Today I have a work meeting in a place called Hollingbury on the outskirts of town. It’s on the edges of a trading estate and to be honest the area is a bit bleak, but for those of you acquainted with my previous output on this blog, you’ll know that’s fine by me. I take my camera.

En route I see many interesting things but I was not prepared for what I encounter when I arrive. Spring has started early this year! All the trees are in bloom with the most exotic of flowers: mainly white but some a piercing blue, some full-blown, others drifting and tendril-like, all as voluptuous as galleons in full sail. Clearly this early flowering has been going on for a while now because there are many more blossoms under the trees and strewn across the grass verges. I am entranced and hurriedly take a couple of photos on my way in to the meeting. I comment on these to Lesley, my work colleague. Because she works at this site she is familiar with the area.

“Oh, you mean witches knickers?”

I’ve seen several across town before and indeed included them in previous posts, but never so many together in such wild profusion. I am delighted; I now know what they are called too.

Once the meeting is over I spend quite a bit of time documenting all the best examples I can find. Hollingbury is at the top of a steep hill and would have once been rolling downland. Exposed chalk must be their favoured habitat. I notice that they can be found growing among the hawthorn, blackthorn and dogwoods in the area so they are probably parasitic, perhaps related to mistletoe or even some kind of native bromeliad.

Happy with today’s discovery, I head back down the hill towards the bus stop, taking a few more pictures of other things as I go, to give the contact sheet a sense of context. While photographing one particular building, nice industrial 1930s sub-deco, two men in black approach me.

“Excuse me sir, have you been taking photographs of the police station?”

“Oh, is it a Police station?” (Look, I’m an artist, I don’t always look at obvious things like, er, signs)

“Yes, we’ve had a bit of bother at the other branch with someone else doing the same thing and we’d like to know what you’re doing and why? These are troubled times”

I explain about the blog and my daily walks around the city to document the beautiful and the overlooked within the everyday. They take my details. At this point a large blue van draws up and two further officers climb down from the vehicle. Both are dressed in black combat gear. They join the other two, once again ask the same questions, and take my details again: name, date of birth, address, postcode, contact numbers… I am rather charmed to see they still use proper note-books and the officer taking my particulars has nice handwriting. For the benefit of the two newcomers I reply with the same answers, repeating my rationale for the blog. I also offer to show them the other photographs I have been taking and so the five of us go through them together. I comment on their beauty and describe them with enthusiasm. I also offer to delete the photographs of the police station (they aren’t that good anyway) but ask them if perhaps instead I could take a group shot of our boys in blue (ok, black) for the blog? Sadly this suggestion elicits a bit of an ‘old fashioned look’ from one of the officers (I’m not sure the others were listening) appended with a slight raising of the eyes heavenwards in a manner which unmistakeably communicates the words “I didn’t hear that” without any need for the intervention of my ears in this act of communication. I decide not to pursue the request.

Our discussion then ranges across many issues and debates about the age we live in. They are nice chaps, though I was a little disappointed that, when I say to a couple of them that my therapists believe my blog to be a worthwhile venture, the officers seem to draw back somewhat. Nevertheless it’s a pleasant meeting, we have a chat about the virtues of mirrorless cameras versus traditional DSLRs and they thank me for my time and understanding.

I have, for a while now, been pondering one of my favourite quotes of Bertolt Brecht. Here it is:

“You can’t write poems about trees, when the woods are full of policemen”

After today I can honestly say I disagree, though certain buildings seem to be another matter.