Coate Water Park (Monday 18th December 2023)

I had to journey to the north of Swindon to take Buzz in for remedial work at the BMW Mini Body Shop. The door mirror part cost £42 but all the labour, paint and obligatory resets brought the bill to ten times that! I have an up to date Grumpy Entitlement license so I can additionally mention my intense dislike of Swindon's Great Western Way, which I had to traverse three times. It would have been four but I was instead diverted by my sat-nav to the Magic Roundabout. To those who don't know it is a satanic circular sequence of several two-way roundabouts, full of motorists unfamiliar with it who don't know what they're doing.
I felt it would be rude not to call in at the nearby Coate Water Park on the journey home. There was little bird life so I made it to the café in record time to order a coffee and a bacon roll, but the whole time there spent waiting I was being plagued by an unrestrained child called Daisy who ran back and forth, shrieking piercingly whilst trying to scare and chase away all the hapless pigeons.
There used to be a resident great white egret on the lake a decade or so ago, before there were many in the country, but it has been many years since I have seen one there. However, when I was almost back at the car I saw one fly into the rushes in a bay I was passing. It stayed obscured and beyond the reach of my 55-300mm lens but for the record I enclose this blurry piece of evidence.

L.
Thursday 21.12.2023 (1335 hr)

Blip #4010 (#3760 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #002
Blips/Extras In 2023 #215/265 + #091/100 Extras
Day #5015 (1197 gaps from 26.3.2010)
Lozarithm's Lozarhythm Of The Day #3150 (#2990 + 160 in archived blips)

Taken with Pentax K-50 (Yellow) and Pentax HD P-DA 55-300 mm F4-5.8 ED WR lens

Coate Water Park series
Herons series

Lozarithm's Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Denny Laine - Say You Don't Mind (1967)
Whilst the Moody Blues reinvented themselves as Knights in white satin after he left, Denny Laine formed the Electric String Band (aka Strings Attached) and continued to write songs, including Say You Don't Mind, written in 1967. The single was not a commercial success but was covered by several others including Colin Blunstone who had a big hit with it four years later.
Denny Laine released Say You Don't Mind as a solo single, with a string arrangement by John Paul Jones (later of Led Zeppelin), but it seems to have The Electric String Band behind him. They were formed in December 1966, initially with himself on vocals and guitar, Michael "Binky" McKenzie on bass, Viv Prince (ex-Pretty Things) on drums, and a cello/violin string quartet of Royal Academy players: cellists Clive Gillinson and Chris Van Campen and Wilhelm Martin and John Stein on violins. Denny Laine recalled “It was exhausting and expensive. Everyone had to be paid and the bit of money I’d saved up ran out eventually. So there I was again – happy but broke!”
There had been a few line-up changes by the time they disbanded a year or so later, in order for him to join Paul McCartney's Wings.
The Electric String Band’s sound inspired Roy Wood to set up the Electric Light Orchestra (the Move covered one of the group’s songs in their live shows).