As Diana Had A Late Shift,

just before lunch,

 we decided on a walk in the park,

 and there was a happening at the mansion,

 stalls were selling different foods.

 not as many as my last visit here,

 but there were still a number of stalls to tempt us,

 some with foods from as far away as Venezuela,

 and a real treat,

 a rock choir, 

 which were really good,

   they belted out a number of popular rock songs,

 nearly everyone in the audience, clapping their hands and singing along, 

and here they are, Diana made this video of some of their performance, after listening to a number of songs we decided on an ice cream and a walk to the lake,

 we both like the ice creams that are soft and come from the onboard ice cream machine, but it was not to be, for the past 2 years or more countless trucks, diggers, JCBs, bulldozers and lorries have been spewing out tens of thousands of gallons of toxic exhaust gases remodelling the park, so one more ice cream van could not surly make a difference? but it did! this poor chap was told by the council he could not run the chiller of his ice cream van, he could only sell what he could keep cool using dry ice, evidently officials on the council were worried for the afternoon that this van, despite being designed to give out minimal exhaust gases, might pollute the park and make it unfit for park users, it always amazes me how there are always 2 sets of rules, the council can run all of their machinery, whilst the park is still in use, but ban this poor guy from making a proper living, your local council working for the small businessman, not,

  so sans ice cream,

 we made our way to the lake,

 there were as you might expect lots of picnickers,

 I took a couple of panoramas, one of the mansion,

 and this one which was a part of the golf course,

 and then a slight detour,

 to see how the garden was coming on,

 the last time we were here all of this was empty of grass and soil, there were just hose pipes being buried to water the grass when there is a summer hose pipe ban,

 it will all look very nice when in a month or so I am guessing it will all be finished,

 seats already in place, so not long now,

 we walked to,

  and then around the lake,

 to have a look at what was happening,

 and it has at least one new resident,

   on this side of the lake the sand slopes gently away,

 making for safe bathing,

 a quick pose,

  I mentioned that the lake has one new guests, 

  well there were three,

  then five of them,

 one seemingly quite tame as she came very close to us looking for some food, next time we will bring some peanuts with us,

   then back to the mansion,

 all of this walking gave me a bit of a thirst,

 so a beer or three it was then,

 the bread shop now getting low on stock,

what a pleasant stroll in the park, after Diana left for work as last night I played with some of my infrared photographs and the new printer,

 and framed some of them, 

to put on the wall over one of the sofas,

which will be my next job, when the neighbours are out, there will be a lot of picture nails going into the wall!

 these are a few of the photographs going up, this one I took in the Philippines using a Nikonos IV-A,

 I used a converted to infrared Lumix GX8, and played with the image in Photoshop,

 a Lumix FZ 300 for the above photograph,

 our other unconverted Lumix GX8,

next for me, a walk to the bus stop to pick Diana up, then home, a quick coffee and we were off to bed.