Parks and Balloons

Richard Thompson last night was amazing - as ever. What a treat it is to see a performer who is a band in his own right - great composer, singer and astonishing guitarist. We've seen him in several different guises and he never fails to delight and astonish!


Today realised that it's getting to be a habit, waking up to a warm, bright morning. Some more cloud about today - still in the high 20sºC, so most pleasant.

After breakfast, we took ourselves out of the house for a change of scenery. Popped by Larkhall Garage and saw this wonderful old Morris Cowley.

I loved the temperature gauge on top of the radiator - you'd need quite good eyesight to read it!

We went down to Alice Park with Bella.

Had coffee and took advantage of their free WiFi for an hour or two and talked about our plans for the autumn.  These are almost finalised, so will share them with you once they are! In the meantime, we are definitely going down to Devon for a five day break in early August, and meeting up with my brother and sister-in-law near Oswestry for some camping in mid-August, so doing our best to stop the moss gathering…

After Alice Park, we swung by Morrisons to pick up some supplies.  Bella and I stayed in the shady part of the car park while Su lingered near the chiller cabinets inside.

Then it was a quick dash up Snow Hill (the shortest way home, as long as nobody is coming the other way!).

Our geranium is doing very well in the sunshine.

One of Bella's many found spherical objects.  She really like this one because it is ultra-bouncy.

Not content with this, it was time to take the ex-lawn turf to the tip. This time I went to the one in Bath, which is just across the river from the old gasometer.

This site boasts 74% recycling.

Later on, we took Bella down to Victoria Park for a later walk and to meet up our neighbours. They had a gift of a balloon flight 15 months ago, but the vagaries of the weather have meant their rescheduled flights kept on being postponed. Today was their lucky day - dry, light winds and warm! This wasn't their balloon - I love that people walk around inside them when they are being inflated with cold air blowers (before hot air is introduced to give them some lift).

This was our neighbours' balloon at the start of its inflationary process.

 Nearly there - flame on!

Upright and warming up.

 All aboard!

 We have lift off!

Up, up and away!

They had the luck(?) to be in a balloon advertising lingerie, with a picture of a semi-naked woman right across it.

This was the sky they took off into - a lovely evening. We saw them high in the sky at the back of our house when we came back home - waved up at them but don't know if they saw us. We'll find out when we see them next.

This day a year ago, I was at my last official function as a full-time member of staff at UWE - the first ever summer graduation ceremony. I had drunk more than one glass of fizzy pop by the time a colleague took this photo of me in my academic garb for the last time.