27 July 2026

 Late July/early August is a strange old time in Cambridge. The students have deserted, colleges stand empty, locals have left for Norfolk or France. Tourists are surprisingly few.

So there weren't many people around to appreciate this trapeze-artist-cum-violinist in Market Square today. He was pretty awful musically, but I did admire his tightrope skills for an old fellow -

Even the pubs are empty, some closed. Here the narrow alleyway behind the Devonshire Arms leading to a stamp-sized seating area - full marks for effort in squeezing outdoor space out of little to nothing -

It's been very hot and there's been no rain for so many weeks that a hosepipe ban has been enforced. So most of Cambridge is looking as drab and dry as this tombstone in the Mill Road cemetery -

- where I discovered a new (to me) bird poetry stone - to the Robin. So tucked away in overgrown foliage that I've never spotted it before -

Also tucked away is this gate on top of the cemetery wall that provides access to a pub on the next road (also empty these days). The gate is always half-open, so that after a few drinks customers can climb over the wall to weave a short-cut home through the cemetery -

Very little is flowering any more, so it was nice to see a bee making the most of this one - 

Overgrown gardens is very much a Cambridge thing, I've noticed. Is it a kind of inverse snobbery to have chaotic, untended growth? I often wonder how people manage to beat a path to their front doors - 

Dinner was appropriately full of greens -