Rookery Time - Wednesday 11th May

Embrace (Brushpen, sketchbook)

By Wednesday I'd come to the conclusion the weather wasn't stable enough to warrant lugging out a lot of the equipment I'd taken with me. In fact, I'd settled into a realisation that I might as well make the most of being away from home, living in a comfortable country house with no pressing commitments. In other words, I was on holiday.

I spent Tuesday getting to the end of The Blackpool Flyer by Andrew Martin, the second of his Jim Stringer, Railway Detective, mysteries. I'd enjoyed the first of this series, The Necropolis Railway, but the second seemed to me to be terribly padded out. Clearly Martin has done a huge amount of research and felt that he might obscure the identity of the culprit by filling the narrative with details of Victorian life. Undeniably fascinating details, no doubt, but narrative cloggers nonetheless. As a result it's taken me months to get to the end.

Wednesday afternoon promised a spell of fine weather, but no sooner had I finished this two page drawing (and in the process become a real fan of the flexibility of the brush-pen) than the rain came back.

Thursday: rain all day.