MONO MONDAY - CROWDED

It was quite a gloomy morning, but undeterred, Mr. HCB was out quite early raking and sweeping the leaves in our garden.  Of course, now that the long herbaceous border has been dug over, the leaves show up even more, so he wanted to get them off there.  He did get out the leaf blower, but because the leaves were rather damp, he said it kept getting clogged up, so in the end, resorted to using the besom broom, which must be almost forty years old, as it was left by the people who lived in our house before us, and we moved in 1982!  

In case you are wondering, a besom broom is one made of twigs and tied round a stick - it works exceedingly well!  I would rather have left the shot in colour, but as I haven’t taken part in the MM challenge for a few weeks, decided to turn it black and white.  I realise the theme is “crowded” and as Mr. HCB pointed out to me, the lawn was crowded with leaves!

I had to go out to do some shopping and was surprised to find that it was really cold and windy, so wasn’t out long.  However, when I got back, Mr. HCB was still out there working away and I must admit that the garden did look much better and of course, these will be turned into compost by the Council.

When I walked through the underpass to catch the bus home, I saw our friend, Keith, playing his guitar - his hands looked red raw with the cold, so I asked if he would like a coffee and his eyes lit up.  When I took it back to him, I asked him how he could play his guitar with such cold hands - his response "With difficulty!"  

I was very surprised to see an incident on the bus when I was travelling home - a young lady, who had obviously been to college, got on the bus with two male companions bringing up the rear.  She bought her ticket, then opened the window just above me and handed it to one of the lads outside, who then got on the bus, proffered his ticket to the driver and they went to sit down.  

Several other passengers and I looked at each other and when they got closer to me I said “You do understand that’s stealing, don’t you?”  They just looked at me, sniggered to one another and sat down.  One of the other ladies said that they obviously had no moral conscience - and I said that when we were younger, if we didn’t have the bus fare, we walked.  I guess these days, if you can get away with it and brazen it out, you can do anything - although it doesn’t make it right.  

Today I am grateful for:

1.  Warm clothes and a cosy anorak against the wind
2.  A friendly bus driver
3.  Laura, a lovely lady behind the counter in the Post Office, who was very helpful

P.S.  I did use my Canon camera for this shot!