Quite a few of the photography accounts on Twitter do this thing on a Saturday (Friday if they’re in the US) where they summarise the week in photos. Posts like that are great — a few fleeting images that tell you a whole lot about the events of the last seven days. We’re going to avoid the obvious ‘thousand words’ cliché, but as this blog’s rather too wordy as a rule, let’s see what the pics have to say.

So, it’s back into running for me — or what passes for running these days, what with advancing age, many months not running, and too many wonderful tasty meals. So you’ll find no details about distance or time — it’s too shameful. Let’s celebrate with these inspirational anti-blister socks bedecking some freakishly stumpy feet.

The spring weather, having finally decided to appear, has wasted no time in gaining a foothold and creating an entirely different feeling about town. And with the warmth appeared this rather startling creature — a blue-tongued skink, sunning him/herself luxuriously on the deck outside the shed — sorry, ‘studio.’

The interwebs counsel that these beasties can act aggressively, but this specimen was lying there with its eyes shut in blissful obliviousness. No blue tongue on display at all — but the legs were what looked freaky. Frankly, it looks as if these almost-vestigial limbs are just about to be subsumed entirely into the skink’s body, delivering the reptile to its true destiny — snakehood. Or maybe pigness (oh, and that’s not my pic).

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Also popping around for a how’d-ya-do is a magpie who has caught on to the fact that there’s always a feed to be had around these parts. There’s the crusty remains of sourdough experiments and any succulent subterranean arthropod dug up during my weeding frenzies and planting fevers. She’ll hang out with an expectant look until I chuck her a worm or a witchetty grub. Here she’s lurking around while I fettle the old MTB.

Being out and about on a go-anywhere bicycle necessitated another recce of Bopping’s Crossing — and crossing’s definitely no dice. In fact, even the mighty Messerschmitt might not be up to the challenge. The pics don’t give a good impression of it: I’d say it’s 15 metres across and of a depth impossible to fathom. But if people have been fording there for a hundred years or more, it could well be fathoms deep.

And look at what that bloody iPhone camera has done to my front wheel! Who says the camera never lies?

As we seem to have had a week in which various fowl feature heavily, here’s a Bungendore duck, swimming in the flooded foundations of a future mall or restaurant or whatever. Ducks go where the algae, tadpoles and scrummy bugs are — they don’t care whether it’s Gibraltar Street or the Gibraltar Strait.

So that’s about it for the week. I’m going to say that it was a solid seven days, nothing too spectacular, but enlivened by some engaging birds and beasts and an inkling of impending summer. That’ll do for now — stay tuned for more pictorial perambulations sometime in the weeks to come.