Staying home after my heart attack. Can’t travel, won’t travel. Delving into my photo archives. A few more photos inspired by summer places that are often very uninspiring. First. The mind-blowing mediocrity of a small town summer.

FREEFALLIN’

I’ve got a Tom Petty song running round my head with this photo. Free falling or Mary Jane’s Last Dance. This is how summer looks where I live when you don’t get away. The mediocrity and snapshot feel enhanced by using a phone camera.

Summer in Bourges (Image 4724)

FRYING UP IN THE HEAT

In the middle of the heatwave. We’re all frying up to 40°c, certainly not the time to go for a fry up. It’s lunchtime in that place I call the Edgelands – out-of-town, on the sun down, discount shopping sandwiched between the two and the countryside – no-mans-land. Frying at lunchtime is this new mega Chinese place, that also does Sushi and steak and fries and I love the photo because I’ve eaten in places like this and he food is just as good as the setting.

IN THE PALMS

Getting away. This is could be a bad photo, like, I pointed the camera the wrong way or quite simply “WTF is that supposed to be?”  This is my passing hommage to those iconic fashion photos we get in glossy French magazines. Send a few anorexic babes out to LA, drape them in designer clothes and ge them to pose by a Motel swimming pool, the more retro and 50s looking the better. Well, there’s no pool in this photo. I just like the juxtaposition of palm tree and balconies and the retro feel. We are in St Raphael on the Côte d’Azur.

BIG IN MONACO

This next one speaks for itself. Two big tourists, snapping the Princely palace down in Monaco. Retweaked with a photo ware. Where one was Princess Grace, I love the disgrace of this colourful pair. But we all look bloody awful when we are tourists.

CRUISING INTO CANNES

Here we are in Cannes. A photo taken from the hotel bedroom. The cruise ship kind of merges into the urban decor, almost becoming a building in itself.

NEO RURAL

The beauty of the French countryside in summertime. Of course there are bucolic of bovine beauty and hairy hedgerows all rolling into the distance, but more and more of France looks like this.

TROLLEY HOME

And finally, back to the seething summer mediocrity of my home town.

SUNFLOWERS

Finally. I haven’t been getting out and about much since my heart attack in April. Trips to hospital and the occasional drive downtown with the benevolence of my carers (my thanks to the for supporting me). With Covid lock and Cardiac care, I’ve missed my usual forays into the countryside, my pointless drifting drives. I’ve missed a lot. I’ve especially missed the sunflowers. So, no photos of exquisite endless fields of sunflowers, just a couple of clichés of wilting. It had been a very dry summer. Here is the end of the sunflowers.