Before and after rain

A multi-tasking day. Finally worked out how to security erase the disk on my old Mac Mini and boot it up as a 'fresh' computer with no nasty traces of miketoons lurking within. That took about five hours in total.

Meanwhile… I baked a sourdough pain de campagne and went shopping for flour, beer and apples Oh, the apples! They were nearly today's blip. Spartan, King David - which is such a dark red it's almost black - and Adams's Pearmain.

As soon as the bread was out of the oven, I donned waterproofs and headed out on the marshes for high tide. And wasn't it just. The creek was three times its normal width. Areas where I normally tramp around were under water. Amazingly it was as still as a mill pond.

As well as a couple of little egrets close by, a heron loped on the far side and two kingfishers: the first flew across to the posts on the left of the photo, the second I flushed out of the bank as I lumbered back. I was too awestruck (and too slow) to use the camera. I simply watched as it flew away to the size of a speck.