Through the Long Grass

It's not often I upload a shot largely straight out of the camera, and it's a shot I might often choose not to use at all, but I found it oddly attractive.

You almost certainly need to go large.

It's been a most relaxing day. A gentle stroll to the local nature reserve, which was delightful but void really of anything of photographic interest. I think the strange weather has disrupted butterfly, damsel and dragonfly hatching, although I did see a couple at a distance.

The rest of the day has been sat by the pond, asserting beer o'clock. My back is feeling a little better today, and with luck and a lack of chores it might be on the mend. At one point I drifted into the front garden and took this looking through the long grasses into the forgetmenots under the apple tree.

A bug's eye view, perhaps. A June bug...

Some of you will remember. It's thirty six years since the infamous "Battle of the Beanfield". I wasn't there, by reason of being at work, but I was in the area and was caught up in the traffic on the periphery of the operation. Perhaps this was when I lost faith in the media, because of the insane rhetoric that didn't match reality.

The police have never been restored to the civil peacekeeping force they were before. Trained by the military and still on a high from the Battle of Orgreave just a year before, Thatcher's police force ended the free festival circuit with extreme prejudice, and the media sat back and wrote about filthy hippies and scroungers.

I only mention this because younger people now have no idea - or a highly nuanced one - that this even took place. But it did - I have friends who were there who still shudder at the memories. To know more, try this link. Nowadays we expect corruption, obfuscation and secrecy... then it was still relatively shocking.