Don’t worry – I haven’t gone all anthropomorphic, and started naming the Black-headed Gulls in Stratford. Amy is the rather low-key name of the storm that battered the UK today – though personally I think that Aella (‘whirlwind’), or maybe Anathema, would have been more appropriate.
R and I were stuck in the Slough of Despond all day, because the storm caused us to cancel a sleepover visit by the Boy Wonder. It turns out that there are calculated risks you might take with your own wellbeing, or even that of your children, that are somehow completely unacceptable when it comes to the welfare of a grandchild, and driving the Best Beloved around in winds gusting to 60mph did not seem like a sensible idea.
So we were on our own, and grumpy, and disinclined to stay responsibly at home when we could be out and about in weather that matched our mood. So we went to Stratford. We’d have felt a bit stupid if a tree had come down on the car, but as it turned out the worst that befell us was not being able to tolerate standing in the street for long enough to get to the top of the BTP queue, and thus winding up having coffee in Costa, where the service was dire and the coffees arrived extra hot, rather than with the extra shot I’d ordered.
Sigh.
Anyway, amid a general dearth of photo opportunities, the Black-headed Gulls compensated by gathering in numbers in the Bancroft Basin to wait out the storm. I could barely hold the lens still against the buffeting it was taking from the wind, but that just added to the challenge, and fun, of trying to capture them as they dropped down onto the waters of the canal.
