Down upon the River Lee

Just back from a day spent on my friend's barge which he moors in East London. Lovely to spend a few hours in the company of the swan and geese families. On the boat you do feel a bit like a water bird yourself. They flock for crumbs when they see you eating; the parent swans chase the geese family off, and below them in the pecking order hovers the hopeful, hungry coot.

Great weather this summer, but the grass is so parched, all yellow and spikey. In the evening grey rabbits appear on the fringes of the path, then when some young man swaggers out of Tescos they disappear into the undergrowth. Industrial wasteland, pylons striding over fields of weeds, these make me think of the journey into Manchester which I used to do every Saturday to suffer/enjoy my piano lesson with Miss Musgrave and to spend the afternoon drawing with my cello-playing granddad.