Holker Hall...

Licensed today: Holker Hall in South Lakeland, one of our less impressive stately homes...

Hovingham...

Top-down in the village of Hovingham yesterday...

Arnside...

Licensed last week: drinking al fresco at the Albion pub in Arnside... before we'd learned about social distancing...

Over by Christmas...

Our political masters may be talking about a “return to normality” by Christmas, but that sounds ominous rather than reassuring (after all, a lot of people thought that World War I would be “over by Christmas”, only to see hostilities drag on, calamitously, for four long years).

Americans, meanwhile, seem to be lurching between denial and fatalism… thereby providing an object lesson in how not to deal with a global pandemic. While I don’t want anyone else to die unnecessarily, I do want Trump to be ousted from the White House, with a Democratic majority so big that even his pre-emptive excuse - “the vote was rigged” - will fall on deaf ears.

Licensed yesterday: turning the hay in South Lakeland...

Woodbridge...

Licensed today: the Shire Hall in Woodbridge, Suffolk...

Packwood House...

Licensed today: Packwood House in Warwickshire...

Latterbarrow...

One of the benefits of carrying a tripod is that you can be your own model (if nobody more photogenic turns up). My camera's self-timer gives me a maximum of twenty seconds to trip the shutter, and take my place in-shot. Of course, I can't run as far in twenty seconds as I used to! This pic, licensed today, is of Latterbarrow, one of the little nature reserves managed by Cumbria Wildlife Trust...