Who moved my cheese?

I was very disappointed earlier this week to open my lunch only to find that I had failed to put anything in my wholemeal bread roll. I had, just a day before, prepared some egg mayo with the weekly lunches in mind. That morning, I had remembered to take out a roll for lunch. I had remembered to butter it. But I failed to remember to add the egg mayo.

I know how it happened. I wanted to use the knife to butter something else before it had egg mayo on it. Having done so, I obviously assumed that my work was done and promptly packed up my egg mayo-less roll into my lunchbox. Once it was there, the thought did not cross my mind until the inevitable moment of realisation that occurred as I lifted the wholemeal bread roll to my anticipating mouth.

A sizeable wave of disappointment washed over me. An egg mayo-less roll is not the worst lunch, but having bothered to prepare the egg mayo and with my mind expectant, I was struck by melancholy. My next thought was to wonder whether I had any other foodstuffs contained in my lunchbox that would improve an otherwise relatively dry wholemeal bread roll consumption. My only option was grapes. A grape sandwich, it turns out, is not that bad. In fact it is a definite improvement on relatively dry bread roll. It doesn't quite match up to egg mayo, but in the circumstances I was pleased with the outcome.

It crossed my mind that this monumental fail may have been the result of my increasing age and my corresponding lack of mental agility. Perhaps it was just one of those early morning dopey moments we all get from time to time, like when you accidentally pour apple juice onto your cereal instead of into a glass. Like in the wholemeal-bread-roll-egg-mayo conundrum outlined above, this is not the end of the world - indeed it makes quite a refreshing change - but when nursing a sleepy brain incapable of contemplating change and with the expectation of milk, it turns it into the precursor for a terrible day.

To avoid this situation from recurring, I am going to embrace change. I will celebrate getting lost as it allows me to investigate hitherto undiscovered locations. I will relish trialling new taste combinations, if only to rule them out as possible future lunchbox components. I will say yes to last minute dinner plans even though I need to use up a carrot that definitely won't last another day. I will accept Plan B even though it means I won't be able to get the washing on as planned. And I will do all of this even though I know that inwardly I will still be tormented by these ludicrous decisions.

Overthinking

I've lately been struck by a strange realisation. By lately I literally mean over the last half an hour. I logged in to Facebook as I often do. By scrolling down through the news feed I was able to pick out the latest updates from various friends and acquaintances, some close, others less so.

First of all I watched a dog push a cat into a bath. Then I read about the passing of someone's brother. Then I read about the birth of someone's twins. Then I watched a paper aeroplane hit a footballer in the head.  

Now I sit here stunned by the tragic, the exciting, the utterly banal and the completely hilarious and have absolutely no idea what emotion dominates me. My sadness for someone's loss is tempered by my excitement for someone else's gain. I am not fatalistic, I don't believe that there is a higher purpose, or that we are all part of a wider plan. But if you ever wanted a snapshot of life and death in the 21st century perhaps this is it: sandwiched inconsequentially between camera-phone video moments.

And despite my emotionally confused state, all of them were celebrations in one way or another. Nobody posted nasty comments or insults. Everyone laughed, cried, supported and congratulated in equal measure. Maybe 'social' could be the right word for it after all.

A Winter's Tale

In these dark days of winter one has to do what one can to keep warm. When the icy chill permeates to your bones it can take a long time to recover. Having moved into a reasonably cold house just in time to experience the long winter nights, I have been reminded of when I lived in a stone-walled cottage in Cornwall which was generally colder inside than out. People actually used to put coats on when entering the building. It had no central heating and the log fire was eventually condemned as unsafe for use. Ice would occasionally form on the insides of the windows. Anyone who has found themselves in similar conditions will likely have shared some of the following experiences:

1. You heat the room that you are spending most of your time in, just by being in there, wrapping yourself in blankets, eating there etc. But you probably don't sleep there, so when it comes to going to bed you have to start the process all over again.

2. Electric blankets, hot water bottles and/or fan heaters are essential.

3. When you go to bed, the sheets are cold, so you have to warm them up with a few minutes of 'cycling' - a process where you lie on your side, rotating all of your limbs in an attempt to generate enough friction between you and the sheets to cause warmth.

4. When you wake up, you feel warm and snug, but by moving a mere centimetre in any direction you expose yourself to extreme cold, and have to lie rigid inside your body's outline until you muster the strength to get up.

5. When you do get up you have to run to the bathroom and jump into a hot shower to give you temporary relief.

6. This is fact makes it far worse when you get out of the shower, as you are now cold and wet, and can't put clothes on until you are dry. This process happens in front of the fan heater.

7. Your clothes are also cold so you either take them to bed with you to warm them through the night, or you hold them in front of the fan heater to heat them up. In some cases, hot air from the heater can be directed through the garment to ensure that it is warm on the inside when put on.

I recounted one or two of these instances to some friends, and there was a completely different response from my British friends, who understood exactly what I was on about, and my foreign friends, who presumably have only experienced mild European winters. Or perhaps they have sensibly lived in warm houses with central heating and effective boilers.

I suspect in summer I will complain about it being too hot.

Valentine's Day Performance

With plenty of leave left to use before April, I decided to take an extended Valentine's Weekend off work to accommodate the many varied and assorted offers that I felt certain to receive. As the weekend drew nearer, and the expected flood of invites and romantic sorties unexpectedly failing to materialise, I was delighted to be given the opportunity to see a gig with a friend in Bristol. Many years ago, a friend had introduced me to the eclectic and mysterious musical talents of Patrick Wolf. I had in turn introduced these to another friend, and that friend had now managed to procure tickets to see the aforementioned Mr Wolf in Bristol on Sunday evening. Better than that, she even invited me along to join her. (She would also, I'm sure, like me to point out at this point that this was in no way connected to Valentine's Day in any way, except by some unfortunate quirk of timing).

Having enthusiastically accepted the offer to go, I searched online for the details of the gig. It was being performed at the National Trust's Tyntesfield House, on the outskirts of the city. This imposing gothic mansion seemed like an intriguing venue for a gig, so I delved further. There were several supporting artists, none of whom I had ever heard of. With a quick visit to YouTube I was able to ascertain why: they were all performance artists rather than musicians. Now I'm generally not inclined towards performance art, being at the relatively ignorant end of artistic spectrum. I just don't get it. I don't understand what it is trying to say, I don't have life affirmations from watching it, and I have no comprehension of what is good, bad, or plain ugly (though in my cynical state I would tend to categorise most of what I've seen in either of the last two definitions).

However, being of an open mind, and possibly inclined towards the fact that this experience might form the basis for this blog piece, I was keen to sling off the trappings of comfort and hurl myself headlong towards an artistic education of sorts. And if all else failed, I would at least be keen to see Patrick Wolf, in what was described as an 'intimate setting'. It appears that my friend had also failed to notice the interpretive leaning of this event when booking the tickets, and we nervously made our way to the house to find out more.

Arriving slightly late at the venue (intentionally - we were making a statement) we first had to navigate several miles of winding, barely lit footpath in the dark, wondering if at any moment the lights would go on and we would find ourselves thrust centre stage on a performance entitled 'And he saw what he had done...'. Approaching the house we finally heard the appreciative murmurings of pensive art-lovers already gathered. Outside the house we encountered our first performance. For me to describe it to you would perhaps be unfair as my Neanderthal explanation would no doubt miss the point of a multi-layered, in-depth analysis of gender, sexuality and modern culture that is blighted by industry and commerce. It was five women in black dresses sawing the legs of chairs bit by bit. For anyone who wishes to judge for themselves, please have a look.

The second performance involved four people stood motionless around a stairwell. We didn't notice this 'act' straight away, as there were lots of other people milling around the stairwell. I don't actually know for certain if it was an act, or maybe four protestors against modern art, or some visitors who had just got bored or were trying to avoid having to see the other performances. There was a brief moment of interest when we went into a room to find it devoid of performance art, but instead a friendly guide told us about the history of the room and the library it contained. I'm pretty sure this wasn't part of the event, but it was interesting nonetheless, or perhaps despite.

The staff then informed us that we would shortly be lead to the chapel for the main performance. This was a beautiful gothic building set apart from the house and beautifully lit up against the stars. During the minutes between entering the chapel, finding a seat and the performance beginning, we were treated to a spot of people watching (and listening). It was a diverse audience, including aging couples, transvestites, thick set gothic boots and black eye-liner, bright dyed hair with strategically shaven patches and emo teens. From the conversations overheard, we also shared the chapel with American luvvies for whom the whole experience was overwhelmingly beautiful, and young British hippies who found all the performances inspirational and left them continually on the verge of bursting into tears. I was reminded of an excellent song that Bill Bailey performed called Oblivion, which is ironic as Patrick Wolf actually has a song of the same name.

The lights dimmed and the headline act made his way up the aisle to the chancel, where his instruments awaited. For anyone unfamiliar with Patrick Wolf, he is clearly a scholar of music and musical history, playing a wide range of instruments, and with influences as varied as electronica, folk and baroque. His songs are largely based around piano or organ and strings, especially viola and harp, and many draw on traditional themes like his Cornish ancestry. He launched into a set that rarely paused for breath or applause, veering relentlessly from melodic piano and voice to electronic beats and a wall of metallic sound that made it feel like we were being attacked by a thousand small children all armed with kitchen utensils. Familiar lyrics were mashed together in unrecognisable formats, and there was a constant hiss of high-pitched background whining that came from the 'organic' organ - an instrument apparently fashioned from drift wood. It grated the ears and was sufficiently off-putting that at one point Patrick himself turned it off. A beautiful piece on the harp turned into a quagmire of sound during which he massacred a viola. He has a haunting voice that works at high or low ranges, adding to the darkness of the songs, but the low range can sound like someone attempting to frighten a small child with a story about monsters. At the end of the show he simply left all the instruments playing and ran offstage, so that nobody knew if it had ended and we all sound there for several minutes looking awkwardly at one another and wondering whether to applaud or simply leave. To that end he captured the atmosphere of the event perfectly.

It was interesting to see him perform, but it felt a little bit like he was just carrying out an experiment that we were all part of. I had to listen to some of his better stuff on the way home to remind myself why I like him, but that did restore my faith and, if you want to check out his varied musical abilities I would recommend listening to songs like 'To The Lighthouse', 'This Weather', 'Blackdown' and 'The Sun Is Often Out'.

The evening was entirely unique and I am genuinely glad to have gone, despite my less than glowing descriptions of it. To see these acts in that setting was the highlight, and I would love to revisit the place during the day. I suspect it would be a disappointment compared to seeing it lit up at night, highlighting it's menacing qualities and the gothic architecture. I still don't understand performance art - I'm no clearer on what, if anything, it is trying to tell me, although I won't be inviting the ladies with their saws to dinner. That really would be a bad way to spend Valentine's Day!

An Eye for an Eye

I've always been fortunate in having good eye sight. It helps when doing survey work. And because I use my eyes a lot for work purposes I can get an eye test on expenses every couple of years. A couple of years had passed recently, and as if to emphasise the point I was contacted by Boots Opticians offering me a half price eye test, so I booked myself in for a check up.

I arrived to be greeted by a lady with a forced smile that reeked of low job satisfaction. She ushered me straight in to a side room where she could perform a variety of facial tortures on me. I was asked a series of questions regarding my last check up, whether I had any problems since then, and what my general health was like currently. Presumably she was not happy with my answers as she then insisted that I place my chin on a device that looked like a head brace and strapped me in while manoeuvring a small light to within three millimetres of my left eye. Having informed me she was going to test my eye pressure, she fired a tiny burst of air into my eye that was similar to having a sparrow sneeze in my face from close range. Not content with the left eye, the right eye was then subjected to the same fate. Then I had to spot tiny flashes of light in my peripheral vision whilst shouting out numbers, like when you think you've spotted a shooting star out of the corner of your eye. After this she attached me to another machine, via the same chin strap head brace as before, that was apparently going to photograph my eye. This time instead of a gust of well-directed air there was a bright flash that left me temporarily blinded. She took advantage of my momentary incapacitation to attack my other eye, leaving me disorientated and stumbling for the exit. Hoping that the test was over, I was then asked to regain my composure and informed that the optician would be with me shortly.

Having just about recovered the optician then dragged me into another side room, this one dark and menacing. Various instruments of death lay scattered across the desk and walls. I was forced to wear a pair of specs that made me look like Harry Potter, while she fiddled with assorted accessories for the lenses. When asked to read the lowest line on the board I struggled through the letters and then tried to remember the same sequence for the other eye. Then the red circles were brighter than the green circles, then about the same, then the line was to the left of the dot, then to the right. Confusion reigned. Various lenses were added and removed from the specs, whilst the line of questioning became increasingly aggressive. Finally, fed up of my indecision, she reached for a tiny light and moved in for the kill, bringing her head right up towards mine before bobbing it like an owl in each direction and asking me to look into the corners of the room as if the answers would be found in the whites of my eyes. My (optic) nerve held firm and finally, in a fit of desperation, she asked me to read from a book whilst it moved slowly towards my face.

Having found no evidence to suggest that I needed glasses imminently, she wrote notes on her computer and dispatched me with the bill to the front desk, where the boots opticians synchronised swimming team were happy to pretend to be happy to help me. Half-price eye torture courtesy of the RSPB: see you again in two years!  

Bird Cruising

There are many times in life when I wish I was in any way cool or trendy. But I am in fact a geek, and rarely does it hit home as much as when I go bird cruising. When people ask me how I'm spending my weekend, the reply 'bird cruising' leaves many people dumbfounded. It shouldn't do, as it is pretty much exactly as it sounds, but folks who don't know about my passion for birds assume it means something completely different, give me a knowing nod, and wish me luck. This weekend I went bird cruising in Plymouth.

The stunning Tamar Bridge backdrop to the river

An ex-colleague and good friend of mine, Bruce, runs a series of boat trips up the River Tamar each winter, with his better half Chris. When I lived in Cornwall, my job was to wear something with an RSPB logo on it, wave at the crowd when I was introduced, and then freeze my extremities off for three hours whilst we travelled up and down the river. In theory I should be spotting birds to help Bruce with his commentary, but with so many avid spotters on board this rarely happens. Or if I do see something, I ask someone more qualified than me to determine it's identity. In practice my role is really to furnish Chris with the latest gossip to keep her entertained, and to ask Bruce unfairly complex bird-related questions to make sure he is on the ball (he never could pronounce the Latin name for Oystercatcher - a hilarious joke amongst us bird geeks!).

The Oystercatcher - Haematopus ostralegus

As a visitor returning for a one-time only tour of duty, I was delighted to find out that the early forecasts of snow and strong winds turned out to be relatively inaccurate, with stunning clear skies overhead. However, the plunging temperatures did necessitate a lengthy discussion about how many layers would be needed, and no matter how many were taken they were still not enough. The river is obviously quite an exposed place to be, and the boat lacks obvious opportunities for warming up through any form of rigorous exercise on board.

The River Tamar on a slightly warmer and calmer day!

The boat we usually use was in dry dock for repairs, and the replacement lacked the same capacity. This could have been beneficial if we had adopted the survival strategy of emperor penguins, rotating to the sides periodically to have our turn on the cold edge. Sadly this does not lend itself to suitable bird watching conditions, as people tend to want to see the birds that are spotted, which means a clear line of sight for binoculars to be pointed through. The new boat also had different technical arrangements to the old one, which meant the first ten minutes was spent fiddling with microphones in an attempt to make Bruce audible. First there was feedback, then there was nothing, then the volume was too low and finally the sound would inexplicably cut out part way through a sentence. It was like listening to an Eminem song on the radio with the explicit lyrics blanked out. This had a pretty disastrous effect, as sentences would end just as they got interesting: 'the bird on the left is a...' or 'curlews will mostly be eating...'. Hardly a cliff-hanger ending, I admit, but inconvenient nonetheless. The problem was eventually resolved with the use of a cable, which restricted Bruce's movements to a small area of the top deck like a bulldog on a chain. 

Leading ornithologist and part-time Madonna impersonator, Bruce Taggart

Once this was resolved we hit a steady stream of birds and associated commentary. We saw curlews attended by crows, learnt the difference between stabber and snipper oystercatcher foraging techniques, and were accompanied for at least half an hour by our own personal common gull (which is, incidentally, the least common type of gull in the area). A rare duck had been spotted in the area lately, and we had to double check every duck that we passed to be certain not to miss out. The main highlights of the cruise are the avocets and spoonbills.

The surprisingly uncommon Common Gull

Avocets are the beautiful and elegant black and white waders with an upturned bill that feature on the RSPB logo. The fact that avocets returned to breed in the UK is largely thanks to Hitler. To counter the threat of invasion from German forces on our Eastern seaboard, vulnerable areas of low lying coastal land were flooded. The resulting habitat, along with little disturbance during the war years, provided ideal conditions for the birds. Although they don't breed in the south-west, our rivers and estuaries provide suitably mild winter feeding grounds for them, and there can be a couple of hundred found around the Tamar Estuary each winter, usually in several flocks. After an hour or so heading up the Tamar, we still hadn't found any avocets in the areas we usually see them, and were starting to get concerned when an eagle-eyed spotter, another RSPB colleague Stuart, located about 200 in a flock at the river's edge. Conveniently by this point in the river the edge was very close to the boat as the channel narrowed, and we had fantastic views of the flock moving along the edge and also circling around the boat and landing back on the mud.

Avocet flypast

The spoonbills are usually found on the River Lynher, a tributary of the Tamar which we also navigate our way up. Spoonbills are imaginatively named birds, having as they do a spoon shaped bill. They have only recently started breeding in the UK, and relatively few birds are found in the country - the Lynher is one of the best places to see them. They are the size of herons, and bright white, so it would be easy to assume that this makes them stand out. Sadly not. When feeding along the shore they blend neatly into the reflective water and mud surface. We often encounter them roosting on rat island at the mouth of the Tamar. As we approached the island, the gathered band of spotters (what is the collective noun for a group of birdwatchers; a flock? A geekdom? A twitch?!) started poking their eyes onto telescopes and jostling for position in an attempt to be the first to locate a spoonbill. But none were to be seen on the island. Fearing failure (and these trips never fail to turn up a spoonbill!) we started up river, only to hear the call that the birds had cunningly tucked themselves onto the back of the island, on the shallow side where the boat could not go. They had also tucked their spoons (at least the size of a wooden spoon) under their wings and gone to sleep, which leaves 100 or so eager birdwatchers staring at three white immobile blobs.

Spoonbills in happier, more active times

Although we were slightly disappointed not to see them wing in wing attempting to conga around rat island, thus is the way of things in nature. You can never be certain what you will or won't see, and most of us who enjoy bird watching will have as many and more failures as successes. Doing guided tours and commentaries can be a frustrating experience when you don't want people to leave disappointed, but there were many other species to be seen, and Bruce's knowledge of the wildlife and history of the area kept the commentary going throughout, as well as his 'show and tell' highlights - the lugworms, ragworms and hydrobia snails that he brings along in Tupperware containers like the remnants of a bad takeaway. We saw mergansers, grebes, godwits, shelduck, and a personal best four foxes, all of which I picked out in fields bordering the river. These stunning russet creatures shone in the winter light, although Bruce was convinced that one was a rusty oil barrel. Then again he has previously been convinced that a plastic bag was a little egret. So often the way when wildlife watching.

Great-crested Grebe in winter plumage

With the cruise at an end we tried to recover some form of circulation and promptly headed off for a carvery. This has long been a tradition of the cruises, with plates piled high with steaming vegetables and thick cuts of meat, smothered in gravy. One of my previous colleagues, a larger than life character who, for the purposed of the blog, I shall call Roland Digby, was famous for his appetite and ability to load up his plate to an alarming degree (he once told me that the tactic was to use some of the sticky veg like grouting, using their natural adhesive qualities to stick other items to the plate). At this point I pity the poor birds that have to forage all day for a few worms and snails to keep themselves alive in freezing conditions, whilst we tuck into a prepared meal in the comfort of a warm room with fine company and a pint of Tribute to boot. A thoroughly satisfying way to round off a great trip.

At the time of writing, there were still a few spaces available on a Tamar cruise on Tuesday 17th Feb. For more information click here.