From Richmond Hill, 30th January 2011

It had been the first bright clear day for a while, so we'd been out tramping the park enjoying the light and the first bright hint of spring, then watching the sun set from the pub best placed to watch it that I know. Thin high clouds caught the last rays and I was taking photos anyway when a friend pointed this one out to me as it headed oddly westward against the spectacular sky.

The tags caused some musing. Aloft it was, but it was almost certainly not black, although in that light against that sky and from that distance any photon of hue hit a rod not a cone, and a dark silhouette it remained. And sunless or not? The sun had a few minutes before sunk below the spinning world, but that tag is meant for the night, so no. A fine day indeed when those are its major wrangles.

Ledbury Road, 28th January 2011

The first of the year, and a stroke of luck and good timing (although I suppose they all are). The small children toddling off into the distance here brought this balloon, and the older of two dropped it as I approached. As has been the case before, the mother marched on, smaller child in tow, while the dropper looked at the balloon forlorn then back at her departing family, and decided to leave it and trot after them. I was waiting for that.

It was evidently a balloon shape when the child acquired it, its numerous wasp-waists testament to a twisted past. No doubt a professional balloon shaper could forensically identify its former form from those spacings, but I have no such skill, so will never know.