A small nugget of wisdom

I was recently unfortunate enough to find myself driving the A303 late into the evening as my stomach began to rumble. This was unfortunate as I knew I could not survive the remainder of the trip without some form of food intake, but I also knew that the culinary establishments available on the A303 were not of the high calibre of cuisine that I was hoping for. My food snobbery extends as far as avoidance of fast food outlets where possible, and on this occasion it seemed impossible.

So I found myself at Burger King for the first time in a great many years, staring indecisively up at a menu that left me bewildered and perplexed. In the many years since I have procured fast food, it appears that the pricing strategy has changed. For example, four chicken nuggets cost 99p. But six cost £2.89. Even my elementary maths can spot that this simply doesn't add up. On the one hand each nugget is worth 25p, but if you wish to extend your nugget eating habit by another 50%, you then pay 48p per nugget. It would be far easier to get two lots of four, save yourself 91p, and have an extra two nuggets to boot!

I contemplated that perhaps Burger King knew something about chicken nuggets that I did not. Perhaps the likelihood of a customer collapsing from a heart attack increases by a factor of six billion the moment they clasp their lips around the 5th or 6th nugget, and so in the interests of health and safety they have a pricing strategy to combat this. Except that you can then get nine nuggets for £3.89. Who in their right mind would risk nine nuggets when they would likely collapse after five or six?! And besides, even if you can survive a certain nugget-related ailment, you could have 12 nuggets for £2.97 if ordered in batches of four!

I wondered if Burger King were trying to combat obesity by encouraging people to consume less, but then I noticed the price of fries. A small bag of fries was over a pound, but a medium bag of fries was less than a pound. How was this so?! Is it more cost effective for Burger King to cook and/or sell more fries? How does this compare to the cost per nugget? And has anyone ever, in the history of bizarre fast food pricing, purchased a small bag of fries when they could get a medium bag of fries for less?! Even if they only wanted a small bag of fries it would make more sense (to the individual, though not environmentally) to buy a medium bag of fries, then consume only a small bag's equivalent, and throw the rest away.

So the only people who should ever purchase a small bag of fries at Burger King are rich environmentalists with small appetites! And the only people who should ever purchase nine chicken nuggets are rich risk-takers with poor arithmetic.

Can anyone explain this nonsense to me please?

Having your cake and eating it...

So last week was my sister's birthday. On the big day, I managed to remember to call to wish her a great many happy returns (I won't say how many), and asked how the day had been. Aside from the joys of work, she had had decided to pop into a cake shop in order to procure sweet treats to take to work. On entering said delicatessen, she was amused to hear Stevie Wonder's 'Happy Birthday' playing in the store, but was even more amazed when the shop assistant randomly asked her if it was her birthday. Having replied in the affirmative, a momentary game of 'no way', 'yes way' ensued until the shop assistant called over a colleague to verify this astounding coincidence - having never once asked a customer that question before, she refused to believe that it could possible be true. My sister was duly able to provide evidence in the form of a driver's license, whereupon the three of them danced around the store to Stevie Wonder. Finally, at the end of the song, they gave her free cake.

What a truly bizarre and wonderful coming together of circumstance.

Banana-drama

On my walk home from work today I happened upon a banana skin on the pavement. Realising the huge potential danger I was in, I neatly sidestepped the fruit peeling to avoid almost certain death should I happen to step on it and slip to my doom. I then wondered if anyone has actually ever damaged themselves in this manner. I have never actually slipped on a banana skin. I have never witnessed someone else's demise in a banana-skin related incident. Nor have I even heard of such a thing. In fact it appears that the only people ever to have suffered, emotionally or physically, through standing on a banana skin, are cartoon characters and clowns. And the only result that I can fathom from this interaction is a comedic loss of dignity. Am I to assume that, should this unfortunate coming together of foot and banana skin ever occur, the likely outcome would be me gliding 50 feet down the pavement whilst simultaneously crashing through market stalls, sending passers by flying, knocking over porcelain vases and finally crashing through a wall, leaving a perfect human outline as I go?!

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.

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.

Scilly Season

It's been a while since I posted anything on here. Largely due to me being away from all forms of telecommunication on the stunning Isles of Scilly. If you haven't been, I strongly recommend it. For the last eight years I have been lucky enough to travel out there on 'business' each autumn for a week. The RSPB does a series of guided walks on Tresco each September, and I'm part of the squad that is hand-picked to provide members of the public with a unique and unforgettable insight to wildlife around the archipelago. Or so I hope!

Bryher and Tresco

A couple of years ago, the Isles of Scilly Seabird Project began. The aim of this work was to remove rats from St Agnes and Gugh. These islands (actually one island at low tide!) contain large numbers of breeding seabirds, including manx shearwater. Although manxies have been recorded on the islands each year, no chicks have fledged in living memory, because of the impact of the rats on eggs and chicks. So the removal of rats is critical to the survival of the species on these islands.

The 'Bar' connecting St Agnes and Gugh

Last winter, experts from New Zealand were flown in to begin the eradication, assisted by a merry band of volunteers. They began baiting rats and monitoring the population, and by Christmas there were no more signs of rats. This summer, more volunteers have been monitoring the shearwater burrows, and finally ten chicks have been recorded at about fledging age. Instant success!

Manx Shearwater

This is the story I get to tell visitors to the islands. Working in conservation can be quite depressing, with stories of declines, and recoveries taking a very long time. Here we have a fantastic example of what can be achieved when people work together. I get to natter with members of the public about this and other conservation issues, pointing out a few birds and other wildlife along the way, based at the beautiful Abbey Gardens on Tresco. And after eight years on the team, we've got the trip planning sussed.

Tresco Abbey Gardens

The best way to reach the islands, for me, is the Scillonion ferry. It can be a little choppy, and some people are not good on boats, as evidenced on both trips this year (both flat!) when one ill passenger managed to be sick overboard on the top deck, coating many of their fellow passengers on the deck below! But it's a great chance to spot wildlife, with seabirds, seals, sunfish, dolphins and whales all on the potential menu.

Common Dolphin

The boat docks at St Mary's, the largest of the islands, from where you can access the other 'off islands' by inter-island boat. Four other islands are inhabited: St Agnes, St Martins, Tresco and Bryher. Each has a different feel and atmosphere. St Agnes is isolated, St Martin's has picturesque wide sandy beaches, Tresco is manicured, and Bryher is wild and rugged. It is to Bryher that we head first, armed with camping gear. Bryher is our base for the week, despite working on Tresco. This means we have the best commute in the world, setting off from our home on the camp site, down to the quay to get the school boat across to Tresco, then walking up past the shop to pick up large quantities of bread and cheese for lunch, along the great pool and into the hides spotting rare birds, before passing the Abbey and on to our working base at the Abbey Gardens.

Rugged Bryher

Before we get to work we may have seen Lapland bunting, ortolan bunting, spotted crake, little stint, green sandpiper, curlew sandpiper, spotted redshank, spotted flycatcher, whinchat, redstart, and wryneck. Look them up! The wryneck is something that I see every year on the islands, and don't see anywhere else. It's a migrant woodpecker, and has a bizarre habit of twisting it's neck around and flicking it's tongue out. It does this when it feels threatened, to mimic a snake and ward off predators. The Latin name for this species is Jynx torquilla. The 'torquilla' part means 'little twister' in respect to this behaviour. The Jynx part originates in Greek mythology. Iynx was a Greek goddess who used a wyneck love-charm to make Zeus fall in love with Io. When Hera, Zeus' official consort, found out, she transformed Iynx into a wryneck as punishment. This is where we get the word 'Jinx' from - a curse or spell cast.

Lapland Bunting

Even from our base we can now see red squirrels, stick insects, and golden pheasants - all introduced to the island by man, just as the rats made it there by ship and shipwreck. We spend the day doing guided walks, turning round one every hour, and I can hear myself saying the same thing over and over again. Then it's back across the island for the last boat back to Bryher, a spot more birding and then a camp meal together. Having spent all day on our feet and smiling like a synchronised swimmer it's time to cook up a feast from fresh veg and whatever goodies we brought in the food hamper. Huge piles of pasta, curry and chilli adorn our plates each evening, all cooked al fresco over a small stove while watching the sun set over the Atlantic. And then to the pub.

Golden Pheasant

The Fraggle Rock Bar on Bryher is where we spend our evenings, indulging in a pint or two of local ale and running through the day's sightings, chatting with residents and tourists alike, and partaking of the odd game of bananagrams or a geeky bird-related quiz. It also does a killer fish and chips. Many a fine evening has been had here: a perfect end to a busy and tiring day, before staggering back to the camp site under the immense beauty of the milky way, and crawling back into the tent and passing out.

2014 Team!

In Groundhog Day style, we do this all over again, on repeat, for the full week, before final packing up our bags and returning to the mainland. It's quite a shock going back into the 'real' world from somewhere where the time of the tide is the most important time, where emails, internet and news are inaccessible, and where you can forget about all your cares, worries and responsibilities. If you ever need a true break from the busy world, this is the place.

Scilly Sunset

Fashion

What determines when something comes back into fashion? Looking around today I see a lot of people harnessing the power of the 1980s in their clothing choices. But there must be a finite period of time during which something could be fashionable again, because you don’t see many people dressing like they did in the 1880s. Presumably this is linked to comfort and practicality. But how far back could we go before we become unfashionable again?!

On the way to work I saw a young lady in a skirt that appeared to be made entirely out of doilies. It was very tasteful really, but it reminded me of cake: my Gran’s cake to be precise. I used to love the days when a three-tier coffee cake would be wheeled into the living room on a trolley, sitting proudly atop a doily. And who doesn't love a trolley with cake on?! Mobile cake is, for some inexplicable reason, far more tempting than static cake. Doilies must be the preserve of elderly woman who bake, since I have never seen the in use anywhere else (except by some ladies’ skirt manufacturers perhaps). I’m not even sure what their function is. It must be entirely decorative since they contain enough holes to render their possible usefulness as a crumb collecting device null and void.

Incidentally, when did ‘hard’ icing go out of fashion?! I used to enjoy a bit of hard icing, though soft icing is equally delish, and does not flake and fall on the floor like hard icing when you bite into it. Sometimes pre-empting the flaking was the best thing about hard icing, since you could peel it off and eat it separately. Perhaps I need to dress as I did in the 1980s and eat hard icing again. Perhaps not.

Eurotrip Day 2

Day 2: First Day in Sofia

Day 2 did not start well for me. Having arrived at stupidly early o'clock, I was amazed to find I had remembered to change my watch to Bulgarian time - two hours ahead of the UK. So on waking up dazed and confused, I was unsurprised to find out from my phone, which I had not changed, that it was 9am in the UK and therefore 11am in Bulgaria. Feeling pretty dopey I rolled over and went back to sleep for a bit, this time waking in shock to find out that my phone now read 11am, which meant it was really 1pm in Bulgaria and I was wasting the day. I leapt up and unpacked some clothes for the day, then checked my watch which read 11am as well. Knowing that I had changed it the night before I checked the phone again, only to find that it had somehow recognised that I had relocated it to Bulgaria and automatically updated its own clock. Whilst I acknowledge that this is quite clever, it highlights yet again my complete failure to find 'innovative' and 'intelligent' technology useful.

Nothing a nice shower wouldn't cure, I thought. The shower was a floor to ceiling glass affair with a Swedish style wooden floor. On the facing wall were three knobs that I assumed were connected to the provision of water. The middle one appeared to be of the sort that you pull up to provide water and then twist left or right to control the temperature. The right one twisted left and right only. The left one appeared to be a microphone. None of them provided any water, no matter how much pushing, pulling, twisting and singing I carried out. Thinking outside the cubicle, I looked for a pull cord in case it was an electric shower. The only cord I could find was an 'SOS' cord to pull in the event of an emergency, so I elected not to test that one. Finding nothing in the bathroom, I checked the rest of the room. The lights were all independent of one another, but nothing was linked to the shower. Realising that I would be in for serious mockery if I called Fran, I decided to call reception. Instead of simply explaining it to me, they decided to send someone up to demonstrate. Two minutes later there was a knock at the door and I, swathed now in a towel, opened it to find a very attractive maid standing in front of me with a look of bemused frustration that she had to attend to a half-naked British idiot who couldn't work the shower. Clearly I was an imbecile. She headed for the bathroom, leant in to the cubicle and pulled up the middle knob (no pun intended). Nothing happened, and she looked slightly put out by the fact that she was also now uncertain of how to produce water. Her instinct was to head for the right hand knob, which she twisted to the left. This had a dramatic impact. A stream of water shot out of the microphone horizontally onto her front, soaking her and causing her to squeal. In a panic she reached again for the right hand knob, and twisted it in the opposite direction. But she overcompensated, and a powerful deluge rained down from the shower onto her head. Now coated in cold water front and back, she regained enough composure to switch it all off. I was now oddly aware that I was half-naked and she was soaked to the skin. She looked round embarrassed and mumbled something along the lines of 'That's how it works'. I tried to apologise and asked if she was alright, but the poor girl got out of the room as fast as she could go.

Having agreed to meet Fran and Graham for breakfast/lunch, I was informed by hotel staff of a good traditional Bulgarian restaurant around the corner. We made our way there and sat down, ordering our first breakfast lager and a few Bulgarian dishes to share between us. One of these was a meat platter, which contained horse meat among other things. When it arrived, it was not clear which one was the horse (I'm not sure what we were expecting!) so we asked the waiter what was what. He knew the English for pork, but didn't know beef so instead made a small devil's horn symbol and a mooing sound. Following his lead, we asked which one was horse, but he didn't know the word, so Graham had to neigh and toss an invisible mane while galloping. The impression was so good that he got it immediately.

We elected to have a short walk about to see the sights. We found designer shops, trendy bars, ice cream parlours, churches, lush green parks, communist architecture and fountains. But what we couldn't find was an English tea. I don't drink tea and am therefore totally oblivious to the sufferings of tea drinkers, but it was to become a theme of the weekend that the only available teas were Earl Grey and Rooibos. Fran bravely made her way through several unsatisfactory tea experiences before giving up and selecting juice instead.

The tea search continues

The evening started at the hotel roof bar, with wide views over the city. From there we made our way to a restaurant cellar where we were given giant hanging platters of salad followed by giant hanging platters of meat. This was accompanied by vast quantities of Bulgarian red wine and assorted noisy conversations with family members, which were finally drowned out by some traditional Bulgarian music. Of course I took the opportunity to make use of my camera, which always goes down well when people are eating and getting steadily drunker.

The evening's entertainment

Aware that we had to save ourselves for the main event tomorrow, we decided to call it a night and returned to the hotel. On arriving in my room, I found a small chocolate next to my bed and the radio tuned to smooth jazz classics. I looked around to see if I was alone, wondering whether this was standard hotel policy or was in fact connected to my rendezvous with the maid in the shower. 

The Bride-to-be, Dot