This morning I dropped Julia at work and, fifty minutes later, was back at home.
In the garden I listened to the faulty strimmer and revealed a basic difference between the sexes, before taking some more flower photos.
Julia has many talents. She could probably, if her ambition lay in that direction, do a better job of running the country than Theresa May. I, on the other hand, have to plan in advance just to get my socks on. However, when called upon to diagnose the problem with the strimmer in the Mencap garden, I was able to spot the problem straight away.
I’m not an expert on strimmers but I could spot that the high-pitched grinding sound was a bad sign.
To be fair, Julia, who is completely deaf to the sound of mechanical agony, doesn’t need to know this as she has me for all that technical stuff.
I, in turn, use a mower shop for repairs as my efforts usually end up with a puzzled look and a tin of leftover bits.
Most of the rest of the journey home involved traffic and queues. One hold up was caused by an ambulance parked across the road as the crew treated a man lying on the road. I took some photos as we waited because I had the camera handy.
I could see his feet moving so I didn’t feel too intrusive. Anyway, there were a lot of people hanging round so I wasn’t the only voyeur. As I drove past, I noted he was wearing a helmet and a bicycle was propped up against a tree. That is the price of reducing traffic and pollution.
I’m happy to report that he seemed quite lively, and hope he wasn’t badly hurt.
There is a question, though, about the ethics of taking pictures of accidents. There’s a long tradition of postcards showing various disasters including train crashes, mining disasters and fires, but does that make it right?
Is the picture journalism, local history or just intrusive?
It took me back 40 years to a Sunday lunchtime (the accident, not the photography) when the driver of a red Austin Maxi overtook me on my Vespa 200 (yes, I had a scooter at one time) and pulled over before passing me properly. Result – me in gutter with the knee injury that still bothers me today.
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It’s amazing what you can pack into less than an hour.