'Pied Wagtail in the England team for the First Test after been spotted on social media taking vital wicket'

Misspelt ‘outtakes’. Somehow misspelt ‘know’. This is the work of an idiot. I need a scrapbook for my notions, not a social media.

truthfully - there are 5 minutes of outages while I try to film the passing forest reflected in the silver shine of my bike bell.

Cycling the path along Hatfield Forest. The reveal of a wood of bluebells - the high angle, the speed I was going - reminded me of the reveal of the sea in Monsieur Hulot's Holiday.

So I made a film of me passing the bluebells, and put it side by side with Tati's masterpiece.

I don't now why!

Three road signs, white arrows in blue circles, stood lazily by the side of a dusty lane. Each arrow is pointing a different direction: UP! TO THE RIGHT! DOWN! A Lycra clad cyclist is passing the final arrow.

I’ve been cycling for about 6 hours, so while my legs have had enough my eyes are like saucers - everything is a possible photo!

I liked these arrows all facing different ways, but it didn’t work until a cyclist passed by - unaware he is cycling through the final scene of Throne of Blood.

Side of a farm trailer. It’s a rusted yellow. How yellow would be described to you after a war. A white and blue logo is illegible. In sticker text above it reads: DEPARTMENT OF RECREATION

I’ve backed further away, showing the long yellow trailer where it is rusting, in the corner of a field, resting up against a fence.

I alway stop to look at this abandoned trailer. The wonderful yellow, the patchwork rust, the lost logo - but most of all the ghost of ‘Department of Recreation’, which reads as both Orwellian, but also has the hope of the post war alternative communities that sprung up in this river basin of Essex.

I have liked these posts about having no signal whilst standing beside a blooming lighthouse. :)

An OS map in the morning sunshine, with coffee and headphones waiting. There’s also a plate of toast, but I’ve moved it out of frame because it was a lot of toast and I don’t want anybody going “that’s a lot of toast, Toby”. :)

Near the best thing about a day’s bike ride - the following morning going over the map of where I cycled, seeing how footpaths link the lanes, putting churches in context, planning further explorations (in this case to the west), and recalling past adventures. It’s Amarcord in folded paper.

A wooden lych gate, standing all alone. Behind it a big stone building - a chapel - is being worked on and restored. Big blue sky sits innocently in the air. The lych gate is wonderful. Those slates! But it was locked when the chapel seemed abandoned (and was nearly invisible - I only found it because there was a cross on my OS map), and now the chapel is as clear as day the gate in unlocked.

Close up in the chapel. Once impossible to get this close, and I imagine once it’s restored it’ll be impossible to get this close again. It’s a featureless building - the wrong size and shape to my eyes, which gives me the creeps. It’s wrong somehow. The south door is in the left corner, and then there’s just a stone mass, with a few window up high in the right corner. The roof must be low, as it’s invisible. There’s scaffolding, and a plastic loo for the workmen. If you want to know more about this strange building: https://hertfordshirechurches.uk/2015/04/07/st-hughs-chapel-hare-street-roman-catholic/

Last photos from today.

A Roman Catholic chapel in the grounds of a big house. When I first saw it years ago it was overgrown and lost; It looked like a ghost story in stone. The building unnerves me - the windows seem an afterthought!

Now it’s clear, but the lych gate remains - also creepy!

St Mary’s, Hormead. 11th Century with additions and alterations through the following 900 years. Rarely open. Stands almost alone among a riot of blossom and flowers. The soft stone surrounding the Norman south door is etched with prayer and praise to the Virgin Mary.

Yes, it’s a little like a real seance, crossed with an everyday science fiction we’ve generally failed to notice under our very noses. Marvellous stuff.

Different church, with an unlocked door into the bell tower. Walk in, close the door behind you, turns around - behold all the method numbers for the bell ringers. This took my breath away; It’s not ancient, it’s not folk horror; if anything it’s a spell - it’s music on a wooden wall!

The small church of St Mary’s, its tower hidden by blossom, and the whole image is distorted by both a fish eye lens and a prism - the south porch appears twice; my bike appears three times, once hanging in mid air. It not an image you’d use to sell the church, unless you were trying to sell it to me.

A failed attempt to see inside the 11th Century St Mary’s at Little Hormead - it remains closed for restoration. But the churchyard (watching over a rare Hertfordshire valley) is awash with cowslips and tulips, and the only sound is birds and the wedding bells from the bigger St Nicholas nearby.

In the Spring mircoseason of it being wonderful warmth and calm in the backgarden, but as soon as I head out on my bike I’m cycling into a headwind of 26% still winter.

Thank you for the Paris Texas screening suggestion :)

Makes the back of my head hurt from laughing too hard.

High angle photo. The sun is going down. Looking down at the back of a farm outbuilding just falling into the final shadows of the day. Squeezed improbably between the back of the outbuilding and a fence - a narrow gap - is a car. It is entirely overgrown, more shrub than car. It is Stalker - as a car. A field next to it is a warren of trodden down paths.

The getaway car in the fallen world.

"Everybody needs money. That's why they call it money"

it would probably battle the large stone lion atop the local manor house gate, which is also said to come to life (though only at midnight on Christmas Eve)

Alt text - a short edited film about a hedge maze with the hedge gone. I’m narrating, and the low atmospheric music is a Thom Yorke piece from an Italian film.

I went out for a short stroll before settling down to work - that was two hours ago. Twice in two days I’ve become entirely distracted by making something.

I edited most of this on my phone whilst walking in the maze, which I think makes it a spell of sorts

She is bravely going down with the ship.

A daft thing I wasted some time on.

My partner pointed out that it'll have a 'Kids Club' screening at the weekend.

Rula, a marmalade cat. She believes she lives with me. When she stays over for the night I often wake to find she's sleeping on top of me, as close as she can get. She enjoys me reading to her

Lucia, a calico cat rescued from a feral life in Catalonia. Once too wild to trust a friendly gesture she also now half lives with me. But she prefers to go home at night, unless her owner is away, in case she comes through my kitchen window and sleeps on my bed. Once slept curled up on my girlfriend's lap during all of Rosemary's Baby.

Gina - Rula's equally marmalade in hue sister. She has no interest in staying in my house, but often visits when she is lonely. The kindest of all the cats.

Tiffin, a black and red farm cat. A busybody and a troublemaker. If this Malcom in the Middle, Tiffin is Reece. She visits me only to roll around in any rag I've left photo chemicals on

""You will be haunted while Blue Sky is down," resumed the ghost, "by the neighbourhood cats. Each will bring a message, mainly of greed and sloth and warm wool"

Two goats in the corner of a field, their heads hidden inside a great plastic feeder. The sun is setting behind them.

The sunset goats.

I just like the way their heads are both hidden. It could be food, but perhaps it’s a small cinema.

An airbase radar, its spinning dish turned into a Cronenbergian horror by a long exposure. It stands behind a bank of white hawthorn blossom.

A zoomed in photo to show the - even at only a few pixels in size - distinctive caron v of a hovering bird of prey

The radar behind the bracken / the raptor behind the radar.

Village I just cycled through - not a human in sight, but seven cats seen, walking along pavements or leaving houses, like they were on the way to an evening class in the church hall.

New footage of the Orion capsule hatch opened. Fist bumps for the astronauts. But careful scrubbing of the footage reveals a fifth astronaut, never once mentioned or acknowledged, like the fifth housemate in The Young Ones.

Marvellous chimney with its Barton Fink hairdo of storks:

"This is my uniform! This is how I serve the common man!"