragged my thoughts away from the
battlefield we wandered away from the memorial. I tried to put these morbid thoughts out of my mind and enjoy the rest of the day.
Spring colour was everywhere, deep
violet crocus, yellow daffodils, and that dusty yellow ochre of the catkins.
The sky was blue and filled with birdsong.
I spotted a chaffinch busy
collecting feathers and twigs for nest building. I managed a couple of shots
but they are poor quality because the bird stayed just out of camera zoom range.
Clever bird, it was teasing me. The next little bird interested me because I
couldn’t identify it. This fat bird sat high up in the tree where its colours
were hard to distinguish making identification virtually impossible.
Then came
one of the biggest Great Tits I’ve ever seen, resplendent and puffing out its
bright yellow chest.
I’m not sure what it is about blackbirds and crows that
fascinate me so much but I really like those big black birds. They have no
fear, unlike the smaller song birds they don’t take off and fly away as soon as
they see you. The blackbirds hold their ground; they stay put, sing even louder
and ignore you. I’m pretty sure they could become quite tame in the right circumstances.
From the memorial park to the pond is about a ten minute walk and that’s the
direction our feet took us. It wasn’t planned, it just happened, we followed
our feet. I had put my camera away by
the time we reached the pond but then I spotted this female mallard in the
shallow water scooping up water and spiting it out. I’m not sure what she was
doing but it was interesting enough for me to get the camera out again.
And to finish, I leave you with this, an owl sat on
top of a pile of open books carved directly from the stump of a tree. This sits
in front of the entrance to the local college. I’m guessing the tree needed to
be felled for some reason, maybe disease, maybe it was in danger of falling, I
don’t know the reason but what ever it was some creative person decided to
invite a woodcarver to weave magic over the stump and this is the result. I
think it’s a very fitting and innovative welcome to the college.
