Ten minutes with two swans at Hope Mill lane

I spent the day preparing the week long exhibition about our Neighbourhood Development Plan in the pop-up shop in the centre of Stroud.  I have more than fifty pictures of the town being used to illustrate the issues and the locations so it was good to see them in the shop window and on the exhibition stands in the shop.  Lots of people walking in the shopping area were stopping to look at the pictures in the windows many of which are views they may never have seen before.

One man came up to me and said he wanted to buy a copy of one of them as I had featured something very personal to him and his wife. So I happily said I would oblige if he offered a donation to the charity of his choice.  This is after all voluntary activity.  However it doesn't help me to pay for the retina computer screen of my Macbook Pro which I managed to damage last night, probably fatally.  I am so annoyed.

I left Camilla at the shop before it closed as I had to pick up Helena from her regular monday afternoon teaching job at a centre a few miles out of town right by the River Frome.  Regular visitors here will be quite used to seeing the swans featured on Mondays as they are always present on a stretch of river in Brimscombe close to her job's location in Ham Mill Lane.  Normally the swans are on the river and come to see anyone standing on the bank and often get out of the water to hustle for food.  But today they were already out and about in the lane, possibly visiting the residents of the small estate there.  When I showed the picture to Helena she said they looked like two gossips waddling down the road, and imagine they would have the local and distinctive Gloucestershire accent.

As I was early I parked by the bridge and spent about ten minutes taking a variety of pictures of the swans.  I have put a small collection of the images in a Flickr gallery here, which might amuse you as much as they did me.