Tea break

I had my head down working for most of the day, and only managed a brief foray round the garden during a tea break early this afternoon. That was quite productive though, netting a pair of Helophilus pendulus in cop, and (right on cue) a Fork-tailed Flower Bee, as well as this lovely fresh male Marbled White, nectaring on the Verbena bonariensis I planted in the spring. He was quite irritated that I wanted to take his photo, and huffily moved to a nearby patch of red valerian, but I backed off and waited, and in less than a minute he'd returned to his preferred tipple.

The other thing I found a few minutes to do today was to read some of the on line tributes to the pianist Alfred Brendel, who died on Tuesday at the age of 94. For decades he was one of my favourite musicians, and while I'm sorry that he's died I feel privileged to have seen him perform live, and happy that he left such an enormous body of recordings (I already have far too many to list, but I dare say I'll be acquiring more in the near future, as recommended discographies begin to appear). For some reason the Guardian obituary writer seemed to think it was a good idea to keep stressing that Alfred Brendel wasn't the same performer at 70 as he'd been at 50, but there were more generous tributes from BBC News and the FT, and a nice one, including a short film clip from a 2015 interview, by Presto Music.