Monday afternoon - rain and shine

Little bursts of sunshine were interspersed today with little bouts of rain. Most people were out in shirt sleeves. I was the only one out there in a ski jacket. I hate even the threat of being cold!

In spite of assurances to Steve that the graffiti would be removed from the Michael Rizzello sculpture it still hasn't been cleared, which is more than a little irritating - especially in the light of Steve's information that this is part of a territorial dispute between two sets of rival youths! It hardly seems wise to encourage them. No harsh words to Tracy Dickinson (Area Managment and Community Engagement, Public Realm) who is clearly doing her best to resolve the matter, but it is sad that someone somewhere is leaving things to stand as they are.

Going off on a complete tangent, I'd love to see one of Tracy Dickinson's business cards - her title must take up most of the thing. Who thinks these titles up to begin with? I used to have meetings with someone from Orange whose title was simply "Commerscape". Mind, one of my own titles (imposed upon my, not chosen by me) was "Head of Applications, Next Day Development" which is in the same leagues of both obscurity and ink-eating as Tracy's.

Anyway, back to the themes of this blog, I went to have a poke around in the park and the woodland and take some photographs. There isn't much to report.

It is good to see that there is more water in the Downtown Ponds than there was last weekend, thank's to the efforts of Steve and others, but the channel that leads from there towards Redriff Road is completely dry.

Up by the windmill I found, as Les did over the weekend, that there were lots of Meadow Brown and Gatekeeper butterflies, but apart from a loud chorus of grasshoppers and the presence of several magpies there wasn't much else to hear or see.

On Downtown Pond there were a set of moorhens with two very small chicks, and on Globe Pond there were lots of female mallards.

I was followed home by a very friendly black cat, which has no tail. It had no collar and had a patch of matted fur so I let it into the house, fed and watered it and made a set of phone calls to local vets and animal support people - but there were no reports of a missing cat of that description. Local professional wisdom suggested that I should relocate the cat where I first came across it so, as I heard nothing back from the Friends email group, that's what I did - it followed me dutifully back to where I had first encountered it (chased up a tree by a large dog). It may live locally and have wandered off for a bit of an adventure, as cats do. Still, it felt very odd and quite wrong to abandon it (which took some doing, as it wanted to follow me home again). I'll check back on it later.

I was able to collect some blackberries and will be back tomorrow for some more if I get time before going up to town.