Iris leaves

Bad tempered most of the day because I had to finish off my FT pieces and file them and I didn't get out. I filed a few images too so it will be interesting to see whether they use them.

Bad tempered also because I'm flying tomorrow and I hate flying. I'm not worried about it, it's just the over-arching boredom of it all. I hate queuing and, let's face it, an airport these days is queue city. First you park miles from the terminal, then you queue for a bus. Then you have to queue to join the queues. You're processed as if you're going to prison and when you pop out of security you have to run the gauntlet of expensive shops and walk miles to a holding area and then you have to queue again. And if you're on a maximum cheapo ticket, as I am, you had better get to the end of the queue where you have to run errands for the cabin staff if you want something as precious as a seat.

Finally I'm bad tempered because I had to change my flight details twice, thus contributing another £70 on to the profit side of Easy Jet's balance sheet.

In fact that's not final because I'm bad tempered about my bag that I'm having to stick together with duct tape; and about my thermals which have been mouldering at the bottom of the wash basket since I came back from the last fishing trip. They're there, says Gill, because the central heating isn't fixed yet. I haven't yet been able to make this bewildering leap in reasoning but boats (I'm going sailing) are smelly places so I don't suppose anyone will notice.

I'm flying to Pisa but will not be visiting the leaning tower. Just as well because those cheesy shots are so tempting. I think the plan is to sail around Elba where Napoleon hung out for a while after Moscow and before Waterloo.

There wasn't much time for a blip and it was very nearly some Russian dolls but they can wait off-stage for now since there was just a little bit of sun left in the garden that lent a nice glow to these leaves of a yellow flag iris. Why black and white? I dunno. I think it was the glow and the shapes that did it for me, so decided to concentrate on that.

Now to decide how much camera gear I can take. I'm bound to get nobbled on that too. Might leave the SLR at home.