Songtime

My New Years resolution (or one of them) was to keep a photo diary on Facebook. This isn't to be a case of chasing the light, or particularly arty photos. I am still trying to get photos I can frame, but those take time. This is a more simple aim, to manage to use my brain for something other than work for at least a few minutes. To look and think that there is a world, I am not living in a black box.

Work is the most likely thing to destroy this resolution but, despite a conference in Manchester for the last few days, I am succeeding (and before any friends in Manchester complain I didn't say hello, believe me, we don't get much of a chance to breath at these things, every minute of the day booked up). Hence most of the photos are from my hotel room! Today, driving back I stopped at the Manchester Valley Health Walk. Now, I admit that the main reason for stopping was to see if the little shop there had something I could buy my daughter. "A" and I had a chat a few days ago and it appears that biscuits and sweets from the hotel do not quite do it. Apparently, and a quote, "little girls always like stickers" (oh, I am so dreading the teenage years). Well I couldn't find stickers but I did find a badge and a pencil sharpener. The response to which when i got home was, "no chocolate?" I feel I will never get it right.

Anyway, the point of this blog. I found the Manchester Valley Health Walk a strange place. Incongruous. Standing at one point I had the sound of the motorway behind me and to the right, to my left the hiss of a very angry electricity pylon which sounded as though every volt was trying to escape. And yet, in front of me, bird song, uncountable numbers of birds making joyous noise. A wren flitting over the ice only 5 feet away. It was almost surreal. Nature managing to go on despite humans trying to destroy the landscape. And there was something extremely peaceful about it.