abstract, never apologise, balls

I nearly discard this photograph. Then I decide to keep it for its abstract qualities. There is one of those green, plastic garden buckets outside the house. In the recent storm it has filled up with water and collected a number of leaves, which have sunk to the bottom. Specks of vegetation float on the surface of the water, a segment of which catches the light and serves as a mirror, while the remaining segment, in the shade, holds its transparency. But what is this? Beneath the mirror segment, you can see through to the same layer of leaves at the bottom of the bucket, but the mirrored light has robbed them of definition, as though on an over exposed film. Meanwhile, some plants, which lean over the bucket and the sides of the bucket itself, show up in yet another layer of reflection.

You don't like to be jostled. In the supermarket, jostling is part of the game. Urgent men and women, who are often harassed by children, push and shunt trolleys like dodgem cars. But for me, it's elbows in, and attention to trolley skills. With that, comes a tendency to apologise, which can be superfluous, as this morning , when I inadvertently nudge a stationary, unmanned trolley, when reaching for some potatoes. "Sorry," I say. "Sorry." But no one notices and the trolley remains impassive.

In a wet front garden, I see a number of apples fallen to the ground. Covered with a greasy layer of fine rain, they are just the colour and size of cricket balls. You don't often see so many cricket balls together except perhaps at net practice. Then, in another garden, I see no fewer than four footballs, lurking at the edge of a lawn, and the thought occurs to me that it is usually only professionals, who have more than one or two sporting items around at one time. When I played tennis I had, not an armful of rackets such as you see, nowadays, at international tournaments, but only one, which when not in use, was carefully preserved in its press. But those were more frugal times.