A Layering Take, Elefant Fruit and All That Jazz

We were up and out early for a run this morning followed by a healthy breakfast of fruit, honey, yoghurt and chopped hazlenuts which was followed, after a suitable period of recuperation, by a quick drink at The Wateringbury before heading back into town for an attempt at some street shots.
Not long after we arrived we were walking down one of the main shopping streets when we could hear the sound of a band playing and came across the scene you can see in my first extra - they're a jazz, americana, blues and swing band called the Jive Aces and they were thoroughly entertaining passing shoppers in the town's Jubilee Square in support of an anti-drugs charity. It was so great to be able to hear some live music being played and we stopped to listen, tap our feet along and add to the well deserved applause at the end of couple of numbers before heading off in the search of some more images.
My main shot is an attempt at layering - placing people, objects, street furniture and reflections in different planes of your image to create interest - inspired by watching online tutorials (a special nod to the advice of photographer Ivan Chow) and a beautiful book of the photographs of Harry Gruyaert called Between Worlds, that I was very lucky to receive as a Christmas present. My image is not anywhere near that level but I enjoyed experimenting and I just liked all the elements including the repeated colours - blues, reds, greens and oranges, the pedestrians in the background (one of whom is my brother) and even the guy in the orange beanie hat in the foreground!
My second extra was taken outside a premises calling itself the Kent International Food Centre and I was just struck by how the colours of the boxes of produce, including the titular 'elefant' fruit, were accentuated by a glorious shaft of late afternoon sun.

Today's favourite story had to be from watching an episode of Monty Don's British Gardens.
Monty visited Lamport Hall & Gardens in Northamptonshire which in the 19th Century was owned by Sir Charles Isham - a Victorian landowner, gardener, vegetarian, spiritualist and believer that gnomes were real.
He begun work in 1847 building a 24 foot high, 90 foot long and 47 foot wide rockery in the grounds which by 1874 he had decided to populate with what is believed to be the very first gnomes (imported from Germany) in the UK. .Scores of them were depicted in various stylised minuscule scenes and he tended to what had become his pride and joy every day for 50 years. 
Upon his death in 1903 his daughters, who had been jealous of the attention he lavished on his rockery and its miniature residents, invited their friends over to take pot shots at them and there was a gnome massacre.
It was only many years later when the rockery had fallen into disrepair and decrepitude, before restoration began, that one lone survivor was found lodged in a crevice.
The grumpy garden fellow is now on display in the Hall and it would appear Sir Charles had the last laugh as he is now considered to be the oldest gnome in the world and valued at £2 million!