Looking like small bits of cloud have come down from the sky to play.

Almost a year to the day I found the gate to the big apple orchard unlocked, I found it open again. Inside all the secret apples, and all the pears with long names. Very tempted to explore, but I’ve only the mouth for trespass, and not the legs.

This, from the story on the planned restoration of Orson Welles’ Don Quixote, is wonderful. I can imagine it - that clattering Welles energy, slicing off heads by slicing through the fabric of the screen, movie actors projected onto other movie actors. www.theguardian.com/film/2026/ju...

Now I’ve remember Tony Hancock’s panicked “that’s nearly an armful!” and have had to stop to laugh. In your face stranger who posted that nothing older than yesterday could possibly be funny to the modern mind.

Walking home from another blood test. Deeply tired, but that sort of delightful tiredness which feels warranted by having blood taken - it carries no guilt of laziness and is allowed to sweep me away. Reminded of Talos, falling over after Jason has unscrewed his ankle and all his energy flows out.

Phone call from home. The door to my parent’s allotment shed had disintegrated. My father was waiting until he had the tools to fix it; my mother was thinking the allotment was too much now and this was a sign. They went up yesterday and a stranger from another plot had put a new door on for them.

Take off from the secret runway.

They’ve mown the meadow, marking the turning of the year. The grass is still to be collected; in August the meadow is a car park for a rock concert, then with September come the Dracula mists, and by winter the land is so wet and frozen that it seems impossible anything will grow here again.

Chase sequence from a largely forgotten Universal horror sequel.

One of the bowlers is called Pie/Pye and the field rattles to cries of: “Really like it Pie” “Really nice Pie” “That’s the one Pie!” “Over here Pie” “Looooking good Pie” Which is exactly how I talk to pies.

I had one shot at this. The bull was getting closer, and the camera struggled to find focus through the prism. I wasn't hanging around for a second attempt. #prism #photography

Stopped at the village cricket. I think the real appeal of village cricket is the rope. The game, especially when amateur, can be a beguiling mix of a Midsummer Night’s Dream and a clock made by Lewis Carroll, and I like that all that is just held in place by a rope (which isn’t even in a circle)

I say here that Hue and Cry "feels more Roberto Rosselini than Ealing". Last night, after posting that self-quote, I learnt that the wartime British official who gave Rosselini permission to shoot Rome Open City was the future Ealing director Alexander Mackendrick.

We’ve had very much a ‘look at what you could have won’ of a storm - thunder rumbling a distance away, while rain was merely a piece of a paper, pushed through every letterbox, with ‘imagine it’s raining’ written on it.

Also I can’t imagine there isn’t a direct line from the fantastical colour of Messel’s 1930’s theatre design and how Powell and Pressburger’s approached colour and art direction.

Caught up with the last of the National Trust programs, as they restored the home of Oliver Messel. The nephews and grandchildren of the Bright Young Things of the 1920’s look otherworldly - like the Elves of Lothlórien or sighthounds that wear clothes in order to mingle with humanity.

Rula last night. Waiting to tell my partner and I about her day under the bed. She’s handling the heat admirably, but doesn’t understand why I don’t want her sitting on my chest.

It’s been a while since I last saw Thompson, and when he came out I felt forlorn - surely his fingers would struggle. How could anybody still find the energy to play Vincent Black Lightning? But he did. And he played Valerie like a forgotten Eddie Cochran rocket, and Al Bowlly moved me to tears.

The birth of a new God. (alt text - a burst water main, a veritable Tivoli Fountain cascading up from a major street in the town)

The cat emerges from another day in the cool under the bed. She found that once she pushed past the boxes of jumpers and Gladstone bags of OS maps there’s a lamp post, a world of snow, and the kingdom she has under her thumb. But now those pesky Edwardian kids have stuck their noses in…

Why is it called a neck fan not a chin chiller

Richard Thompson gig tonight. He really does not seem an artist to see in such a fierce heat.

Trying to stay cool by exploring the Norfolk Broads on google maps.

The Reflecting Pool story will end with the wannabe king demanding every mirror in the nation be smashed.

Well, I also took a photo - accidentally - with the flash on, so I mixed those eyes in.

Evening walk offered little respite; the fields are as warm as a proofing oven. Football on tv, so nobody out bar myself and this pair of ears by the museum.

Waiting with many others at a walk in blood clinic. We break into two groups: those who dress like this is a stop on the way to somewhere else, and those who dress like this is their social engagement of the day.

Just spotted this typo in my email to a client about video footage. It should read ‘future’.

Caught the end of Shaun of the Dead, and I’ve always wondered if Jessica Hynes is mimicking a jolly Joyce Grenfell run at the end (when she arrives with a hockey stick) But Joyce Grenfell runs a different way in St. Trinian's - she runs, just wonderfully, like this:

Part of Radio 3’s long Solstice Eve program - new to me, this Jocelyn Pook piece is incredible, and this seems a rare chance to hear it. Reminded me of Hounds of Love, because it has the same sense of people as ghosts, even before they pass. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

Windows wide open at the music school on the corner. Somebody practising saxophone by playing the theme from The Pink Panther. And as if second nature all us passing pedestrians slip our slouching walks into a Côte d'Azur slink. In a dance of hands and distractions we pick each other pockets.

The Newscopter follows the train carrying Andy Burnham into London. The camera pulls back, and it is revealed the train is a miniature on a model layout... and we are at a model railway exhibition in Todmorden Town Hall. Andy Burnham steps out - "hello, that's the sort of magic I'll bring as PM"

A cooling image of the edge of the known universe. Took my Polaroid to the meadow, just as it was too dark to use it, laid in the long grass, and took an instant photo with the flash on. Nearly not a photo at all, but there’s the glow of the buttercups, and that’s the last light of the longest day

With an uncertain drift of Prime Minsters, England cricket captains, Doctor Whos and James Bonds, Britain is now a Fata Morgana of a country, seen as a shimmer from the coast of France and occasionally glimpsed by shipping.

I hope the lectern is wide enough that Keir Starmer can do that trick when you pretend you’re going down hidden stairs.

Part of Radio 3’s long Solstice Eve program - new to me, this Jocelyn Pook piece is incredible, and this seems a rare chance to hear it. Reminded me of Hounds of Love, because it has the same sense of people as ghosts, even before they pass. www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

On the water meadow again. It’s nearly dark; a couple walking their dog cross my path. “Are you waiting for the barn owl?” they ask - and isn’t it lovely how a field becomes an animal, and that animal becomes a small handshake. The owl does appear, and their dog barks at the sky out of jealousy.

A solitary deer.

Merry midsummer. I first saw Spirit of the Beehive on a worn 35mm print in Cambridge, at a lunchtime screening as part of a film club for older people. I was, then, an interloper. There’s a good print on YouTube now; I’d forgotten how dangerous this remarkable scene is.

5am. Rula the cat leaping from the window to the bed because she’d spotted I’d just woken up. I then fell back asleep

One of those evenings so warm and endless that it feels like science fiction.

On the water meadow; You’ll have to take my word for it as neither photographs well, but there’s a barn owl hunting (it screeched when it spotted me hiding in the long grass), and a thin paperback of a mist. Look at it merging with the cow parsley. Swallows showing off trying to reach the moon.

Bottom heavy and drunk bumble bees weaving their way haphazardly across the water meadow. They look like Charles Laughton in Hobson’s Choice, crossing the street from the boozer.

A feather lost in a fight, resting on its side, speared on barley tops. A party of contrasting pattern and colour; as I walked away I realised the sidelong white reminded me of Fellini’s surprise ocean liner in Amarcord.

Silly burst of pride as the bike shop rings me about my bike, in for its annual service, and in a voice of Spielbergian awe says "you must cycle a lot" Turns out it was they're having to replace everything only replaced a year ago, but it was like I was a gunslinger admired by other gunslingers.

Well, either I have given the cats a key or I stupidly left the back door open all night. In my house in the middle of a town, with a costly edit suite in the down stairs room. I am slowly losing my mind. (nothing missing, so not burgled)

Wonderful walking tonight. There’s a skylark high high high above the fields. A new planet undiscovered by NASA, until it stops singing and drops like thermometer mercury in a cold snap. The bird unfurls a little parachute of song before it strikes the earth.

Aha, the moon and the sun in the same quarter of the sky, like celebrities trying to quell rumours of an affair by leaving the same hotel by different doors.

Today is a chloroform rag, and a whisper of “you have woken up the wrong shape for Thursday. Rest your eyes. Go back to sleep”

Watching a heron standing in the river. It resembles a tower construction crane. Then, with only a slight bend of the knees, it’s up, now as wide as it is tall, and flying away. Which is something tower construction cranes should also be able to do.