A Year in Pictures – 8 to 10 May 2015 – The Morning After and Other Sights

The still Sort-of-United-Kingdom had a General Election on Thursday 7 May and I had the good fortune to walk to the polling station with our then Member of Parliament, Vince Cable. While I did expect him to receive fewer votes than five years ago, I certainly did not think he would lose his seat of 18 years. The scare-bombing campaign by the Conservatives to convince people that the Lib Dems would crawl into bed with Ed Miliband's Labour Party and thus allow the Scottish Nationalists to achieve Scottish independence worked, and Twickenham has lost Vince as an MP and there are now only eight Lib Dems in the new parliament.

While our new Conservative MP, Dr Tania Mathias (a GP), seems decent and was certainly most gracious in her remarks about Vince as she stepped up to the plate in the early hours of Friday morning, I have heard her quoted as saying that it was free-market capitalism that persuaded her of the virtues of being a Conservative. Now, I have much to learn about many things, not least the dangers to our planet of current human activities, but I am convinced that if we do not change our ways, seriously bad things are going to happen, both in terms of the health and wellbeing of our fellow humans and our fellow creatures in general. Not that the Lib Dems are the same as the Green Party (who increased their vote locally) but I believe that their values stand more chance of carrying us through the problems that are developing faster than any one of us wants to hear than the sort of impulses that tend to be let more off the hook under Tory government.

My bicycle adjusts to the new political landscape of Twickenham on 8 May

On Saturday 9 May my wife and I made our way out of Twickenham—beset by the crowds attending the Army and Navy rugby match—and over the bridge into Richmond, where the annual May Fair was in progress on the Green. On the way I took this shot of another example of conservatism, Quinlan Terry's Richmond Riverside development, which I have always liked because it certainly fits its environment, although designing in the classical style in the later 20th and now 21st century seems, well, a little strange.

Doubtless there is some profound philosophical reason why this is not to be regarded as mere pastiche?

On 10 May I did not have much time to photograph, but I did have a little while at home on my own in the afternoon, as other family members were elsewhere. Thought I would try another still life. Not great—and the aficionados will doubtless spot the howlers—but I love the colours and, after the political upsets, it was rather consoling to concentrate on elements of the world other than the human.

The pine cones are from Brittany, the stones from Frinton-on-Sea and here's me blathering on about carbon footprints.