bee keeper

 The path downwards is gravelly and steep. Wooden beams have been let into the surface by the gardeners to make steps.

An old man is coming on up these stairs, these stairs along the steep valley in the park. It is the camera collector, greet him by name. And that is the start of an hour long conversation, about cameras and lenses. Talking shop with a collector of cameras, he collects cameras to have them and to love the mechanical finesse of them. They are like jewels, he knows them all.

Stand and talk. It is good to speak to a friendly person, and he explains the difficulties that he is having with his bees, on account of the weather being so cold. He says that it has been the coldest April for the last twenty years. Climate change and global warming are not just about climbing temperatures, the chances are that late summer will be impossibly hot again.

The man is a camera collector and a bee keeper.

And he lives in a house on the top of the hill.