“They can talk too, but they won’t.” *

Hello, remember me?  My blogging mojo has been on strike for a while now, but I’ve resolved to resuscitate this dying art – in fact, I’ve so resolved many times over recent months, but I’ve always been stalled by the lack of anything to actually write about.  Unlike more prolifically creative bloggers, I find it hard to just start writing without a topic, or a story, or both.  But this evening both landed in my lap.  I said to Z: “You should blog about that.”  She said: “No, you should.”  So here goes.

If you’ve visited the Zeddary, you may recall that between the dining room and the hall there’s a window.  It was actually part of the original Tudor fabric of the house, formerly an external window up in the roof space somewhere, which had been bricked up for many years.  It had been reinstalled where it is now, years ago, as part of a major extension/refurbishment.  It serves no particular function, apart from being beautiful and entertaining the cat.

Eloise Cat loves ducking through this internal window, flaunting her prowess at avoiding any delicate objects that might be stood on the sill.  Usually this isn’t a problem, but a while ago we put up a pair of heavy curtains on the hall side, to prevent her doing this when we were away and triggering the burglar alarm.  They’d been left closed last time, though they didn’t need to be.

This evening, as we were eating our dinner, Eloise Cat decided to investigate the corner cupboard where the best glasses and crockery are kept.  The door was open a crack, but she obviously couldn’t get in there.  But she was amusing herself, and us, by trying.

I remarked that we should open those curtains.  “She used to love going through there, and now she can’t.”

Eloise Cat turned away from the corner cupboard and looked at me.  “You reckon?” she said.

*A quote from Clive James, originally about dingos.

Caravan diaries (cont'd)

We had to collect some chickens from Herefordshire and bring them back to Norfolk, so the obvious thing to do was go to Reading, go to Pembrokeshire, open up the caravan, stay there for a few days, go to Herefordshire, pick up the chickens, go to Reading, and come back to Norfolk.  And so it came to pass.  About thirteen hours driving in all, but I don’t mind that.

Opening up the caravan is usually straightforward – you put the drain taps and the shower mixer back in, sweep up the dead flies, clean the green gunge off the outside walls and cut the grass.  This time, normality had gone slightly adrift.  The grass hardly needed cutting (Joseph has a new mower, which goes almost all the way up the slope in front of the van, which used to be entirely my responsibility). Far less green gunge than usual (the overhanging sycamores have been fairly ruthlessly pruned, although not enough for my liking – they’re still above ground level, vile weeds).  No dead flies at all (once some years ago I could hardly see the carpet for them, which was when I started spraying with Raid or Flit on departure, which helped but a few would still get through). 

The plumbing, though, proved unusually problematic.  Joseph had told me, ages ago, that the thing to do in the autumn was unscrew the four drain taps and just remove them.  Of course, he now denies this, and tells me I should have been following a whole different procedure, the detail of which is too boring to relate… anyway, I had several leaks, the last at about 3 a.m.  But once he’d fixed the underlying cause – a crossed thread – all was well and dry, and the problem will never happen again.

After that, it was just as it’s meant to be.  We walked through the tunnels to Saundersfoot (I wanted to make ghosty noises in the long one, like when I was eight, but didn’t want to scare Z), had a nice fish lunch at the Mermaid (now rebranded the Beach View, which is more accurate but less romantic, but otherwise unchanged in twenty years), walked around Tenby, watched the pale everchanging colours of the flat calm sea, failed to connect to the internet… everything as it should be.  No rabbits so far.

The chickens are gorgeous.  Z will no doubt tell you all about them.

Tortoises

This is the last in a miniseries. 

Tortoises are demanding animate boulders.  That’s all I really have to say on the subject, but this is a blog post not a facebook quip, so I’ll have to expound.

Let’s take boulders first.  Basically, they don’t move (but see animate below).  You can watch one for hours before it proves it’s alive by sticking its head out to see if there’s anything green within reach.  If there is, it’ll eat it; if not, it’ll stick its head back in and revert to boulderdome.  If you catch one in the act, feel honoured.  It’s almost interesting.

As I hinted though, they can be animate, in the sense of actually moving.  When this mood takes them, they can be surprisingly sprightly.  We caught the older one halfway across the lawn a few weeks ago, it having somehow scaled a brick barricade five times its height and sprinted the equivalent of two or three of our miles, before pausing for whatever is the tortoise version of breath and looking around for something acceptably green to eat, the basic lawn grass of course not fitting its strict dietary regime.

Which brings me to demanding.  I mustn’t say too much under this heading, because after all, once you’ve taken responsibility you have to discharge it, don’t you?  But really.  Who needs three custom-built palaces?  Especially ones you spend most of your energy trying to break out of?

Poultry

If you’ve never had a close encounter with a chicken, you’ll find it hard to believe how such a profoundly stupid creature could have survived the evolutionary process. 

My grandfather kept them in his garden, just down the road from my first home in a sedate suburb of Bournemouth, but I can’t honestly admit to having been particularly aware of them; I think they were probably discreetly disposed of by the time I was about nine.  But before that, he must have gone through the learning process I’ve recently embarked on.  Even grandfathers started out as babies, after all.

I’m learning fast, though, and I’m approaching some preliminary judgements about these curious beasts.

For a start, the cocks behave for all the world as if they were immortal, each of them certain in his own superiority to all other cocks, and prepared to fight to the death to prove it.

Secondly, the hens are determined to put themselves in danger.  All right, it’s nice to peck around in a great big grassy open space, but haven’t millennia of evolution taught you about predators yet?  Come home at night, idiots!

And thirdly, they’re all impossibly perverse.  Why, when a clearly superior being like me tries to help guide them in a sensible direction, do they persist in doing the opposite?  I try to chase them away from me, they run towards me; try to cajole them, they recoil.  It’s almost as if they think they know better – or would be, except that implies a thought process.

In a word – teenagers.

 

 

Animal Crackers

Until recently I hadn’t spent all that much of my life around animals.  My parents had two cats, consecutively – Scrap, who was a black adopted stray, evidently much loved, and Sandy.  Scrap died when I was about four, so my memories of him are almost entirely vicarious; and Sandy was a fat ginger neutered tom for whom I can’t remember ever feeling a scrap of affection.  (It was reciprocal, I’m sure.)  Then there were two dogs, again consecutive, both called Trixie, both Pembrokeshire corgis.  Trixie I died after only a few months in the family, and was immediately replaced by Trixie II.  I’d guess this was around 1953, when corgis had suddenly become quite fashionable.  I had to take this dog for walks, which worried me.  My fears were justified, because on one occasion a local male mongrel took advantage on my watch, fortunately without outcome.  I think Trixie II was ‘done’ shortly after this incident, thus becoming as fat and lethargic as Sandy the cat. 

Much later, I had two German shepherds, or Alsatians as the British public were trained to call them during WWII.  Again, these were consecutive.  The first was too friendly for his own good, wanting to socialise boisterously with every dog or human he encountered, which didn’t always work the other way.  He died of a mysterious virus at about two years, and was replaced with his temperamental opposite, a shy, nervous creature who was hard to get to know.  I loved him, but he scared me – not for myself, but for other people.  He was lucky to get away with some transgressions.

So my early experience of  animals wasn’t particularly special.  Recently, though, all that has changed, so over the next few posts I’ll tell you about some of my new friends, acquaintances and, dare I say, potential adversaries.

To kick off  with, then, cattle.  Or bullocks, to be exact – although I’m told that one of the seven is in fact still a bull: I haven’t attempted to verify this yet. As readers of Z's blog will know well, they visit the meadow every summer.   They’re placid creatures, but naturally inquisitive, and they don’t play to human rules, as I found when I incautiously went too close to one, just trying to be friendly, and he decided that my jacket looked like a tasty morsel.

They’re not stupid, though.  The other day, we found that they’d managed to remove the galvanised cover on the header tank of their water trough and hide it somewhere in the field.  This was the first move in a cunning plan.  They then unscrewed the ball from the ballcock, thereby causing the tank to overflow onto the surrounding ground and form a nice muddy lake, from which they were able to drink without having to raise their heads from their other important business, eating grass.

Aargh! They're back!

The dreaded harlequins!

But this time I'm ready for them...

Buzzy Caravan Visit

As I’ve said so often, always something different!  This time, insects.  Two earwigs had managed to find their way into the earwig-wide space between the glass splashback behind the bob, and the wall.  This splashback is secured by two pozidriv screws, which I had to loosen in order to insert a knife and entice them out.  I wish I could say I rescued them, rehabilitated them, and released them into the wild, but actually I squashed them with a bit of kitchen towel.

Be thankful that I’d forgotten to take the camera.

Then a bumblebee with a body as big as a Luques olive (I know this, I had a bowl of said olives on the table at the time) came in through the window right next to my head, just as I was settling down to a G&T and the early evening news.  I thought: do nothing.  Sure enough, it buzzed around the room for a bit, decided the news was too distressing (as had I), and exited the same way it had entered. Mutual relief there, I reckon.

And just before going to bed (this was all on Saturday evening) I killed three mosquitoes with three swipes of the swatter!  Fly-swatting is probably the closest I’ll get now to a racquet sport, since I gave up table tennis at the age of seventeen.

That’s about it.  Oh, except for the latest ‘THINK!’ sign on the Reading traffic information boards on my way back today:  “THINK!  TAKE MORE TIME TO LOOK FOR BIKES!”  Try as I may, I can’t make this mean anything.

Familiarity

One of the joys of a caravan visit, for me, is that very little changes.  Sometimes familiarity and continuity, though they can easily tip over into boredom or indolence, are what’s needed.

So, it was good that the rain started at Port Talbot (it always does, if it’s going to), and the sun came out just as I crossed the border from Carmarthenshire into Pembrokeshire (it sometimes does, if it’s going to).

And my caravan neighbours (who I call B & B to remind me of their names) were welcomingly there, as they always are every weekend (they only come from Pont Abraham, 45 minutes, alright for some).  And there were the usual seventeen (I counted!) rabbits mowing away when I filled the first glass of the evening.  (I say the usual seventeen; I’d guess they’re different ones from fifteen years ago, but I don’t know for sure; and neither do they.)

Then there’s Joseph.*  As well as being familiar, as he should be after fifteen years, he can be surprising.  This time, I needed to get rid of some very old, completely unsittable-on, plastic chairs, which I’d proved wouldn’t fit in the boot without some help.  As he explained, Joseph can’t take stuff to the tip anymore without incurring a charge, and his informal deal with the bin collectors has fallen through since they installed CCTV on the back of the lorries.  (I won’t repeat his remarks on this topic.)  He said he’d have a think. 

Half an hour later, he turned up at the caravan, toting an angle grinder.  ‘We’ll just chop their legs off, shall we?’

The journey home this morning was familiar too.  As soon as I’d crossed the Severn bridge, the rain stopped and the sun peeked out.

  

*Not his real name, he’s a very private person.

 

Five random notes

1. There was another gorgeous butterfly in the garden earlier, but it scarpered before I could get the camera. “Not ready for my close-up, Mr de Mille”, I heard it mutter as it fluttered away. Mostly black, with bright red flashes on its wingtips.  Any clues?
2. Back in May, I turned the central heating thermostat down to 18⁰C: it’s just clicked on (5.35 pm)!  Outside, it’s 15⁰, and hasn’t been much more all day.  How am I supposed to get those tomatoes ripened??
3. The letter ‘i’ on my keyboard is making an ominous clunky noise.  Could this be due to the residual presence of dried red wine? 
4. Rummaging through a drawer for an old butter knife, as one does, I came across the fork from a cutlery set I was given at my christening, back in 1942.  (The rest – knife, spoon? –  is lost; as is the butter knife.)  It’s solid silver, little lion on the back to prove it, and is engraved with my initials.  I found this quite moving for some reason.   I also discovered that, if you tap it on a hard surface, it plays a very interesting chord. 
5. Does anybody speak cat?  I can communicate with most dogs, but cats are mysterious.  I was sitting out under my bus shelter when a tabby who frequents the garden crept out of the shrubbery.  In the past, any friendly approach by me would be rebuffed with a startled stare and a dash back into the bushes – but this time it crept up, miaowing threateningly, came close enough to be briefly stroked, rolled over on its back and allowed its tummy to be tickled.  Then it jumped up and ran away like a scaredy-cat.  It might just be hungry, of course, but it’s not going to get fed around here.  Or it needs counselling.  Mysterious.      

*

Elusive

Alien Invasion

It had been a slow morning, and I was starting to wonder how I’d fulfil my self-imposed daily blog quota.  I hadn’t even been out of the house, except down the paper shop (and there’s rarely any bloggable material in that trip).  I’d done a bit of housework, including ironing (ditto).  And though the newspaper and the radio contained several rantable idiocies as usual, my rant mojo seems to have gone a bit limp lately, and besides, I did one yesterday.

Just after lunch, I went outside to put the wheelie bin out.  When I came back, I noticed that the back door, and some of the surrounding brickwork,  was covered in ladybirds.  And I mean covered.  I didn’t do a precise headcount (carapace count?), I’m not quite that dedicated, but there must have been, ooh, sixty or seventy.

It was the first time I’d seen a ladybird all year, indeed I’d been wondering about this, especially compared to last year when they were around for days on end.  Just when you’re pondering whether the lack of a single ladybird can be worked up into an entertainingly informative blog post (Ed: prob not), seventy turn up at once, a coccinellidaeous flashmob.  I can use this, I thought, and went inside to get the camera.  I noticed that several had already made their way into the kitchen.

Just then the phone rang, as a result of which I had to do some business on the internet involving aeroplanes, so it was an hour before I could make my way out again, camera in hand.  Guess what, they’d all gone!  Well, there were about four left, to convince me I hadn’t imagined the whole thing.  Oh well, I thought, another blog idea gone carapace-up.  (Or down.  Or something.)

I remembered the ones who’d snuck into the kitchen.  Gone too.  I’m not particularly paranoid by nature; but I will confess that I went up to check the bedroom.

 

A haiku

 

Here's a little moth.

Do moths eat cloth? Is that a

Myth?  I've no idea.

'that which eats away at anything, gradually and silently.'
'a fragile frivolous creature, readily dazzled into destruction.'

Horses no longer for courses

I was saddened, though not surprised, to read that at least a thousand horses have been killed over the last six years for failing to jump over an obstacle which proved too difficult for them, and which, to put it bluntly, had been designed to precisely that purpose.  If you don’t accept that contention, just consider – when you watch a steeplechase, is part of the excitement praying that your preferred horse will make it over the next fence?

I used the word ‘killed’ above in place of the euphemistic ‘destroyed’, or even worse ‘elective euthanasia’ (ugh!), which even the Observer’s report didn’t see the need to question.  The British Horseracing Authority, which puts the case for the defence, should be renamed the ‘British Weaselwords Authority’.   After trying to undermine the bare facts with the last refuge of the modern-day scoundrel, percentages (those 1,000 dead horses are a mere 0.2% of the total number of runs over fences, so that’s all right then), they assert, with a straight face, that “[t]horoughbred racehorses are not animals that take well to being turned out to a field … and sometimes the most humane option is to put them down.”  (Substitute “kill them” for the last three words, please.) 

I’d say the most humane option is not to make them do it.  Although I wouldn’t call myself an enthusiast (or a gambler – which is what it’s really all about), I greatly enjoy watching a flat race, almost as much as I imagine the horses enjoy running it.  But jump races have always made me a bit queasy, and learning that the death toll is getting worse rather than better doesn’t assuage this reaction one bit.

*

I was born in the Year of the Horse, and they sense this.  Whenever I’m near them, they seem to single me out, with a smile and a wink.  Once, I was walking (on a designated footpath)with companions across a field in Pembrokeshire in which three beautiful horses were running free.  The others were a bit nervous, but I was enthralled; until the young colt ran up to me, grabbed me by the sleeve and insistently tried to get me to join in.  I eventually got free (one of the older ones might have come over and had a quiet word, I’m not sure), and bore a little bruise on my upper arm for several days afterwards.  I saw it as a badge of honour.

I’ve never ridden a horse: something I’d add to my bucket list, if I had one.  I have ridden a camel, though, and a donkey.  And a tram.

 

More on wasps

I was going to write about how it is that reducing the number of pumps from twelve to six has increased the efficiency of my local petrol station, but this is much more interesting.

Why is this wasp so hooked on this chair?  He's been regularly coming back to it for two days now.  Okay, there's a smear of something that could be vaguely sugary, but even so.  And why hasn't he brought his mates along?   They only live next door, I'm told by my neighbour.

Do wasps eat anything?

Yes, apparently they eat midges.  (No, not Migs.)  I learned this from a man I found myself sharing a table with at a very long, very hot but very enjoyable garden party yesterday, over paella and fizzy liquid.  John was, he told us, a wasp expert in one of his several previous lives (you have to believe that, don’t you?), and explained at some length how they’ve had a bad press, because, well, because they eat midges.  Without wasps, we’d be midged to death.

Someone suggested that there are few wasps in the Western Isles, whereas there’s no shortage of them midges.  So what we need to do, I proposed, is reintroduce wasps to north-west Scotland, a bit like they did with red kites down here.  (Or nothing like they did with red kites down here, actually.)  Then they wouldn’t have to keep trying to eat us.  (The wasps, that is, not the red kites.  ‘They’ being the wasps, not the reintroducers. Or the midges.)

John had, understandably, no answer to that.  It was that kind of party.

Tomorrow, Dorset seagulls, I promise.

Number four from yesterday

“Do you have glis glis yet?” I was asked.  “You know, the ones Baron Rothschild brought over?”

“Keep talking,” I replied.  “This is bound to start meaning something eventually.”

When I got home I did some research.  It’s not in Chambers, even under its common name of ‘edible dormouse’, but the internet is less reticent.  These largeish rodents (by dormouse standards) were indeed brought over from Europe by the then Baron Rothschild, in 1902, and installed in his bestiary at Tring Park.  Naturally, they escaped (or were released if you believe the Daily Mail) and since then have apparently been devastating house prices across a 200 square mile of the Home Counties.   Well, you don’t want things that go bump in the night in your attic, do you?  Or that have developed the noteworthy skill of being able to gnaw through electric cables without being electrocuted.

They do have some endearing features though.  Their name, for a start.  ‘Glis glis’ must be one of the few cases of the scientific name being prefeered in the vernacular to the common one.  ‘Edible dormouse’ somehow isn’t very appealing – although they were indeed eaten in large numbers by the ancient Romans, and still are in Slovenia.  Also, they can make a noise like a lawnmower; it doesn’t say what sort, but I’m guessing not a Flymo or a sit-on diesel-engined one.  And best of all, they like to climb up window panes and then slide back down.  Aw!

If you find one, you’re not allowed to kill or release it – they’re a protected species!  You have to call your environmental health agency, who will come and take it away.  God knows what they do with it: hand it over to the present Baron Rothschild, presumably.  Or have it for supper.   

Keeping tags on them

The Government proposes to make electronic tagging of all dogs compulsory.  Fair do's, the Representation Of The Species Act hasn't yet been passed, so we can do what we like to the poor beasts, short of cruelty.  But I'd like to propose compulsory tagging of politicians.

This will tell you all you need to know about stray MPs.

Mouse tale

This was years ago.  I was getting the wellies out of the garage for a trip to the caravan.  We kept one set of industrial socks in the wellies in those days, another in the yomping boots.  This mouse had found a nice cosy nesting place, with a plentiful supply of bedding which only required a small amount of shredding, in one of V's Hunters.  I don't know which of us was more surprised, me or the mouse - I'll never forget the expression on its face.  It certainly had the quicker reactions, though.  V was in the kitchen doorway just in time to see it scuttle away under the cooker.

By the time we got to Wales, there'd been some embellishment.
"The place is infested with voles," our friends were informed. 
"Mice, I think," I added sotto voce.
"Voles!"  Her voice dropped.  "It was not a mouse.  It was a vole.  Wasn't it."

When we got back home, there were skirmishes.  I didn't really want to murder the poor little beasties, but I didn't particularly want them crapping underneath the cooker either.  I got some of those humane traps, the ones where the quarry crawls in after the bait and it tips up so it can't get out again, and bought peanut butter specially.  Friends were generous with advice.
"You need to take them quite a long way away.  They have a range of about a quarter of a mile, like wasps."
"Well, why don't the sodding wasps sting the sodding mice to death, or the sodding mice eat the sodding wasps?"  I enquired.  (We had wasps as well at the time.)

Eventually I came down one morning and one of the traps was clattering around.  Aha.  I put it in the boot (not the welly, silly, the car) and drove it up to Prospect Park.  I opened the trap and gave it a shake, and sure enough something dropped out and scarpered into the undergrowth.
What still preys on my mind (though not in my kitchen) is that, as I watched it run, it didn't seem to have a tail.  I hadn't even opened the drawer where I keep the carving knife.  I didn't look inside the trap either.  I threw it into the bushes after the vole and went home.

Ladies? Birds? Bugs?

I couldn’t get any pictures, but here’s a delightful one from a favourite photo-artist:

feliciti - hang loose

But yesterday, when the sun was full on the back of the house, there were several dozens of them.  Far more than the forty-two I rehabilitated last week during the Great Grape Picking Adventure.  At one point, I felt like a beekeeper.  I’m ashamed to say that I became less than solicitous in my behaviour towards them, and a few got swatted.  And as for the ones that decided to come indoors – well, there are rules about invasiveness, aren’t there?  They shouldn’t be immigrating hidden up my sleeves or in my hair.  I respect their right to inhabit the outdoors; they should equally respect my right to an insect-free house.  They do leave a nasty orange stain on the carpet as well.

Most of them were lurking around the back door.  I gather that this is fairly usual at this time of the year, as they look for warm places.  But I’ve never seen it on this scale before.  I can only put it down to the grape vodka.  I’ve told them and told them that it won’t be ready till the New Year, but they just don’t listen.  Tuh.

Bailey

Here's Bailey, in a barrel in my garden.

I believe this cat to be called Bailey purely from an overheard conversation in the post office quite a few years ago.  He's not telling.  But he looks like a Bailey's, doesn't he?  He often lounges around in the garden, and occasionally plonks himself on my back doorstep: it's brick and faces south, so it's a nice warm snuggly spot for a cat to snooze; especially a confidently controlling one.  When I turn up from the car, Bailey thinks about it then decides physical contact is not appropriate, so he slopes off a couple of yards away, sits down and challenges me with his eyes.  He's the rule-maker. 

Bailey is huge.  When I first saw him from the bedroom window, I thought a white panther had escaped from a local zoo, until I realised that there aren't any local zoos around here.  But that's not conclusive.  Here near the centre of Reading, there have been sightings of deer, pheasants, parakeets, red kites and grey wagtails and, once (admittedly a few miles up the road) a wallaby.*  Life is wild around here!

* Sorry, can't resist an old SIHAC definition:  'Wannabe: someone aspiring to be a kangaroo.'