Hedgehogs

Naturalists tell us that hedgehogs are becoming rarer in England, because fewer are being found squashed on the roads. I think that fewer are killed because their habits are changing: that natural selection has dictated that the remaining hedgehogs in England don't curl up when threatened, but keep on running.

It may not be true everywhere.
Last weekend we were in Farndale, famous for its daffodils, and in the course of a few miles driving and walking, we saw half-a-dozen flattened hedgehogs on the roads. I hadn't seen any elsewhere for months. Perhaps the hedgehogs there still roll up. Perhaps the hedgehogs are just much more common in the North York Moors.

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And last week, I visited Omex, a company in flat Lincolnshire which makes slug pellets which don't affect either hedgehogs or birds, so you can gaily protect your spinach from slugs without worrying about poisoning your garden wildlife.

Sluggo, it's called. It's not a very inventive name. The pellets are based upon pasta laced with ferric phosphate, and I stole a free sample.

Moonface

I like this picture, taken when we were walking across Dartmoor a few weeks ago.

The Chalybeate

I visited my chalybeate spring at the weekend, for the first time in six years. There had been lots of rain in the hills over recent days, so the beck was too swollen to show the taint from the iron water. However, the spring was still flowing steadily in its hollow in the moorland, by the narrow ford and the footbridge. The alder trees were larger than I remember them, obscuring the path down through the heather and bracken.

250,000km

After about ten years on the road, and six years in my possession, my SAAB passsed its quarter of a million kilometers mark. It doesn't look so impressive in Imperial units (155,000 miles and more) but it's still a long way for a car to travel.

Should I keep this car? Is it time for a change, or should I run this reliable machine into the ground? I must admit, the driver's seat is getting thin and worn, and is less comfy than it used to be. But Moonface loves it, especially the heated seats in winter, and it's fast & good for long journeys.

Strawberries

It's late October. The weather's cool and wet.
It's not warm blazing sunshine & it's not glorious June.

However, this morning I picked three fresh, perfect wild strawberries from our front garden and ate them. They were delicious. They aren't meant to ripen at this time of year: what's gone wrong with the seasons?

Philip Bouchard

About a year ago, we visited a small exhibition of paintings by Philip Bouchard. He is a living surrealist, specialising in detailed imaginary landscapes. As it was the last day of the exhibition, Bouchard himself was wandering around, looking more like a businessman in a dark charcoal suit, with white shit and thin red tie. He looks his age, mid-fifties, with round-framed glasses and worn face, and a slightly worried air about him.

Bouchard lives in Bath, so many local buildings are incorporated inti his paintings, but set in Mediterranean or other exotic locations. This lends them a dreamlike, mystic quality that can be studied for hours, especially with the detail that he has included in the works.

http://www.bouchardpaintings.com/exhib_pic_03.html

We were so impressed by his work that I tried to find a poster or reproduction of his work as a Christmas present for Moonface, but none were available anywhere.

Walking, party, working-party.

There's no philosophy today, just a dull recounting of the facts.

It's been an average weekend. Moonface & I strolled down to the Miner's Arms for a drink on Friday night, knowing that we would find a seat, not suffer from too much smoke, and have some decent cider to drink. Moonface's cousin dropped in later, & we nattered about politics and kids and the usual small-talk. It's the minutiae of talking like that, which gives one a sense of place & belonging. Heimat, I think the Germans call it. Terroir?

On Saturday we had a ridge-walk on the Quantocks, about 50 miles from home. The views were spectacular, with the vale of Taunton and the Blackdowns to one side, and the Severn Estuary to the other. To the North, we could see right across to Barry & Cardiff in Wales, 20 miles away. The Severn was patchworked with the reflections of clouds and squalls, which we could see disapparing after they had soaked us on our hills. We walked for about 12 miles, there and back, and ended up tired by not exhausted.

It was just as well we weren't exhausted, as we went to a house-warming party in the evening, at which we talked, talked, drank & ate. Then we walked home by midnight.

On Sunday I cycled down to the lake, to lend my labour to a working party. I shovelled and barrrowed soil into sacks for a couple of hours, turned down the chance to swim, then returned home for a snooze. En route I dropped into a technically incompetent friend's house, and talked her through the use of her email system. The snooze was a better use of time.

Then, since it was raining all afternoon, I dossed around and listened to music, played with the internet, did little. Cheers, drive.

Moonscape?

This is a poor reproduction of the photograph that I liked so much at the weekend. It's by Cathy Hicks. It's the incongruity of the footprints in the dust that makes me admire it.

Is it a henge? What size are the stones? Why are the footprints like those left by spacemen?

Contrasts

Last Thursday night was a cracker, with two separate events and a late ending.

Moonface & I started by rushing to the opening of a small art exhibition, at which a friend was showing her ceramics and sculpture. The sink splashback is really effective, and I think that she could make a living producing customised tiles. She doesn't want to try, though. "Ooh, I don't think anyone would want one of those", she says.

The works that interested me, however, were strange photographs of landscapes: set up to look like a cross between megalithic stone circles and moonscapes. Very spooky.

Then, onward towards the Oxfam gigs, with five bands playing at the Fiddlers. We went to see John.E.Vistic, whose country thrash is scarily fast & load but there was an uneasy selection of different genres that evening. The bands ranges from hi-hop soul to punk to heavy metal none of them sitting well with the others. perhaps that's why the gig was badly attended.

Cwncarn

It's been years since I have travelled to Wales for the mountain biking, so this Sunday in Cwncarn was tough. Six of us crossed the bridge & drove to Cwmcarn, only 40 minutes away from home.
High above the ruined grim valley streets, reeking of industrial decay & unemployment, the Forestry Commission has built a 10-mile trail a around hillside.

The cycling was tough. Well, it was for me. The first climb was slow and ponderous, with my lungs wheezing as I tried to haul my lardy arse and an eight-year-old bike over the roots & up the hill. In the cold autumn air, my forehead was frozen and painful, whilst my chest and back were running with sweat and my my thighs ached. And the descents were scary. There were damp roots to catch the knobbles on my tyres, and rocks to bounce me sideways. Still, we managed it. But some of the young gods on two wheels that passsed us were sublime. On downhill stretches which had me braking hard, they were accelerating and leaping into the air with every bump. On the uphills they pumped their way past me and my friends, bouncing upon their pedals. To our shame, they seemed to be lapping us towards the end of the circuit. [To be fair, one of the girls doing this was in the national development squad, so I guess she was quite good]

Coincidentally, I met my daughter's boyfriend there, who was riding with his mates. We watched them flying down a fast black run, without fear or imagination. Then they decided to do another circuit; we didn't.

Minimum reqirements

Money, vitamins, sex and exercise.

If you have enough of each of them, you're fine.
After a while without, life becomes hard. Your health deteriorates.

The first three are there for me,touch wood, but I've been short of exercise over the last two weeks, so I've become ratty. Last night, I cycled up to the new pool for a swim, & felt much better for it.

London

Usually, I see London through business eyes. I arrive on the train, fight my way onto the Tube, trudge to a meeting, then reverse the journey; all in the space of a few hours. I wear a suit and tie, polished black shoes, carry a laptop. All I see is the rush and the grime. Every evening after a trip to London, my shirt collar will be black, and my snot will be grey.

This weekend, Moonface & I went to visit friends, and it was a revelation. The sun shone, the air was cool and the traffic was light. We stayed with friends in Camden, with lots of space and time to entertain (now that their children are away at school) Instead of the tube, we took buses. Not buses like Bristol, but new, clean, fast, frequent and cheap buses. Brigh red London buses. Lovely.

We walked from Trafalgar Square to the river, then along the South Bank, watching the other tourists and seeing the sites. Of course, there was an ulterior motive in our friend Lynne choosing this route. She took us into her office, where her window seat must have one of the best views in the city. From a vantage point several storeys up, opposite HMS Belfast,she looks directly across the river to the Tower of London, and down to Tower Bridge. Senior accountants have it cushy.

The pictures were taken on the camera phone, so they aren't that great. But hey, we had a good weekend.

Swimming

Moonface & I visited friends in London at the weekend.

The weather was perfect for tourism: dry, sunny, clear and cool. On Sunday we walked from their home in Camden through the market, full of punk and exotic clothes, toward Hampstead.

I was suffering from the lack of swimming, so I grabbed the chance to swim in the ponds on Hampstead Heath. The mixed ponds were closed for winter, so I used the men's pond, which is bigger and deeper. At only 15C, the water was clear and green, but a challenge to enter quickly.
I swam until my balls disappeared and my feet started to tingle, then climbed out, pink-skinned.

The changing rooms are a notorious gay pick-up spot, as there is an area set aside for nude sunbathing, but they were almost empty apart from a group of men in their 70's, obviously hardy and inured to the cool autumn winds. I was only approached by one cheerful painter, who seemed to be here for the sun & men rather than the swimming. And he wasn't very good looking.

However:

http://www.chrisgeary.co.uk/london/LondonHampsteadHeath/

The world turns

After returning from the forest, the rain cleared.

My best friend from my childhood, whom I met on my first day of secondary school at the age of eleven, was visiting Bristol. We haven't seen each other for a year of so, but we always get on. He was here to deposit his daughter at the University. Things change. It's 35 years since I arrived here from the frozen North, but I was by myself with just a trunkful of luggage. Now it's Margot's turn to settle in Bristol.

Alastair has changed, as we all have, but he's recognisable as the boy he was. He's still lean and craggy, long-legged and self-deprecatory. His wife is similarly tall, slender & good-looking. She's French, although she moved to England when she was twenty and has never really returned home. Due to a rushed marriage in Uganda and a reluctance by the French to recognise any but their own interpretation of reality, they are legally married everywhere in the world, except in France. Their daughter is beautiful in a model-ish way: leggy and skinny and wide-eyed. And very bright.

We met them for coffee, talked and walked around the prettiest tourist parts of Clifton, then returned them all to Margot's new hall of residence - the best in Bristol. Then Moonface & I strolled home in bright cool sunlight.

Fragments

The weekend was mainly spent in the Forestof Dean, with twenty or so friends & their children. Total group size, of course. Now that the children aren't really children any more, it's noticeable how the adults' interests and behaviours are beginning to diverge. Previously, our group was bound together by our need to care for and amuse our children. Now that they are self-sufficient, our own characters are beginning to grow again or to revert to their original, child-free forms. Some friends we had grown close to are beginning to pall, as our new interests and enthusiasms are so different from theirs.

The Forest is a strange place, with scattered houses & settlements everywhere, replecting the mining and industrial history of the area. Our walk was along one of the many disused railway tracks that litter the Forest, with spoil-heaps and unidentifiable industrial ruins beside them, hidden and covered by trees.

The weekend away followed the format of the 15-20 previous weekends that we have all spent together. Most of us arrived at the hostel on Friday night, and stayed up late, talking. On Saturday the stragglers arrived, and some of us walked or cycled around the Forest while offspring hung around the hostel and sulked. Saturday night we had a group meal, with talk and drink and argument, before falling tired into bed. Our Sunday was something of a washout, this year, as it was pissing down in no uncertain fashion, with thunder and 25mm rain in the morning. So Moonface & I returned home....to tomorrow's entry.

Le Boulot III

Since starting work with my current employer back in May, we have experienced the following wonderful calming incidents:

• In June, 25-30% staff cutbacks.
• In July, the guy who influenced me to join the company, was fired.
  

• Also in July, a salesman who joined at the same time as me, quit almost immediately after only a day or so on the job.
• By August, the company was rumoured to be up for sale.
• The marketing manager quit in early September.
• The product direction has changed and promised updates and improvements have been shelved
• Last week it was confirmed that my division is to be split away from the rest of the organisation.
• 
  

Only fear and lethargy keep me here......