February 28th 2014

 

Sometimes in life we may feel like shouting "keep paddling I hear banjo's".  Seeing this bunch of reprobates was one of those moments. T spotted these chaps this morning in the engineers department of the BBC. I have no idea where they have come from, nor more importantly why they are there, but they are. And they brought a ray of sunshine to an other wise end of week feeling. I only wish there was an answer to my question. Why?

February 27th 2014

There is something heartening about nature regaining control of the man made environment. I love the notion that we think we can control nature but once we turn our back it sneaks in via many a nook and cranny. After World War Two sights of buddleia shrubs reclaiming the bomb sites of London were a common sight. My walk out of work this evening was arrested by something less dramatic, a maple spp sapling newly emerged in the pointing of a brick wall. There it flew like a chlorophyll flag waiting to grow into it's mature neighbour a few feet away. Sadly this probably will not last beyond this growing season as the building maintenance team will remove it, or when the drier weather arrives it will succumb to dessication. But for the moment it stays here battling the forces of man. Unlike it's neighbour on the same wall

Ivy leaved toadflax, (Cymbalaria muralis) is native to hot climates of the Mediterranean and so not native to Britain; but in Bristol and elsewhere it grows on just about every wall available providing a much needed softening to the hardscape. An interesting plant, in this stage in early spring the plant is positively phototrophic and so grows towards the light. After flowering as the seed is being formed it switches to negatively phototrophic and retreats away from the light back into a crevice. This allows the seed to be 'flung' into a crevice to allow germination to take place in a cool moist environment. A strategy to survive and spread in a hot climate. The natural world is fascinating. 

February 26th 2014

Very simply today is a three digestives day. I managed to get home after work while there was still around 45 minutes of daylight left. Spring is knocking at the doors and daylength is lengthening rapidly. As I walked out to the seating area in the garden to sit for a while with my cup of tea, this image came into my head. Luckily the camera was in the conservatory, so it was but an instant before the shot was taken and the beverage imbibed before it cooled down. I'm glad I sat out there as a flock of jackdaws noisily flew over in their coupling groups, a pair of raven cronked over and the countryside was alive with the dusk chorus. Sheer bliss. After loading up the image, I then thought this would make a lovely monochrome photo, so here it is.

February 25th 2014

I've got a bit behind with my postings over the last few days as not feeling great in the head region, some sort of cold or virus thing I can't shift. However tonight after work it being a fantastic evening and the night's drawing out a pace now, I raced down to Somerset Wildlife Trust's Westhay Reserve and caught the last few minutes of sunshine. It helped clear the air (and head) after a day staring at a computer screen. One of the photos I took (above) which I posted on Facebook brought a lovely comment from Rebecca Welshman who is a Richard Jefferies scholar and fellow trustee of the Richard Jefferies Museum. Rebecca wrote;

"This has elicited a Jefferies quote! "The wind works its full will over the exposed waste, and drives through the reed-grass, scattering the stalks aside, and scarce giving them time to spring together again." - From Jefferies book 'The Open Air'.

February 24th 2014

Working in the media, or at least turning up every day and having a nap, often throws up some strange going's on. I well remember the rowing over Malham Tarn at midnight trying to record a programme on an extinct caddisfly. Or that time I turned up to give a talk on the BBC Natural History Unit in Newcastle only to increase the audience by 100%. So today it made absolute sense to me to be loading some of my gardening tools into my car to be sent to London for a radio play. A colleague here is producing a comedy drama called 'Gossip from the Garden Pond' which is being recorded at the BBC's Radio Theatre on Sunday; the characters are all species found in a garden pond. Not having a garden my colleague sent out a plea for props, and so in true Bulldog Blitz spirit I have loaned some of the tools for the day. If it wasn't the fact that the show was being recorded in London I'd head over there on Sunday and check out for myself how good my tools performed on stage. Will I hear the spade sigh as he's picked up? Will the shears produce cutting comments to the cast? I'll have to wait until they return to find out.

February 23rd 2014

Today I began a task that really should have been started in 2010, that of removing the football frieze around the spare guest bedroom. I moved into this house in December 2009 and the previous occupants had a little boy who presumably liked football, hence the frieze. Not long after I moved in although the front bedroom is the master one with an en-suite the back bedroom is the same size and has a lovely view out over the fields to Sand Bay and eventually the Black Mountains in Wales. Indeed on a bright day with binoculars I can make out individual people on the mountains even though as the crow flies it's about 20 miles. But with one thing and another although I sleep in this room every night I'd never got around to decorating it, or the rest of the house for that matter (although it was quite smart when I moved in). So today after 4 years of looking at footballs, it's time for a change. I may put up a tractor frieze, or maybe one with gnomes.

February 22nd 2014

 

Day 145 of my romp through the stuff of life around my 50th year sees me for the first time in weeks and weeks having a day on my own with no external demands at all on my time. And now I'm bored. Well that's not true, I'm trying to relax and rest but that doesn't come easily to me, so I'm bored. Someone once described me as a hurricane trying to create delicate origami which I've always liked. Sums me up very well. I'm not good having nothing to do, and this morning made worse by management texting me to say she's off for a stroll around Avebury. The odd thing is I have a lot to do here, the whole reason why I'm staying at home. The trouble is it's sunny and what I have to do is indoors, and that's domestic stuff, not for me. But, But, But, I am being focused, very focused at the tasks in hand at home. Which is why I've now spent over an hour reading through some of my P G Wodehouse books in a classic distraction manoeuvre. There has never been a time in my life when Plum has not made me see life in anything other than an uplifting way, and one of the very few writers who makes me laugh out loud. Stout fellow that Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, stout fellow.

February 21st 2014

 

I've often thought watching rugby is like trying to herd cats. Quite brilliant but ultimately something that is unfathomable. And so it was, that I sat down tonight to a farrago of feline husbandry in the Wales v France Six Nations tournament. A superb 27-6 win by the Welsh dragons added to my enjoyment of a rare evening on my own. I wonder what ladies do on their own? Possibly something involving bathing in scented water, face packs and slices of cucumber. Chaps on the other hand tend to envelope the sofa, drink alcoholic beverage and watch sport or Dave on TV. I enjoyed last night encircling the sofa, scrambled egg on toast dribbling down my vest and a pint of tea. Ahh, that's it, tea is not an alcoholic beverage - that's why I think cat herding is a six nations event. The penny drops.

 

Down there, the cats down there

 

Quick, that's cats got it's claws out

 

Quick, run to the hills, the moggy's loose

February 20th 2014

As I sat outside a street cafe at lunchtime I mused on the fact that this is the first time since Christmas Day I have ventured out for an alfresco lunch. Of late, incessant rain and wind have curtailed all thoughts of fresh air over the noon yardarm, but today with the clouds parted and the sun shining I partook of street cafe culture and downed a Fenteman's Victorian Lemonade. I love lemonade, quite possibly a throwback to my grandfather who was tee-total almost all of his life but liked a glass of ice-cream and lemonade from his friend Joe Frankie, who ran Frankies Italian Ice-Cream Parlour in South Shields. My father too loves this cocktail on a hot summer's day, whereas I prefer to eject the frozen cows milk and just luxuriate in the zest of a lemon sizzle.

If I'd done this four hours earlier mind you I'd have been moist in the extreme. I parked up after driving into work enjoying the sunrise, stepped out of the car and a Biblical deluge hurled itself out of the sky for 5 minutes. Taking shelter in the porch way of Clifton's Cathedral I watch this water spout erupt as if God himself had turned on the Holy Water tap. Dry to deluge to dry in 5 minutes. Blink and you'd miss it.

February 19th 2014

 

I'm going to a lot of these leaving functions these days, all part of the passage of time in a working career. Today it was the turn of Alan Baker, the outgoing Media Manager for BBC Information & Archives Television Services -  or as I first knew him in 1993 the Natural History Unit Film Librarian. Alan was the first ever person I met at the BBC as he interviewed me for a job in Bristol in October 1993. I worked for Alan for 7 years until I moved over into the BBC management area. Tonight after 24 years Alan leaves the BBC for pastures new, probably back in his native Scotland at some point in the not too distant future.

 

It was a lovely send off with staff old and new there to wish him well which was a good time to catch up with old colleagues. The above photograph is the moment Dave Cox in black unveiled a mock up Radio Times from the week Alan began at the BBC (the original cover was Jason Donovan). This went down very well with the watching crowd. So that's the end of an era. With the departure of Alan there is nobody left at the BBC who was there when I arrived and who has either not left, or left and returned. It seems strange to be becoming an elder staff member. I arrived at a time before e-mail, before computer terminals, before DVD and a time which seems like a foreign land now. How have I become this relic from an era that now seems as far away as Victorian England?

February 18th 2014

 

Today was a consultancy day for Julie at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. The letter from the hospital said parking was a problem there so we elected to come into the city from the Thornhill Park and Ride off the A40. The 800 bus service. As we go off the bus I noticed we had alighted at the West Wing. I'm hoping the madcap comedy of that series did not await us and I was right. Excellent chat to the surgeon and a sense of calm, if not relief, to a difficult situation.  As we left it gave me time to take a few images from the hospital as we'll be back here in the summer.  A view across the suburb of Haddington and also the wonderful claw prints along the hospital corridors which meant we didn't get too lost, though we did a bit!

 

February 17th 2014

I watched a repeat of Sir Tony Robinson walking from the Scottish Borders to Lindisfarne during his Walking Through History programme tonight. Such a wonderful programme to remind me of my homelands. He stopped at the River Tweed to do a spot of fishing for salmon and this reminded me that in April I shall have a first go at fly fishing on one of the Hampshire chalk streams. Its over 30 years since I last fished on the River Coquet so it will be interesting to see how I get on flicking the fly over the water. Maybe I too will be proficient enough to flyfish the Tweed..... hum maybe J.R.R. Hartley will spin in his grave first.

February 16th 2014

As we'd say in the North East 'proper bread'. This is a Hobbs wholemeal loaf bought yesterday at the farm shop. It was lovely to break into it for breakfast, toasted and warm, spread with butter and extra fruit conserve. A cup of tea. A wonderful way to begin a day as the sun shone into the kitchen window.

February 15th 2014

 

We headed off to Planks Farm shop café for the third Saturday in the row today. The endless string of storms this week gave over to a clear sunlit day in Wiltshire. The images however do not convey the wind that still blew across these vast landscapes of middle England. The gale last night peaked at 2am and I listened to all of it. It was like an express train through the trees in the garden. Much calmer at day break but still very windy. As we drove along the road if we hit any flood water the wind whipped the spray up and over the car, which gave me the idea for the above photograph (obviously I wasn't driving). So much rain has fallen this winter in Southern England its no surprise even up here on the high chalk-lands that the landscape is flooded. It will take many weeks to dry out.

 

February 14th 2014

 

Valentine's day is about sharing love with someone, or something special. Which is how this photo came to be taken tonight following a candlelit meal at home. As I placed my glass next to the wall this image, and a couple of other images, came into my head. Almost as if the shadow glass is about to embrace the actual glass in a loving moment. A surreal moment in fact as outside 60mph winds flailed the back of the house in a violent end to what has been a violent winter. Yet love is mysterious in its effects, for I am one who loves extreme weather, providing of course it involves no damage. The power of nature is all we should worry about in this life, like Saint Valentine himself who was associated with nature and love, if we abuse our master, the natural elemental world, nature will fall out of love with us and we will become its martyr ourselves.

February 13th 2014

 

I passed this garden walking into work this morning. This garden always has some of the earliest bulbs I know. In the distance the camellia tree is under-planted with snowdrops and aconites, later bluebells will flower before the tree canopy fully opens. Nearer the wall these daffodils are poking through the dusting of snow, which was the first wintry weather I'd seen in this area all winter. We're at the middle of February already and this week the sense that nights are lengthening, still reasonably light at 6pm, gladdens the heart. Spring is there as these brave daffodils show poking through the snow. I love the thought they've always been there through every season just waiting for now to show their true colours. 

February 12th 2014

 

It's been a stressful and very busy 2 weeks. With Julie being in hospital and then some side effects having a major impact on our lives, I have been up and down the M4 more times this week than I care to know. Tonight I got home exhausted, first time home for nearly a week and after supper and checking a few things I took a phone call upstairs. While taking the call I lay on the bed chatting, upon which once the call ended I stayed trying to collect my thoughts and gain a sense of normality again. One of those moments when we just have to stop. No other action is possible.  As I lay there I noticed this view out of the bedroom to the landing. I snapped this then I took another image with the door upright. However this sideways view from the bed as I relaxed in the dark epitomised my last few weeks. Slightly off centre, my emotions either light or dark, but okay really.

February 11th 2014

I never thought when I began this 1 year long blog that I'd live through the wettest (possibly the windiest) spell of winter weather in nearly 300 years. As such my daily ramblings recently have been something of a relentless tirade of  moist observations. Groucho Marx said "I'm leaving because the weather is too good. I hate London when it's not raining". Sadly I'm still here and love the South West when it's still raining.

Usually in the winter I'm out and about doing things, but like many this winter has been relentless wind, rain, dull overcast days, wet, flooding and we're about to be battered again down here in the South West as the chart below shows for Wednesday. As I sat in a traffic jam at 7.30am today caused by Bristol Water traffic lights due to the replacing of main water culvert along the A370 in North Somerset, the irony of being held up by water both above and below ground didn't fail to make me smile. Time for a whisky, once known as 'Aqua Vitae’ but now better known from the Gaelic, 'usquebaugh', or 'water of life'. Now that would be fun if usquebaugh flowed out of my taps. Slange var!

February 10th 2014

Ohh this is a nice surprise. It's the first time I've seen my garden in daylight for about 3 weeks, so tonight getting home at 5pm meant it was light enough to see what had happened in the intervening days. Apart from a range to plastic bags and other rubbish which had blown in on the breeze, plus a few pots blown over, nothing was amiss. But heading to the compost bin with a cornucopia of recyclable peelings I nearly stood on these daffodils which were planted on October 20th last year. http://365-2-50.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/20th-october-2013.html . I wrote at that time that it would be 4 months before I saw any evidence of these February Gold narcissii coming through and even in this mild weather, it's been 4 months near enough. Nature is brilliant, but I do need to get that fence painted I think!

February 9th 2014

In a walk this afternoon, around the village, we were caught out by one of those squally wintry showers that comes from nowhere, dumps skip loads of hail or wet snow down ones neck and then disappears as quickly as it had arrived leaving no trace of it having even existed. Having set off from home in sunshine by the time we got to the village green it was not pleasant at all. Diving into the lychgate of the village church gave some respite and while there the musings for today's blog entry emerged. Peering through the open archways it reminded me that lychgates were where the coffin was held prior to a funeral. Beyond the gate however I could see a carpet of snowdrops around the gravestones, so in a lull in the weather I wandered over to take some pictures. Some call the snowdrop 'Candlemass bells' and their shape reminiscent of an earring accounts for it's name. Yet the snippet of folklore I like is that it derives from Adam and Eve, despairing of the endless winter, Eve saw an angel, who caught some snowflakes and made them into spring flowers to bring hope for the arrival of spring. And that is what I mulled over as I wandered through the gravestones admiring these delicate but tough spring flowers, bringing a ray of hope to the cycle of life, birth, death, winter and summer we all endure from the cradle to the grave, but even on a day like today these snowpiercers give out their brilliance and a ray of hope! 

February 8th 2014

 

Two connected images 8 miles apart. In recent years Julie and I have gone out on Saturday morning for a coffee, or breakfast, or just to read the papers. Usually this is to Cobbs Farm Shop near Hungerford, or Plank's Farm Shop near Devizes. Today it was to the latter. The café is a funny ramshackled sort of a place but that's why we like it. The tables are old cable drums and the café also doubles up as a gift shop. The drive over there however was dramatic as this part of Wiltshire as with many other parts of southern Britain are flooded, serious localised flooding. Every field it seems is waterlogged and any part of the road that is low lying is awash. In fact in this relatively high part of Wiltshire we passed through 2 temporary traffic lights to control traffic through floods.  And so after our refreshments we drove back via Silbury Hill near Avebury, which I have now renamed the 'Isle' of Silbury. Quite dramatic in its floodwater moat but there is a more serious side to this in that it should not be in a waterlogged landscape and so as I later learned there are concerns over the stability of the chalk slopes on this 4,000 year old man made hill. I hope this is not an example of human history being eroded by the possible human induced change in the weather.

February 7th 2014

A shocking exhausting day. Weather grim, in fact so grim its becoming comical if it wasn't so serious for those affected. Work busy, Julie still not 100% after her scare in January so I'm up and down the UK's flooded road network and motorways burning candles at both ends by the dozen. So it was good to get home at 7.30pm and be told to sit down, supper is ready, don't move. So there I sat on the sofa, having been told to, glass of wine in hand and a tray meal of vegetarian haggis, potatoes, cabbage and peas thrust in front of me. I love vegetarian haggis, very filling but every mouthful feels like an improving pick-me-up as the ingredients are most wholesome. It went down a treat I can tell you, especially accompanied by a red wine or two. So with that consumed the efforts of day took hold of me and bed by 9pm. A perfect end to a difficult day.

February 6th 2014

I didn't take this photograph today. And those of you with a quick mind will have already discovered that fact. So why on a day when it has rained for 12 hours, when everywhere is flooded, sodden at best, have I posted a high summer photograph. Well because I stumbled across this photograph while looking for something else on the laptop. Taken last May it epitomises what I love of the Marlborough Downs, a landscape that on the 6th of February, today, I drove over looking grey, cold, waterlogged and as though the entire lifeblood had drained out of it. But nature is resilient, really resilient and in a few months when the sun has risen again to provide a bit of warmth the poppies of Wiltshire will once again flower over the chalk downland. I shall look forward to that day. I posted this photograph on Twitter and within an hour over 12 retweets plus half a dozen comments, all saying it has cheered them up on a day when it seemed rain was the only element on earth. And for that I'm glad.

February 5th 2014

 

Well what can I say, today has been another rip roaring winters day. Gales, pestilence, driving rain, even the shipping forecast had an air of excitement about it; at one point using the phrase for wave height off Cornwall as 'phenomenal';

Sole : Storm warnings - Issued: 2000 UTC Wed 05 Feb

At 051200 UTC, low 61 north 29 west 960 expected 60 north 40 west 959 by 061200 UTC. Winds will reach storm force 10 at times in the far northwest of West Northern Section and the far southwest of Denmark Strait after 060300 UTC. New low expected 45 north 50 west 977 by same time. Winds will reach storm force 10 in the southwest of West Central Section after 061800 UTC.

 

Area Forecast - Issued: 2000 UTC Wed 05 Feb

 

Wind West 7 to severe gale 9, occasionally storm 10 at first, decreasing 6, becoming cyclonic, mainly north later, 6 to gale 8, perhaps severe gale 9 later.

 

Sea State High or very high, becoming rough or very rough. Weather Squally showers, rain later. Visibility Good, occasionally poor.

Outlook for following 24 hours

From 2000 UTC on Thu 06 Feb 2014.

Hurricane force winds expected in East Central Section and West Central Section with storms expected in West Northern Section and Denmark Strait. Gales or severe gales expected in all other areas. 

So there's nothing for it but to batten down the hatches and head into the school tuck shop and have an early Cadbury's Cream Egg. Although as this photograph was taken at 8am, even for me that's a bit early!

 

February 4th 2014

We all pass the humble city, or feral pigeon without maybe thinking about where they came from. It is almost impossible to calculate how many feral pigeons there are in Britain but there are less than we think. Familiarly, coupled with many pigeons often being congregated in small areas of a city often makes one think that every city is awash with more pigeons than the city can cope with. But ecology and population dynamics are not ideal for wildlife in our urban areas. With that, best estimates are around 500,000 breeding pairs across the UK, with maybe 2-5,000 in most cities. To put that into context there are around 4-5 million breeding pairs of blackbird, possibly as unlike the blackbird, the feral pigeon is closely related to human settlements, not the wider countryside where the woodpigeon or stock dove are more numerous. Although they can have their problems, disease carriers, seen as pests, I like pigeons as they bring a little bit of the wild into our urbanised areas. Their ancestors are the rock dove of which just a few hundred now cling to a precarious existence in the remote cliffs along the western side of Scotland and a few islands. Humans domesticated these birds over time and it is from that domestic stock that our feral pigeon derives, from escapees.  So next time you walk past a small flock of pigeons as I did today, just enjoy that feeling of a little bit of the wild being brought into the well ordered concrete city.

February 3rd 2014

It has been a mad and hectic two weeks for me with repeated 140mile round trips up and down the M4 and the M5 to be both at work and to be with Julie while she was poorly. I don't mind the travelling at all but it is exhausting, and so tonight I was at home at the beginning of what I hope is a spell of less moving about. I am exhausted by it all but a few early nights is what the doctor ordered. And so to bed at 8.30pm with a big mug of hot chocolate. I do like Green & Blacks Hot Chocolate and having heard that hot chocolate can ward off the crippling disease dementia, it is a goodly excuse to drink this elixir regularly.

February 2nd 2014

 

Amongst my many interests, monochrome photography is increasingly fascinating me. In a society deluged by colour images there is something aesthetic I find quite exciting about a black and white study. I think its the texture coupled with a limited palette of colour for the senses, which allows the viewer to see a different image to one which is in full technicolour. I'm not sure exactly what we see different but with black and white images the image is maybe second to the story the image is trying to say. Two images taken this weekend. Avebury church and cottages today and our pheasant in the garden yesterday.

Frbruary 1st 2014

 

It comes to something to be posting in my diary the arrival of blue skies and sunshine. However this winter has been pretty bad down here in the south and south west of the UK, with it being recorded that it was officially the wettest January on record. We're in a new month now, the season of Imbolc and as if a light switch had been flicked I woke this morning to unbroken blue sky. So wonderful was this that I had all the windows open for an hour to air the house - there is something restorative in getting fresh air into houses after the winter dormancy. We may still get a cold snap but I can feel the heat in the sun now, it's not going to be long until we can all venture outside and feel warm. I must be getting old if I'm craving sunshine and warmth!

 

While I'm on our resident pheasant enjoyed todays warmth too.....