A Snapshot in Time

This image keeps popping back into my head even though I took it well over a year ago.

We were on a camping trip with my son, Luke and his family to Clapton-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire.  The campsite, owned and run by an elderly lady, was dominated along one side by a big, old, dark brown barn.  Some of the slats were slipping,  leaving just enough space for an iPhone to take aim.  It was late evening, the sun was sinking and a blackbird sang.  It was as though each object in the barn had been specifically placed in order to create this composition. 

A look through a peephole into an old barn

I can tell you know more, it is just a snapshot in time.  Another moment to savour, it reminded me of:

Adlestrop  by Edward Thomas (about a Gloucestershire village station):

Yes. I remember Adlestrop

The name, because one afternoon

Of heat, the express-train drew up there

Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.

No one left and no one came

On the bare platform. What I saw

Was Adlestrop—only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,

And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,

No whit less still and lonely fair

Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

 

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