England 1, Croatia 2...

Football came home, but only for a shit, a shave and a shower; then it went out again. I watched the game in a splendid little pub in Berwick-on-Tweed. Good beer (Exmoor Gold), good company and a pretty good game too. When England went ahead, just six minutes into the game, I really thought we were going to win. But Croatia came back strongly in the second half, scored two goals... and that was that.

Licensed this shot - a regular seller - of a lorry on the A82 through Glencoe...

Butterfly Hospice...

A charity shop, in Boston, raises money for the Butterfly Hospice Trust. Nobody wants butterflies to suffer needlessly during their last few minutes (or mayflies during their last few seconds), so I was happy to support the work of the trust by buying a DVD, Brief Lives...

Windermere...

Back to Windermere - briefly - to see the doc about my gout (though the pain in my foot stopped, as if by magic, the moment I walked into the surgery). I quickly found we had something in common: a love of birds... and photography. Drove over Kirkstone Pass, stopping to take pix - and have a pint - at the Kirkstone Pass Inn. I'm now parked up in Penrith.

Thornton-le-Dale...

Coming home...

After England beat Sweden yesterday, Ulverston filled up with excited fans singing “Football’s coming come”: quite a sight on a hot summer night.

Rural policing...

Effortless observation...

Krishnamurti on seeing... "So we are asking, as at the beginning, can the mind come to that extraordinary seeing, not from the periphery, from the outside, from the boundary, but come upon it without any seeking? And to come upon it without seeking is the only way to find it. Because in coming upon it unknowingly, there is no effort, no seeking, no experience; and there is the total denial of all the normal practices to come into that center, to that flowering. So the mind is highly sharpened, highly awake, and is no longer dependent upon any experience to keep itself awake.

When one asks oneself, one may ask verbally; for most people, naturally, it must be verbal. And one has to realize that the word is not the thing—like the word “tree,” is not the tree, is not the actual fact. The actual fact is when one touches it, not through the word but when one actually comes into contact with it. Then it is an actuality—which means the word has lost its power to mesmerize people. For example, the word God is so loaded and it has mesmerized people so much that they will accept or deny, and function like a squirrel in a cage! So the word and the symbol must be set aside".

One of the first images I ever uploaded to Alamy - the cobbled street in Haworth - licensed this morning...

Dales campsite...

Had a day in my favourite campsite, trying to edit and upload as many recent pix as possible: 111 in total. My eyes are glazing over. The Dales landscape is parched, with grass turning into hay even before it's cut. Off now for my summer haircut: just one of the many excitements of the nomadic life.

The Leeds & Liverpool Canal at Gargrave...

World Cup...

Watched the England v Columbia match last night in the Albion pub (where else?) in Skipton. A so-so game, but a good result: the first time we’ve ever won a World Cup game on penalties. I like the way the competition is engaging people who wouldn’t normally watch a football match. I overheard two elderly ladies in a charity shop debating the merits of 4-4-2 over a flat back four.

An ice cream van getting a parking ticket in Hebden Bridge...