Blackface

It rained again today, so hard and for so long that my drive over to Chipping Campden tonight, for our penultimate rehearsal before tomorrow's concert, was a nerve-racking affair, as I had to pilot my little roadster through great pools of flood water. I'm not a timid driver, but I phoned R as I was arriving and told him what a torrid journey I'd had - causing caused him such concern that he told me to leave my car parked in Campden overnight, and came over in his four-wheel drive at 9pm to fetch me safely home. To my great embarrassment, although it had rained solidly during the intervening couple of hours, the flooding had largely managed to find a run-off and had subsided to the point of being merely inconvenient, so I was able to follow him back with no difficulty. In the circumstances I felt compelled to spend the rest of the evening apologising, though R made it clear that he didn't mind turning out to make sure I was safe.

This photo was taken at lunch time, as we were coming back from running various errands in Stratford. There had been nothing much there to trouble my shutter count, but as we were turning off the Roman road towards the village, I remembered that there were lambs in one of the nearby fields, and asked R to pull in so I could take a look at them. Of the ones that were within reasonable range of the gateway, this little chap(ess, I think) was by far the cutest, and I loved the over-the-shoulder smoulder she gave me before scampering off to seek safety under Mum's belly. The ewe was horned, with a mottled face and a long shaggy fleece, which I think makes her a Blackface, or one of its cross-breeds - and honesty compels me to add that these are principally bred for meat.