I teach at Sheffield University (UK) and life seemed very hectic in the first few weeks of the academic year, October 2006. New students, new teaching to do and we were using a new teaching room. In many ways it's a great room - moveable seating, so students can easily move around to group together for discussions, plasma screens on the wall, laptops for students to use in class and even good natural light, with windows on two sides.

However, the room is in a building at the other side of campus and, as with all new things, things go wrong .... floor sockets that aren't QUITE deep enough, so the plugs stick up and might trip people, some of the laptops haven't turned up yet - and where do the pictures actually GO when you position the whiteboard under that nifty digital camera and the mechanical voice says "image captured"???

When you've had little problems, sometimes you feel a sense of relief just for getting through the session ... and on this particular day I decided to celebrate this feeling by turning RIGHT out of the lecture building instead of LEFT (to go back to my office). Turning RIGHT meant walking just a few minutes to get to a little wilderness park that, somehow, I'd never explored before. It was in a corner I hadn't come to much, before the class in this new room.

It turned out that within a few steps I was closed off from the street and the world on a little meandering path, surrounded by greenery just turning to autumn. There were leaves starting to fall from the trees, not many flowers, but some autumn fruits, such as blackberries. I noticed that the sun had come out quite strongly and was being filtered through the leaves or striking parts of the path with shafts of light.

Fortunately I'd brought my camera with me and started taking pictures, and the photo I come back to now is this one of the sunlight catching the leaves of a blackberry shrub. It gives me a sense of the peace and coolness, and I feel there's serenity in the way that the bright leaves are balanced against the dark surrounding woodland. Blackberries aren't showy, but when you look at the leaves closely, they are as marvellous as anything. The runners and prickly stems can be irritating, but they produce something nice (the blackberries), free for anyone to gather and eat. I've got this photo tacked on my wall and it makes me feel good to look at it.

This submission has been viewed 4431 times.