Flash

Day 7823 of The Cold - but (whisper it) I think I may be winning.

If you never hear from me again, you'll know that your mother was right, and in fact it isn't a good idea to tempt fate.

Anyway. I had an appointment at Stratford Hospital this morning for more blood tests - the third set in a month, this was, on account of me having failed the previous two. If I didn't pass today, I think they get to set fire to my NHS card, and dance around the pyre. R had some errands to do in Stratford as well, so off we zoomed at freezing o'clock, and went our separate ways outside the hospital with a vague plan to rendezvous later at BTP.

In the event I was photographing tufted ducks (seven) in dreadful light off the Bancroft wharf, when the app via which we keep a vague uxorial eye on each other told me that R was arriving and parking in Old Town, and as I was pretty confident he'd be tracking me too, I just stayed put and waited for him to turn up. (I love modern technology.) After coffee and cake we made our way back to the river, where the ducks were fewer and the light no kinder, but just as we were trying to decide whether to walk the longer or shorter route back to the car, a chap approached us and said that a kingfisher had been showing well down at Lucy's Mill Bridge half an hour earlier, so off we strode in that direction.

To no-one's surprise, the kingfisher was no longer showing well, or indeed at all, at Lucy's Mill, though we did find a heron that tried to hide from the camera when it saw me by stepping behind a twig. Bless. And although it seemed likely that we'd lucked out on the kingfisher, R was happy to let me persuade him that if the bird was out hunting, it might be worth our while walking back at least as far as Stratford Lock, where another informant had told me a few weeks ago it can often be seen.

I don't mind admitting that I had no confidence in this mission - I doubt I've seen a kingfisher in Stratford more than ten times in thirty years - but ta-da! First we caught the flash of turquoise and orange as he flew across the weir from one island to another, landing in a hopeless position photography-wise, with a large twig right in front of him (watch and learn, heron); and then he flew across the lock and landed here, on a branch overlooking the spot where the stream that cuts across the recreation ground flows into the river. He's a self-confident little bird, and we were able to get to within just a few metres of him before he took off along the stream, and though we made it round the corner in time to see him make a dive, I didn't manage to get him on camera before he moved on again, this time disappearing completely.

We were both extremely happy and felt very lucky to have met him. And I'm maybe just a tiny bit smug that my prediction as to where we might find him happened to come good.