This week’s photo was taken by regular contributor John May, “I found it washed up by the side of the Ouse by Harveys Brewery”, he says. “I thought the pose of the figure was rather touching. It was lying on a block of concrete, which looked like a piece of wood, as if it was the only survivor from a shipwreck. There’s something very poignant about lost toys”. The picture reminds us of the famous (and almost certainly apocryphal) tale of the shipwreck of a French frigate off Hartlepool, during the Napoleonic wars, of which the only survivor was the ship’s pet monkey, dressed in full uniform. The townspeople, who had never seen any real Frenchmen, assumed the monkey to be one, and its jabbering to be the French language. After a kangaroo-court trial, they hanged the poor beast. You can see more of John’s pictures here .