Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 6)

Another walk today, in better weather, although in the last hour of daylight, as the sun sank towards the horizon, it turned very chilly indeed. But we reached our goal, the lake in the northwestern corner of Tottenham Cemetery, and having bought some bread along the way did not disappoint the ducks and geese -- who clearly expect to be fed by visitors, since their response to the appearance of humans is to come straight over to them. Almost all of them, anyway; the tufted ducks didn't seem to be interested, and nor did some smaller, more elusive waterfowl which Judith theorised from our copy of Jonathan Elphick's The Birdwatcher's Handbook might be teal.

Other species sighted were Canada geese (which, like the Canada geese in Lordship Rec, come right up to you and peck in the direction of your fingers), mallard, coots (which also came over for some bread), and moorhens (which didn't). There were also what we think might be a couple of hybrid species: three examples of a cross between mallard and some sort of domestic duck, which had grey heads, a white collar, brown chests and mostly white wings and bodies (although one of them had some black stripes on the wings); and one goose which might have been a cross between a Canada goose (same size and colour of body) and a white or a greylag goose (white head on a shorter and thicker neck, which was also white), with a beak more like that of a duck's and pronounced pinkish-orange feet. One of the photographs here shows that goose alongside the Canada geese, for the purposes of comparison.

The other photographs show Judith casting bread upon the waters; a scrum of mallard ducks fighting for a piece of bread (this photograph also shows two of the hybrid ducks referred to earlier): and a Canada goose which appears to be blind in its left eye, or so we deduced from the fact that it didn't seem to respond to anything happening on its left-hand side and the curious manner in which it kept twisting its neck to keep things in view. Ordinarily, a bird with such a deformity would not long survive in the wild; the fact that this one is living in Tottenham Cemetery and receives food from visitors as well as whatever it can find for itself is presumably what keeps it alive.

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 5)

We went for a "post-prandial" walk today, aiming to do a grand circuit of Downhills Park -- Lordship Rec -- Tower Gardens Estate -- Tottenham Cemetery -- Bruce Castle Park, but the weather was against us. The day had begun bright and clear, but as we breakfasted clouds began rolling in from the northwest, and by the time we set out a chill wind was picking up. In the open spaces of Lordship Rec, it was a disincentive to continue -- so after donating all the bread we'd taken with us to the geese and ducks on the small lake in the Rec (instead of saving some up for the coots and moorhens on the Cemetery lake), we returned home.

(A couple of hours later, of course, the sky cleared again and the wind died away. Bloody typical.)

We'd also taken some peanuts for the squirrels in Downhills Park. Despite being notionally wild creatures, the Downhills Park squirrels are so habituated to park users that they practically come up and mug you for food -- and will happily take it straight from your hand, as the first two pictures here show. (The bare hand is mine; the gloved hand is Judith's.) Come to that, the geese at Lordship Rec will take bread straight from your hands as well....but then they're much bigger than the squirrels, and probably routinely beat up dogs and toddlers who get in their way. So here's a photograph of one of them taking bread from my (gloved) hand.

Back home again, we have now completed the second jigsaw and embarked on the third. For dinner this evening: a leg of pork, roasted, with a similar range of vegetables to that on Christmas Day.

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 4)

We completed the Hadrian's Wall jigsaw earlier today -- and, after a brief pause to admire our handiwork (the images on many of the pieces were so formless that for parts of it we had to resort to the "brute force" method of trying every remaining piece in turn to get a fit for the slot we wanted to fill) broke it up to make the space to start another one. This second jigsaw -- shown in the second of these photographs -- is one of a batch of five I picked up outside a house at the top of our street, where they had obviously been put out in the hope that someone would freecycle them rather than seeing them thrown away. As you might be able to see from the picture, we got a head start on this jigsaw because it hadn't been completely broken up after last being made, so that whole sections could be lifted from the box. Yes, that's definitely cheating....but on the other hand, only two of the five jigsaws I freecycled came in their original boxes; the other three were in an old shoe box, sorted into three plastic bags with no accompanying images to show what they might be. Weeks of fun, I'm sure!

We might not get around to making those three jigsaws this holiday. So instead here's a picture of the 1960s retro-chic lava lamp that Judith bought me; pulsating close-ups of hot wax action! And to finish, a picture of Judith about to commence our Christmas dinner yesterday evening: roast duck with our own potatoes, parsnips and jerusalem artichokes, plus bought-in carrots and brussels sprouts (our own plants failed to produce this year), with home-made gravy, cranberry sauce and sage-and-onion stuffing. And plenty of red wine to accompany it all. Yum!

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 3)

Some more photographs of our activities -- Judith working on the jigsaw; Judith with her new Barbie doll (a 50th anniversary Barbie edition,which is apparently slightly different in shape from the original -- smaller breasts, wider hips, longer legs -- and therefore won't fit the wardrobe of her existing, original Barbie doll); and our Christmas cake, with faux Christmas scene. Yes, that is a plastic donkey!

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 2)

Later this evening, after a drinks party at a neighbour's, we'll be doing what we usually do every Christmas, and breaking out a jigsaw. In this case, it's one I bought in the National Trust shop at Housesteads on Hadrian's Wall in May, showing Milecastle 39 with Greenlee Lough beyond it. For comparison, here's a photograph of the jigsaw's box lid with a panorama I took of very much the same view while walking the wall from Steel Rigg to Housesteads. (Housesteads Fort itself is just behind the clump of trees in the far background.) On the right of the photograph, the leading members of the group we were with are descending the hill towards the milecastle; Judith is second from the left.

Blogging our Christmas Holiday (part 1)

We went to the allotment earlier this afternoon, to dig up some parnsips and jerusalem artichokes to go with the duck we'll be having for dinner tomorrow. (This was of course after I'd been to the consumeroid horror that is the local Tesco to stock up on wine -- red to accompany the duck, white for other times -- and beer. And various assortments of nuts -- nuts are so a Christmas thing in the UK.) Although the temperatures are back above freezing, there's still plenty of ice and frozen snow on the ground, not to mention great thick caps of ice on the water tanks and the pond. (The surface of the pond could at first sight almost be mistaken for a sheet of glass: an illusion attributable to the top centimetre or so of the ice having melted and the light being reflected from the ice layer it covers. We hope that any frogs hibernating in there will survive the freeze.)

A photograph of the reflecting pond is one of the images displayed here. The second is of an ice sculpture formed partly (we theorise) by freezing water sloshing out of some plastic basins as they toppled from where they'd been stacked, and partly by a leak from the tap attached to the water tank, where a nut that perhaps needs another quarter-turn to tighten it fully is allowing a thin spray of water to jet out.

The other two photographs are of the real actual wonky-shaped parsnips that we get from our allotment. This wonkiness is due to the stoniness of the soil, which prevents them producing the nice straight thin cones preferred by supermarkets. We could, if we felt so inclined, sieve the soil minutely to remove the stones, like one of our fellow allotmenteers does for his parsnips; but (a) crop rotation means that we never grow parsnips in the same bed every year and would therefore have to minutely sieve them all, and (b) sieving of that minuteness bespeaks a level of tidiness of which not even I am capable. Well, actually, I probably am capable of it....had I nothing else to do at the allotment but sieve stones.

Deep and Crisp and Even

You may have heard that it's been snowing in parts of the UK (in northern Europe generally, in fact), causing immense disruption to the transport system. Luckily, we haven't had to travel anywhere (except for a visit to my parents in Lyme Regis this weekend just past), so haven't been majorly affected.

(All those travellers moaning and complaining about the interruptions to their rail and air services should have lived through the winter of 1962-63 (I think it was -- that or 1963-64), when the snow fell in December and stayed until March. We were then living in the village of Porton, outside Salisbury, and for several days at a time couldn't get out of the village at all; the roads were that impassable. Modern yoof of today -- don't know they're born, stuffing themselves with junk food, surfing for naughty pictures on the internet, etc. etc.. Hanging's too good for them -- string 'em up anyway -- where was I?)

Snow doesn't tend to stay very long when it falls in London, because the "heat island" effect means that the temperatures very rarely fall below freezing. But below freezing temperatures are what we have now, because the conditions are almost totally windless, meaning that the air mass which has moved down across the North Sea from Scandinavia has not been shifted out again by the westerlies which normally determine our weather. The snow which has fallen has therefore stayed; where it has melted at all, it has turned to ice (visible and invisible), making the roads and pavements very slippery. It is therefore possible that we will be having a white Christmas here in London, and the bookmakers who take bets on this sort of thing every year will be paying out big time. (Ho ho. Or ho ho ho, as Father Christmas might say.)

These photographs were taken yesterday evening, at around 6.00pm, a few minutes after the snow had ceased falling. (It began as cold rain about 3.00pm and then turned to sleet before falling as snow at around 4.00pm.) They show the views from our windows, and from the streets outside, as we headed off for a drinks party at a neighbour's. The images look brighter than the conditions actually were, because I was using the camera's "night landscape" setting with a long exposure time; that accounts for some of the blurring.

Adventures with plumbing (to be continued)

Adventures with plumbing

1) Kitchen floor all awash, like a lake, when JN padded down in still-dark on Tuesday morning. Anguished yells! Panic! Water dripping from the ceiling light -- though not causing it to short out. Must be coming from the bathroom above, though no leaking visible there. Central heating pipes running between the joists seemed an alarmingly probably suspect. So I call the number pinned on kitchen notice board for a friendly local plumber, who is immediately on his way, while JN sets bucket to catch the dripping and mops up the lake from the lino. Dave the plumber's first step is to drain off the central heating. Then checking upstairs, he finds in the bathroom that its a little silvery hose that runs between toilet cistern and bowl has sprung a leak, with the water soaking down through the rubber-backed carpet until, presumably, it followed the electricity wiring down through the ceiling below.

Dave has replacement little silvery hose in his van, and in a trice the leak is fixed. Two days later, though, we still have the bathroom carpet peeled back and draped over a couple of wastepaper bins so the floorboards and the carpet itself can dry out. They've lost all their sopping wet spots, but still definitely damp. We also have two of Dave's spanners, which he left behind, to be collected...

However: he told us that the pressure release valve (PRV) tucked behind the back our central heating boiler was not installed properly -- it doesn't release the water (or steam if it were running) in a swift 'pffft' as it should but (the note he left us says) 'water escapes from between PRV and expansion pipe'. So we ought to get that fixed. British Gas disclaims responsibility for incorrect installation beyond the 1-year guarantee period -- and will charge either just under £100 + £22 month 'homecare' package or a one-off £200 for doing the repair. The former only saves money if you call them out about 3 times a year. So next step: check with Worcester, the manufacturer, and see what they say, though installation error doesn't come down to them... get back to Dave for his rate for the job...

Meanwhile...

2) Bathroom extractor fan went kaput. Again. It was installed last year, and is still under 3 year guarantee. The firm that initially recommended it and installed it now says the wonderfully elegant spaceship-round (Ikon) has proved so unreliable that they aren't doing them any more. We bought a model that boasted a humidstat control, set off by moisture level, which rapidly broke down. Okay, I said after the third call-out to replace it, we can manage on just the pull-cord and timer. We got it set up to operate independent of the light circuit -- so the fan wouldn't start up every time the light was switched on, and could be run without switching on the light. And it ran okay for just over a year, then something blew. First call, Jim the electrician was sent out with a normal square ugly replacement extractor fan -- which would need a new and different shaped hole bored through our newly insulated bathroom wall, and which did not have a pull-cord control but could only be set up to run off the light switch. So he took it away, and the firm promised to replace with a new Ikon, with pull-cord and timer but no humidistat, with new 3-year guarantee. But when he unpacked it from its box here yesterday, they'd sent a model without the pull-cord and timer module.

What we have now is at least a sort-of working set-up: with the old timer+pullcord module re-installed and connected up to the light circuit, the fan will only go when the light switch is on, when it starts vaguely spinning. Then the pull-cord sets it going properly until the timer cuts out (and it goes back to vaguely spinning), or switching off the light instantly switches it off. But at least we can de-steam the bathroom without having to open the window to the winter air and traumatise my windowsill maidenhair ferns and orchid.

Seasonal observances

Just had a very busy three days!

Yesterday: 'Big Wave' pre-Copenhagen climate march, for which we duly dressed in blue. Joseph carried the Tottenham & Wood Green Friends of the Earth banner, and one of our bods had made herself a very fetching polar bear costume and sign saying 'Has anyone seen my habitat?' The news sites today say just 20,000 marched in London -- which seems impossibly low. It took 2 hours after the scheduled start time for our bit of the march to actually get moving, the same sort of delay as the million strong anti-Iraq march, or the 100-250,000 strong anti-nuclear marches. The whole of Piccadilly was definitely filled up by the march -- seems like there's a '0' missing from the official count.

Yesterday evening: local Civic Society Xmas dinner, at our local traditional country pub, the Ferry Boat, which sits on an island in the river Lea. JN is secretary, about 30 people. We took over one wing of their dining area, spread out at little four-person tables. Good tucker, then a communal lift home in Wendy's mini-van.

Friday evening: Wards Corner 'Winter Warmer' social, at what used to be the local Royal British Legion building, which has been taken over as a community centre called Tottenham Chances. That very day, the news came through that the Save Wards Corner campaign has been granted leave to take their appeal against a judicial review decision supporting the Council to the High Court. Entertainment featured a ukelele band, a cayley band (with a very dictatorial caller), an excellent bellydance trio (who borrowed the belly dance belt I wore along, as they were one short!), then a good Motown style singer -- whose set went on rather long. Not as much get up and dance time as at previous WCC socials. They'd sold very few tickets in advance, so were quite worried about numbers -- but it was packed out with people who paid up the higher 'on the door' price, and made a nice £800 profit to support the struggle. JN ended the evening fairly spectacularly inebriated -- I had to send a chap (the Civic Society chairman) in to retrieve him from the Mens WC, with various other blokes emerging looking highly amused... So at the Civic Society dinner, we were greeted by 'So you did get him home safely...' comments...

Thursday: TWG FOE Xmas meal, at an Indian restaurant in Wood Green -- all of us at one big table this time, next to a fountain with goldfish. Food was fine, jolly sociability, lift home with deputy leader of the local Council who is partner of our FOE Co-ordinator, who'd left her car parked in the official space marked for 'Leader of the Council'.

Quite a lot of overlapping people among all these different events -- Sue P (with whom I run plant stalls during the summer) and her chap Nick were the only people at all of them. Today: do shopping, hope the current sunshine dries the ground out enough for us to get to the allotment and dig up potatoes. Next week: I have a retirement party on Weds, JN has organised a 'thrashette' with his various girlfriends from work on Friday eve', Saturday is Friends of Tottenham Marshes Xmas social down at Picketts Lock on the Lea during the afternoon. The following weekend, we head for JN's parents at Lyme Regis, for his birthday. Plans for Xmas itself: eat, make jigsaws: we bought a Hadrians Wall jigsaw when we were up there in May, and the other day JN found a couple of plastic bags containing two jigsaws in their boxes and three jigsaws in plastic bags which no picture to show what they are.

Seasonal cheerios, etc....

What we're up to

1) Socio-cultural quota
We've had just one or two free weekends after the wind-down of the summer community events season -- and now the Xmas sociability is overtaking us, plus a bit of pre-Copenhagen CO2 action. Yesterday was food co-op and community cafe up at Lordship Rec/Broadwater Farm, then 'Passing shadows and Reflections' exhibition opening at Bruce Castle of photographs by our local notable wildlife photographer and founder of Friends of Tottenham Marshes David Cottridge -- abstract patterns and textures found in nature: lots of tree bark, lichen and the games water plays with reflections and light. This afternoon, there's an 'Open Studio' in Sylvia's big house a couple of streets away, for those of us living hereabouts who do arts and crafts to show what we do. Thursday is local Friends of the Earth Xmas meal (JN is treasurer and membership sec).

Friday is Wards Corner Winter Warmer -- fabulous fundraising knees-up with local bands, food etc -- do come along if you're in the vicinity!

Saturday there's the big climate march, followed by Totttenham Civic Society Xmas meal at the Ferry Boat Inn by the river and reservoirs. And the following Saturday is Friends of Tottenham Marshes Xmas social. Then we head to JN's parents in Lyme Regis the following weekend -- then back home to collapse for what we hope will be a nicely slothful Xmas at home.

2) Life aquatic
Just on two years ago, I took up swimming to counteract winter sloth and accumulation of insulating flab. Once I found that goggles, swim cap and ear plugs take the pain out of putting head under water, I've taken to it like a, err, fish to water, and finally mastered overarm (crawl, freestyle) and just recently, the modern 'wave' or dolphin breastroke -- though I still find it faster to keep head underwater for multiple strokes. So I now reckon 80 lengths (in about 55-60 mins) as a short swim, 100 lengths (in about 70-80mins) as normal swim, and 120 (in 90-100 mins) or 160 (in about 120 mins) for longer stretch. I've even started working my way through 'how to swim good' books: Janet Evans 'Total Swimming' is the best I've found so far. Now working on trying out the various stroke drills, and including more 'speed' lengths. Also having an occasional go at butterfly. So far, completely failing to somersault for tumble or flip turns at the ends. Aiming for three or more swims a week: this seems to have stabilised my weight, but not reduced it at all -- however, I tell myself, it should now mostly be muscle which is denser and heavier than flab.

3) Werking at home
Joys of laptop, remote log-in to werk IT system, mobile phone -- so much easier to concentrate at home on the thinking, writing, analysis and even reading that are supposed to be the core of my job. At least, once I switch into 'at werk'mode -- and home distractions are proving less distracting than open-plan office werk distractions. It gives back the couple of hours a day otherwise spent commuting, lets me grab swim bag and fit in the aquatic regime, and nip out to local shops or neighbours. The downside is the loss of face-to-face casual encounters with colleagues; however, none of my actual team-mates are located in the London office where I'm based. On balance, I used to find that it was only at the end of the day, when others started heading off home, that I could manage to focus down on the big stuff rather than juggling small, reactive incoming stuff -- now, at home, I can focus right down on the big stuff for most of the day, and feel more effective -- 'cultural ecosystem services' is my current favourite game. But it does make me feel even more semi-detached from the organisation, particularly the growing mass of bureaucratic process. On balance though, I think it probably does give the organisation better productivity -- and for me, it gives a sense of liberation and enjoyment that feels too good to be really legitimate...

4) Electrickery
Werk has a corporate commitment to cut the organisational eco-footprint by 50% (and has also signed up to the weaker 10:10 pledge). So its acquired some 'smart meters' for loan to staff. Ours arrived while I was down with a cold -- and as I emailed back, watching it provided about the level of intellectual stimulation I could cope with in that state. The electric kettle produces a huge surge, so I've taken to boiling kettle-full and filling up a thermos flask with the extra. As well as eliminating all the 'make another cuppa' switchings on, this means instant hot water rather than waiting about for kettle to boil. JN's old desktop computer is another big energy-guzzler -- much more so than either of my laptops (werk and own). Switching on the kitchen fluorescent light pretty much doubles the normal (.04-.07 kwH) background consumption of running a couple of CFCs, the CD system, a laptop and broadband. So far our daily usage totals have fluctuated between just under 300KwH to somewhat over 500KwH, with weekly totals between 20-25KwH -- or 10-15 kg CO2. I'm not sure how where that puts us in the energy efficiency league -- have yet to track down the info sources on that.

However, this year our central heating thermostat didn't switch on the boiler until at least six weeks later than the autumn temperature fall would previously have had us shivering -- we're certainly feeling the benefit of the insulation work we had down last year. No feeling of chill striking in through walls, so the inside temperature stays steadily comfortable.

Our other new toy on the electrickery front is new fridge-freezer, very tall -- maximum freezer capacity, five drawers, all the way up to my chest, to store summer fruits and other allotment produce. New luxury accommodation for our lavish fridge magnet collection.

5) Other stuff
This year we've been to Hadrian's Wall, Sutton Hoo, by Eurostar to Avignon and Provence in spring, and to the Loire Valley with its chateaux in September. I flew for werk to "Norderns Ark zoo north of Gothenborg in Sweden. I taught on a couple of permaculture courses for Friends of Tottenham Marshes, and we explored up the Lea to Rye House and the Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey. We post about all this and other stuff on LiveJournal, at headgardener" for me, and the_gardener for him. Oh yes, garden and allotment are doing just fine, just mostly closing down for the winter.

26 years -- that's older than I feel!

For our 26th wedding anniversary, my true love gave to me: a miniature'grow your own Hanging Gardens of Babylon': this consists of a (roughly) 3" sq 3-tier plastic ziggurat in three pieces (scale 1mm=1m?), a compressed peat pellet, a dozen or so quite large round seeds, and this 3" square, 32-page booklet discussing the 'Seven Wonders of the World' as identified by the ancient Greeks, the history, archaeological evidence for, and practicalities of how the 'hanging gardens' may have been built and kept watered: water lifted from the river to the top tiers in a 'chain of buckets' mechanism, construction in stone, tile and lead lining as sun-baked clay bricks crumble with moisture. The seeds should, the booklet says, germinate in 6-7 weeks time -- just in time for Xmas.

JN gave himself a similar miniature Stonehenge: again, probably in something like 1mm=1m scale. I am now looking suitably sized for Spinal Tap figurines to accompany it. They did not come supplied on a grow-your-own basis.

I took JN out to dinner at the Ferry Boat Inn on the Lea, between Tottenham Hale and Walthamstow: an old-fashioned traditional English gastro-pub, catering for the anglers who hang out at the Walthamstow Reservoirs across the road; bird-watchers who visit the Reservoirs as an SSSI, Europa 2000 Special protection Area under the EU Birds Directive, and Ramsar wetland site of international ecological significance. So the dazzling pair of sequin-decked mini-Beyonces, both almost loudly and excitedly screaming into their mobile phones throughout their meal (perhaps that was their way of conversing with each other, though they were the main background noise, was a bit incongruous. A gaggle of a dozen or so assorted young persons, probably students just moved into the first building completed on the vastly ambitious Hale Village regeneration/development site, fitted in better -- one floppy-haired terribly English Tory-boy with insistently posh intonation the only one who obtruded offensively.

Ho-Hum

Today is Judith's and my 26th wedding anniversary -- which we share, apparently, with World Toilet Day.

Jokes about busted flushes, down the pan, etc., are probably inevitable.

The Beginnings of the End of the Anthropocene

It must be an artefact of getting older, as I remarked to an old CND friend at the weekend, but I seem to be spending an increasing amount of time thinking about the past -- not the historical past but my personal past: the things I did, thought, said....presumably because, at my age, I now have many more years behind me than I am likely to have ahead of me, and it is therefore more personally fulfilling to recall my life to date than to address what might happen in the next twenty or thirty years.

Although, as a long-time New Scientist reader, I do feel rather jealous of those now in their twenties who will experience the beginnings of the end of what the magazine has called the Anthropocene: that period from 2030 to 2050, once average global temperatures have resumed their expected upward path after the temporary period of cooling imposed by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, when the world's agricultural and industrial systems begin to falter and implode. It will of course be a chaotic time for our species; but for anyone who manages to live through it, it should also be an extremely exciting one. I almost salivate with anticipation....although, knowing what I do about the life expectancies of males born in the early 1950s in the developed West, I'm statistically unlikely to see much of it.

On the other hand, I have already lived through some exciting times. The 1960s had pop and rock music and the 1970s had the collapse of the post-WW2 social consensus, but the 1980s had the struggle against nuclear weapons and for (as I put it a couple of days ago) "a Europe whole and free", even though that was more of an intellectual than an emotional campaign and one with a result that I scarcely expected to see in my lifetime. But "all that is solid melts into air" as Marx put it, and it was a genuinely thrilling and heady time, in the summer and autumn of 1989, to watch the old order crumbling by the day and a new world come, disoriented and disorientating, into being. I doubt that those who experienced it will ever forget it.

And for that reason I think I can just about accept not experiencing the beginnings of the end of the Anthropocene.

It Was Twenty Years Ago Today

-- and we, quite literally, slept through the opening of the Berlin Wall because 9 November 1989 was the day we moved from our rented flat above a shop in Pimlico to a rented flat on the ground floor of a house in South Tottenham, and were so tired out from unpacking boxes and sorting out their contents that we went to bed earlier than usual. And woke the next morning to the incredible-seeming news that part of what we'd spent much of the 1980s working towards -- a Europe whole and free, and free of nuclear weapons -- had come into existence overnight.

The surreality was compounded by "Sunny Jim" Callaghan popping up on Radio Four in that morning's Today programme to solemnly warn the Tsar Russians "not to take advantage" of the Wall's opening. Quite what advantage he thought Gorbachev might take (tanks as well as East Germans making day trips into West Berlin, perhaps?) could only be conjectured -- especially since it was Gorbachev's public abandonment of Honecker's regime the month before which had brought about the Wall's fall.

We have a piece of the Wall, brought back by Judith on a subsequent trip to the former East Germany for the public transport interests for which she was then working. Our very own piece of Cold War history. Quite where the intervening twenty years went remains at issue!

New Fossil Pliosaur from the Jurassic Coast

According to the BBC report:

The exact location of the find is not being revealed, as Dorset County Council does not want to encourage people to head to the spot. The area is unstable and prone to rock falls and landslides. Richard Edmonds, Dorset County Council's earth science manager for the Jurassic Coast, said: "This part of the coastline is eroding really rapidly and that means the fossils that are trapped and buried are constantly tumbling out on to the beach."

-- and anyone who knows anything at all about the Jurassic Coast will recognise this immediately as a description of the stretch of blue lias cliff between Lyme Regis and Charmouth, and not be deterred at all.

That aside, it is really rather irritating that the fossil is reported to be going to the Dorset County Museum in Dorchester rather than the Philpot Museum in Lyme Regis itself, where it would have made a fitting companion to Mary Anning's ichthyosaur.

Happy Birthday Rosie!

Hope you had a good one... Do anything exciting? Did you get down to Albany for a hol?


Our news here... nothing much going on: we've bought a new fridge-freezer, with the biggest freezer space we could find to cope with allotment and garden harvest. The five-door freezer comes up to my chest. The neighbour who pops in to water the plants when we go away pointed out that the old one seemed to be running its motor all the time whenever she was here, while her fridge hardly ever needs to, and once I started trying to keep track, I found that she was quite right -- every time I thought to listen for it, it was running... and the fridge door seal seemed to have lost its oomph. Since it was only mid-point in energy efficiency when we bought it ten years or more ago, seemed worth while now that all fridges are A or A+ energy-rated, to buy a new one.

Last weekend, Joseph ascended into the attic to haul down the eight or so plastic boxes where my winter plumage was stored, then return them back up filled with my summer plumage. Plumage includes footwear. So now I have boots and woolly slippers instead of sandals lined up along the bottom of the wardrobe.

Autumn leaves falling, autumn chill set in -- but temperature inside is still warm enough that our central heating thermostat hasn't yet fired up the radiators. So the insulation we put in last year is definitely having an effect -- without it, we'd have needed the heating a good month ago.

1) Swam 160 lengths (4 km) in 120 mins on Friday...

2) Ran plant stall for Wards Corner campaign on Saturday: raised err... Well, there was £64.55 in the tin at the end of the day, but I put in £10 change as a float at the start, and some of it was from the campaign marquee selling mugs/t-shirts/canvas bags... So probably raised about £40 in all, from a day sitting in chilly wind, far too close to noisy polluting heavy traffic. Interesting to watch the people passing: most simply didn't register the plant stall, just not part of their worldview. It was a minority whose eyes were caught by plants: seeing the green, their eyes were caught, they had to just scan and check out what the plants were, even if they carried on walking -- even if not really interested, recognising plants was part of their world view. And an even smaller minority actually stopped to see what was on offer -- and most of those who stopped to check us out bought at least one plant, because they were plant-people and interested in local community.

However, I did manage to come home with just one small tray of selected plants-- a succulent, warmth loving Jamaican herb whose names include 'Spanish mint' and 'Guyanese thyme', and a clutch of verbascum/mullein/Aaron's rod seedlings to plant out around the allotment. After selling off all my previous plant stock about three weekends ago at Lordship Rec show, I'd re-built the stock up to half a dozen trays full of plants cluttering up our little back passage. Sociable dinner followed, celebrating the birthday of the campaign's events impresario at Caribbean Spice restaurant in West Green. Then home to watch a Monty Python evening on the teev -- or in JN's case, fall asleep in front of...

This afternoon, Civic Society members meeting at Bruce Castle -- JN is secretary. This morning: email and computer catch-up -- and over to my Seven Sisters Permaculture serious quasi-professional blog, to muse on the concept of 'cultural ecosystem services'. I think if you click my user-name on the panel on the right of this Hanna family blog page, it will take you through to my user profile and show the link to Seven Sisters Permaculture blog...

Cheers, all -- howya going?

Confused Blackberry

In my previous post here earlier this month, I uploaded a photograph of one of our apple trees which had put out some new blossom. (It seems to have been pollinated -- the petals of the flowers are gone and the buds at their bases seem to be swelling.) This morning, I came across another confused plant -- the blackberry, which had also put out some new blossom....presumably, to judge by its appearance, a few days ago. And that too appears to have been pollinated.

We wait to see what happens next. Perhaps not so much a white Christmas, as a petal-strewn one?

Confused Tree

Spotted this morning, although they've obviously been there for several days and I just hadn't noticed them until now: new blossom on one of our apple trees.

It's very unlikely that we'll get a second crop of apples -- the colder winter weather will kill off whatever fruits do form -- but it will be interesting to see just how far they do get.

Mangy Fox

We get foxes on our allotment: usually we see the evidence of them (nesting amongst the potatoes, rolling over young broccoli, little grey sausages of dried poo) rather than the creatures themselves, although yesterday one sauntered boldly past us as we were about our work of planting out peas and breaking up a fork lift pallet, and sat down on the neighbouring plot long enough for me to take its picture. As you can see from the photograph above, it's in terrible condition: presumably mange, although it also appears to be nearly blind. I imagine that whatever it's suffering from is what caused it to lose its natural fear of humans; I also imagine that when we go back to the allotment (probably next weekend) we'll find a dead body to be disposed of. Such is life.

Ticking Them Off One By One

I posted last month about our visit to Rye House Gatehouse and Rye Meads Nature Reserve; yesterday, we ticked another item off the list in my filofax with a visit to the former Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey -- a small town on the Hertfordshire-Essex border in whose church the body of King Harold was allegedly interred following his death at the Battle of Hastings, and which we first visited around ten years ago. At that time, work at the Gunpowder Mills had ceased and the site had been mothballed pending a decision on its future; it was eventually decided to transfer it to an independent trust and open it to the public as a tourist attraction.

Unfortunately. visitor numbers weren't anything like those expected, and the plans for the site were drastically scaled back: it is now open only at weekends in the summer months, in part because it is run largely by volunteers and subsists entirely from entry fees and donations. We didn't donate, but we did buy some stuff in the shop; and also bought tickets for a trip on the land train into the more distant parts of the site, which is otherwise closed to visitors because the remaining structures there are simply unsafe and because it's a recognised SSSI -- we saw evidence of badger activity (their latrines), many birds (but not the herons who were once there, and seem to have moved away), and I glimpsed a group of fallow deer which disappeared into the woods as we approached.

I even took a few pictures. (What a surprise, eh?) Here are, in order:

1. Part of the canal system used to move gunpowder, nitroglycerine, cordite and other explosive materials around the site;

2. One of the (partially restored) flat-bottomed barges used on the canal system -- the stern half would be canal-worthy were it attached to something that would float, but the bow half has decayed wood and holes in the bottom;

3. The so-called wildlife observation tower, formerly the concentrator for one of the explosives manufacturing processes. Note the round-arched bridge over the canal to the right of the tower; this is a characteristic of the site. The rules were that no one was allowed to cross a bridge while a barge was passing underneath, in case something fell on it and set off an explosion.

4. One of the buildings from which explosives ingredients were loaded onto the barges. You'll note that the canal has dried up. Note also the thick walls between each of the building's bays: these were intended to ensure that an explosion in any one bay did not set off a chain reaction in the others by directing the blast up through the roof of the bay, thus containing it. You can also see, just to the left of the picture, part of an enormous brick "traverse", again to guard against the spread of explosions.

5. A derelict gunpowder milling and pressing plant. The mill is the building on the right (the water wheel is the give-away) and the press is the contraption on the left, which would have squeezed the gunpowder into flat cakes to ensure its consistency and stability. The press would formerly have been housed in a wooden building, which has now disappeared. Between them is an enormous brick traverse, intended to protect the mill (machinery was expensive -- men were not) should the gunpowder go off while it was being pressed.

The Weight of The Fruit

After two wet summers in which the little fruit produced by the one pear and two apple trees in our garden -- most of what didn't fall off when still unripe was pecked by birds and nibbled by squirrels -- we've done rather well this summer. So many apples, indeed, that we've had trouble keeping up: most of them have had to be processed into jam (where the pectin helps set the blackberries, gooseberries or elderberries with which they're mixed), and others are being stored in the refrigerator until they can be eaten (either on their own or chopped into the morning muesli). And now the pears are coming ripe, too....

So here's a couple of pictures, of branches bent low by the weight of their fruit. Once free, they should spring back up -- but even then I think we'll have to do some heavy-duty pruning, to get the trees back into the shape they're supposed to be. That's "minarette" shape, as in keeping short branches close to the trunk, but obviously our trees have failed to RTFM and are behaving like full-size trees. But we'll learn them!

Wet stuff

4 km swim yesterday -- 160 lengths in 140 mins! Particularly pleased that I wasn't knackered afterwards, but able to settle down to 'working at home' -- with laptop on a tray across my knees, in my upstairs study comfy chair, with view of back garden and lots of little birdies playing around the bird feeders.

This weekend, we have the annual local street party on Sunday -- Joseph has made an info display on what being a 'conservation area' for local architectural heritage means; I'll be working on the book and/or plant stall. The last few weekends, we've visited Sutton Hoo in Essex, and Rye Gate House and nature reserve up the Lea. Next weekend, we're off to Lyme Regis and JN's parents for the end-of-August Bank Holiday.

Sutton Hoo is like Tolkien's Barrow Downs: a field where rich Anglo-Saxon burials, two of them inside ships, were found; the barrow down is on a ridge looking down on the Blacwater estuary, at the furthest point that ships could navigate up the river Debden. Around the pagan warrior burials there are later Christian-era Anglo-saxon bodies, some decapitated -- thought to be criminals who were hanged from a gallows up there, their bodies left with the ghosts of the heathen damned.

Rye House is just a local train trip up our river valley: it was one of the first houses in this country built of bricks, when they were a new-fangled architectural innovation. Then it was the base for an attempt to assassinate Charles II when he was due to ride along the road past it -- but he headed off early, so the assassins missed him -- but were caught when one of them betrayed the plot and got the chop themselves. Just the gatehouse now stands, on an island moated by a channel dug from the river. Beyond the old house, the wide flood plain is now nature reserve, partly managed by Royal Society for Protection of Birds, partly by the Wildlife Trust: Jospeh saw his first ever live kingfisher -- a fast-moving turquoise and russet streak that, every now and then, went into its nest hole in an artificial sandbank beside a weed-choked pool then headed back off towards the river to hunt more fishies. Masses of luscious blackberries ('please leave for the birds'), water buffalo keeping the grazing marsh grazed, grey heron, lots of wood pigeons.

Meanwhile, this is harvest season: masses of lettuce, runner beans, raspberries. Some blackberries. Tomatoes just starting to come ripe (a race against the blight which is taking hold on their leaves). Main job down the allotment is transplanting broccoli and cabbage seedlings so they can grow big and fat for winter harvest. Freezer already stuffed full -- but we think its time we got a new (energy efficient) fridge, and we've spotted one that offers an extra, fifth freezer drawer...

How are you all?

A Grand Day Out

One of many lists which I carry around in my filofax is of places in and around London to visit. I've had it for some years, and it gets added to from time to time -- and just as occasionally, a tick appears next to an item to show that it's been duly visited. These ticks don't appear very often, even though Judith and I tell each other at the start of every year that we really must make an effort otherwise we'll never see them at all....but then ordinary everyday life gets in the way and before we know it the summer's over, we've spent most of our time gardening, and places are closing up for the winter.

But this weekend just past we made an effort, and took a train up the Lee Valley to visit Rye House Gatehouse and Rye Meads Nature Reserve. There's not much to see at the Gatehouse, although the late medieval brickwork is worth more than a passing glance; one would probably see more from the roof during the winter, when the trees aren't in leaf, but as the property is closed to the public from October to March inclusive, only the Lee Valley Park Authority's maintenance staff ever have that opportunity. There's more at Rye Meads, mostly waterfowl; at this time of year, the meadows are being grazed by three water buffalo advertised as of Romanian origin (although how these animals differ from the water buffalo one finds in southern Italy was not at all obvious), and there was an excited notice in the visitor centre announcing that kingfishers had bred in the artificial sandbank in the northeast corner of the reserve. Predictably, the hide overlooking that sandbank was crowded; but we got seats, and waited. And waited. And waited....

When it arrives, kingfishers are less like the bird one sees perched on a branch on television wildlife programmes, and more of a linear phenomenon: a bright blue and red blur as it zooms down into the burrow (presumably with a fish in its beak), followed some seconds later by another bright blue and red blur as it zooms back out again in search of more food. In the fifteen minutes or thereabouts we sat watching, it zoomed in and out three times. But it does mean that, after a life of never having seen a kingfisher except on television wildlife programmes, I have now finally seen the bird for real.

Not something else to tick off, because we don't do that sort of birdwatching. But it was a grand day out just the same.

Avignon Old Town (Part 2)

Following on from a couple of days ago, a selection of some of the notable 18th and 19th century buildings in the old town. We begin with the Hotel de Ville and l'Opera (misleadingly renamed the Theatre; although opera en Francais does not have quite the same meaning as in English, "theatre" is not really a synonym); move on to what is now the Galerie Ducastel but was originally the Theatre Comedie, founded in 1660 and taking its present form in 1825, home to the opera bouffant tradition for many years; and then drop by two eighteenth century mansions which have been converted into museums -- the Musee Vouland, which houses a display of pre-revolutionary furniture and asociated objets collected by the 1920s industrialist Louis Vouland; and (in the very magnificent former Hotel de Villeneuve-Martignan) the Musee Calvet, based on but expanded from the collection of the 18th century's Dr Esprit Calvet: an engaging collection of paintings and portraits from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, which includes a number of singletons from famous Northern European artists such as Brueghel and Vlaminck as well as many pieces from less well-known French artists such as Nicolas Mignard, Horace Vernet and Jean Louis David plus any number of Provencal artists whose local fame did not survive their demise. But such is the way with art of all kinds....

Avignon Old Town (Part 1)

After a longer delay than I'd anticipated, I return with some photographs of Rue des Teinturiers, supposedly the most atmospheric street in the old town. It would also have been, at one time, the smelliest, for it was a street lined with workshops occupied by cloth dyers and fullers, who used the power provided by the water wheels to drive the wooden hammers that threshed the wool and cotton....and then tipped their waste dyes and other gunk back into the same small channel. At least the water flowed away from the centre of town, so that the smelliest smells were concentrated by the medieval walls, from where our walk along the street started. (Whether anyone would have wanted to buy cloth which they knew had been dyed and fulled in the workshops closest to the walls is left as an exercise for the reader.) The modern street is enlivened by sculpted blocks depicting a variety of scenes: animals, memento mori, whatever. Their exact function is a mystery, but then who said art had to be functional?

For those fascinated by the circumstances in which photographs are taken, these images were collected during a torrential downpour -- rain which had held off during the whole of our time in Provence but then arrived all at once on our final afternoon. We spent almost as much time standing in doorways waiting for the rain to pass as we did walking along the street.

Yet More Photographs

As promised yesterday, some views from the roof of the Palais des Papes, over Place des Papes. The first view is a general view southwest towards the River Rhone, just visible towards the top right of the picture; at the bottom right of the picture can be seen part of the exuberantly decorated facade of the seventeenth century Hotel des Monnaies, formerly the papal mint and now the music conservatory: it is seen to better advantage in the second picture. The third picture shows the view north, towards the Petit Palais, formerly part of the papal complex but now a museum of religious art, mostly of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; the building is seen to better advantage in the fourth picture. The River Rhone appears again on the left of the third picture; if you look carefully, the Pont de Benezet can be seen to the left of the Petit Palais.

Next time: selected buildings in Avignon's old town.

More Photographs!

Last weekend, the spring bank holiday weekend, we had an archaeologically and historically themed visit to Hadrian's Wall with some LJ friends. I ought to post some photographs of that, but we only returned on Tuesday evening and I haven't had the time to even download them from the camera, never mind sort them into labelled folders. Instead, therefore, we resume our tour of the Palais des Papes in Avignon, first with a couple of images of the Cour d'Honneur, a courtyard formed by the construction of the New Palace (on the south and west sides of the square) next to the Old Palace (on the east and north sides); then of the Cloister, the central square of the Old Palace; and concluding with the Grand Tinel and the Chambre des Notaires, respectively the banqueting and the audience chambers. (In theory, you're not permitted to take photographs of the interiors of the Palais, but you can take photographs of the exteriors, which include the courtyards and the cloister. In practice, this means everyone takes their cameras around with them and the interiors are photographed by default....when you're sure that the guards aren't looking, even though they're too few in number to properly police the photography rules.) Tomorrow: views from the roof!