May Day

Wednesday being my regular day off, I took a walk down a long road in the May Day sunshine.  As a photographer, you have an ambivalent relationship with the sort of sunshine that gladdens other people's hearts.  Too harsh, too contrasty, you're thinking, as everyone else is rejoicing and casting off clouts way too soon.

In such circumstances, I seek out reflective and translucent surfaces, and places where the light may be playing interesting tricks, transforming dull things into exciting things.  You really can't beat a very long north-south road with varied domestic and corporate architecture down one side and natural vegetation down the other, with an assortment of bus shelters, barriers and other interesting street furniture.  Especially if it leads, say, to a picturesque Victorian cemetery so overgrown with trees that the jumbled gravestones appear to be growing out of a sun-dappled forest floor.  Happily, I know just such a road, called Hill Lane.

Along the way I came across these two two-dimensional May Queens, revealed as semi-divine beings by the sunshine on dull corporate advertising matter. One was on a bus shelter placard facing out onto the road, the other was on a vinyl banner attached to the railings of a local sixth form college.