Kony who?

I love the way that one moment this Kony 2012 crap is all over the place and the next, not a whisper. Just goes to show how superficial people are.

Invisible Children

A couple of people have sent me links to the invisible children video that seems to be all over the place right now. Like everybody with a spark of humanity I suppose, I watched the film, was moved by it in an unthinking sort of way, reacted to it automatically and posted the link on facebook even. But I must admit as always it didn’t take me long to start having some niggles. There’s something wrong with my swallowing mechanism because things always just get stuck half-way down especially as I am very wary of anything with an overly glossy, refined format and especially if it comes out of the USA and especially when  lots of dollars and merchandising are involved. So as usual I was soon  hunting the internet to find out more information. I wish I hadn’t. Like everybody else I’d just like to click a mouse, buy a T-shirt and stop these atrocities. Of course I want the LRA and Joseph Kony wiped from the face of the earth, of course I don’t want kids being abducted for nefarious purposes BUT this all smells a bit fishy to me. Where’s the plan? Exactly what are we getting involved with? Having doubts of course makes me feel heartless, a killjoy. But reading the comments on the subject on facebook it just seems like a bunch of mostly ignorant over-privileged white kids doing the usual armchair activism. I doubt if very many of them have bothered to try to find out just how real the Ugandan reality is.  I tried and there’s not a lot of information about. Even IC itself is not providing background information. Why? But what makes me most suspicious is the total lack of Ugandans behind this scheme. I want to know what the people of Uganda think about this. Do THEY want this?  Why are there no Ugandans speaking out, why no Ugandans on the film? Is it just an online club for white activists, making their conscience better by clicking a mouse or is there a real possibility of changing something for the better? Is not the Ugandan situation a tad more complex than simply eliminating one man? I don’t know. So for the moment I’m only supporting the initiative with my mouse and not with my money. I don’t want to think of myself as a heartless cynic and half of me thinks what harm can it do? But the other half says but that’s just it, what harm could such an initiative do? What repercussions could this trigger? I don’t know enough and nobody in IC is filling in the background.

Usually when high-profile movements hit the world other deserving people get left behind. People love glamour not mundanity. Sure you have to start somewhere and I really hope this is genuine and useful and it would sure as hell be a fantastic thing if FB and the internet had this much power to really change things as it could maybe start something epic, but it just doesn’t convince me. I want hard facts, not emotive phrases like this morning’s, “...[we’re] ready to handle all the love you’ve been sending...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

Why I don't vote

@Lighthouseman62 (to everyone else, sorry it's just a personal dispute)

‘how do I think I have the right to complain when I don’t vote?’. Well sorry but what a stupid question. You yourself said that the government  is just a bunch of crooks. So how exactly did they get there? I didn’t vote them in, YOU DID, you and all the people like you who voted. I don’t want any of them there. I didn’t vote any of them in  yet unless I’m mistaken  what you’re telling me is you vote these ‘crooks’ in and I can’t complain. How on earth does that work then?

So no I have never voted and almost certainly never will. Why? Because I refuse to vote myself into subservience and servitude. I have never given my consent to be governed and I repudiate the whole concept. I don’t mind being organised, a degree of organisation is essential, but governed no. And though of course at present I have no choice in the matter I especially do not want to be governed and ruled over by politicians who despite being our servants, our representatives, act like we are their servants.

These arrogant pricks even go so far as to presumptuously bestow upon themselves grandiose titles (nothing honourable in a right-honourable) as if they were in some way better than the people they would rule, believing they have the right to exercise control over me by abusing the force of law and who imperiously believe that this justifies granting themselves ridiculously high salaries and bonuses which I have no choice but to pay. And then they have the audacity to claim governance over me because they have a historical fiat and a  mandate from the sightless and the brain dead. No way.  I mean, what word do we use to describe their rule? Power. Read it over to yourself again, Power -  ‘the conservatives are in power again’, ‘a power struggle’. WTF! That’s frightening and  should be enough to put any moderately thinking person off. But instead everyone accepts it as normal. Holy fuck, people even defend it! Defend it and even get angry defending it but still complain because the administration sucks on every level. What a joke.

This is my friggin’ world  yet I have no say in its running because, unfortunately my friggin’ world is also over-populated by historically blind and voluntarily subservient sheeple, obsequious and servile for the most part who for some stupid friggin’ reason continue to do exactly the same thing over and over again election after election always, always hoping for or even expecting a different result and believing even, that yes there can possibly be radical change, like pigeons in a skinner box pecking away and every now and again getting a measly reward,  just enough to keep them interested. For years this insane blind addiction has been going on. “Politicoholic addiction” as someone called it, with the same damaging results for themselves as for everybody else. You don’t cure your chronic cirrhosis of the liver brought about by drinking four liters of Barbera wine per day for years by changing to drinking four liters of Dolcetto instead, that’s insanity. So why do the voting masses still insist on doing precisely that? Still voting over and over again despite being fully aware that government is and has always been run by an arrogant, inflated, self-important  bunch of lying, thieving bastards with anything but your welfare or the welfare of your country or (more importantly) the world at heart. Year after year, over and over again voting the same corrupt incompetent parties and often the same corrupt incompetent people who as I said, don’t,  never have and never will give a damn about you, your life, your problems. Stop for fuck’s sake. Wake up. Look at their track record. Look what you are losing.

Its humiliating and saddening to see  people ‘nobly’  (your word, not mine) voting themselves into servility then scrabbling about on the floor for the crumbs that their elected leaders (that those same people themselves elected remember) choose to throw them. They give you the crumbs of a welfare state, the crumbs of a health service, crumbs of education, pensions, transport, infrastructure, social security, just the crumbs of  what could so easily be a fragrant cake large enough to satisfy everyone in equal measure and you only whine about it and give them more money? By voting these arseholes you are saying that it’s OK for them to do this, you are giving them the mandate they need, you are giving your explicit consent to a cancerous process that eats away the tissue of society. Leaders [sic] that are removing your freedoms and security, ruining your world in order to bolster unworkable, unsustainable  or damaging projects that only serve to line the pockets of these elected, and thus legalised, criminals. 

Time to wake up to the fact that democracy is bollocks; it’s a ridiculous system which should be limited to brief periods of transition from something worse to something better not a be all and end all. North Korea needs democracy, Saudi arabia needs democracy, most of Africa could probably benefit from a little democracy. But Europe? Time for Europe to move on, to progress but it never will if people like you keep voting these toe-rags in.  It’s a system that the toe-rags want. It works permanently for them but for you it stopped working  decades ago if it ever did in the first place. Now, as it is it’s just a pacifier, a mouldy teat full of rancid milk for the masses to suck on so they don’t bleat so much. We, don’t live in what you think of as a  democracy, never have, we simply live in an economic dictatorship disguised as a democracy. So sure go ahead and protest when your elected leaders do what they want instead of what you want or what is right or ethical, wave banners and flags, if it’s a flag of some political party so much the better, smile at the cameras to show you’re having a jolly good time, chant the same pathetic inti-illimani style slogans people have been chanting probably since the first pompous jackass donned a blue suit with a shiny arse and took control but  remember all you get is just enough to shut you up. And thinking about it, while you’re at it, why not go on strike too if you don’t like something? That way you can stir up a bit more misery and hardship for, and only for, your fellow peasants. Much easier to inflict suffering on a dog that is already chained and whipped  than to actually do something useful and make the master suffer. Phah! And anyway, after you’ve had your pathetic little strike and inconvenienced everyone you always end up capitulating anyway so just tell me what the point was. Stamping your little tootsies for a bit and then gulping down the handful of sugar pills they give to take the edge off your self-centered discomfort perpetuating the same circular zombie procession as always. We need something else and before anyone accuses me of actually being one, no we don’t need these iconic revolutionaries with their che guevara t-shirts, obelix trousers and birkenstocks reading their wholly conformist but oh-so anti-conformist newspapers and watching  the alternative news on-line sourced from the same new-agencies just like everybody else, bowing before just another class of media priesthood again just the same as everyone else.  We need radical change.

So vote me for dictator of Europe, you know it makes sense.

kjlkj

Quechua SO Ultralight again (with cheap Ikea fleece liner)

 So now the temperatures are at last getting down to good sleeping out temperatures after last year’s inconsequential -5s I thought I would to remind myself of how the Quechua S0 Ultralight  0°C sleeping bag performs. It was snowing heavily  so I added on the Alpkit Hunka Bivvy to keep me dry. As usual I wore longjohns, t-shirt, light decathlon fleece, sox, fleece hat and a buff to cover nose and mouth -  a bit of waterboarding  often helps me get to sleep I find.

The weather men told me that the temperatures would get down to the minus 15s so I put a Quechua S10 inside the S0 inside the Hunka bivvy. Unfortunately as it was only -5°C, after struggling to sort out the mp3 player and the phone alarm for the morning (school as usual) I was sweating profusely so about half-past midnight had to hop several kilometers to the kitchen to take the S10 out before I expired from heat exhaustion.

I slept on the sun lounger which has holes in the bottom and a bright yellow sun lounger cushion under me which wasn’t ideal or very comfortable but despite cutting corners with the insulation under me back outside it was warm as a slice of toast on a plate with only a couple of niggly cold pressure-spots until about half-past four at which time though it was not cold enough to be really uncomfortable I eventually opted for one of the kid’s beds inside, with a kids-size duvet, so just about as warm as outside.

The hunka bivvy worked really well despite 10cm of snow piling up on it. The only problem was there’s no overhang on it so the snow drops right onto your face and though I don’t mind a refreshing bit of wetness the snow tickles which is a pain.

Next night though I thought I’d do things seriously as per previous experiments and as before put down a groundsheet on the snow, then a self-inflating mattress with a cheap roll mat on top. Again as at other times I put the fleece insert the wife made (just a double layer of cheap Ikea fleece made into a shoulder-height bag) into the bag and again popped the bag into the Alpkit bivvy. Then I stuck an umbrella into the flower pot behind my head to keep the snow off my face and hoped the temperature would quickly go below the -5.2°C it was when I got into it to avoid overheating.

Fortunately the temperature got down to -9.3°C with just a sprinkling of snow and I slept right through to 07.00. The fleece liner takes out more airspace in the bag but works amazingly and is really comfortable. I even didn’t bother to tighten the hood round my face as I was warm enough without.

Next night the rubbish weather forecasters got it wrong yet again predicting snow and -16 and it only got down to -12°C with no snow (about time somebody sued them for fraud, lying and being generally incompetent). Anyway, I’d say that a Quechua S0 Simple plus fleece liner tops out at about -12°C because I began to feel a little chilly. Not uncomfortably so by any means and not the usual cold spots either more rather just a general chilly  but I don’t think it would have gone much more before being too cold to sleep.

Roof in peril

I have a strange feeling another snowfall and the roof is going to collapse. Standing under it today as it was snowing I noticed it was creaking and popping ominously. Difficult to get the snow off it without going up.

Tuesday

on tractor with hot water bottles

Wife goes to work. As she doesn’t have snow shoes, she has to hike it foot in the dark through lovely deep snow and down to  4x4 (now 2x4) in village which she takes to station. For me load kids on tractor for shuttle to car then car to school. Then I took ex-4x4 to garage to add some antifreeze. As the pump attendant was pouring in 10 euros of green liquid, 10 euros of green liquid was spilling out onto the forecourt. Back to mechanic to receive grim news that we’ll have to leave it with him for several days as the radiator is leaking somewhere. Excellent.

However, we can get up to the tractor with the 2WD. Yippee!

After school wife should be back at 18.10 so took kids to bar for a snack. Robin scatters dozens of ice-cream cups on floor so not sure of future welcome in the bar. Chivvy kids out of bar and into car to go meet their mother. Wife rings to say she will be late as there is no connecting bus, may lifelong squits strike the managers of the railway company for their incompetence. So meantime it’s snowing too much to bother to take chains off but not enough to keep them on. I keep them on anyway and gleefully annoy  dozens of arrogant jeep drivers anxious to overtake and we drive in stages three villages down to get wife. Wife eventually arrives and hour and a half later to a car full of crying kids, one with headache the other wanting milk, chocolate, bear and anything else he could think of that was not in the car. Horrible drive up to tractor at 20.30, load kids on and eventually get home at about 2100. Thank you ferrovia dello stato. Bastards.

 Eventually had to replace the radiator for 280 euros. Then a windscreen wiper broke.

Monday

School run on tractor

Monday morning was school so up bright and early to haul the kids on one bob pulled by Wife and the tractor battery hauled my me in snow shoes on another to open the path down to the car. Snow by this time about 40cm. Lost mobile phone in snow when I fell over. When we got to the car I started to clean it up and add water to the radiator while Wife hiked the kids down to the school. Of course as the local authority hadn’t gritted the road as soon as I got to the steepest bit found my way blocked by two cars trying to get up. Couldn’t phone wife as didn’t have phone. Nightmare. We couldn’t even stand up to push the cars on the road it was that icy.

Eventually we go the kids to school and I met up with the wife and we went in search of someone to charge the tractor battery and someone to repair the 4x4.

Regular mechanic couldn’t do the 4x4 so he sent us to a colleague. On the way down we stopped by to buy more chains for the 2WD. Unfortunately wife notices we have  a puncture so after spending 39euros on chains we spent an hour and a half at the tyre repair place to get the tyre mended (the spare is one of those stupid mini wheels, bollocks to you Fiat). Down to new mechanic to be told no as because of the usual pathetic attempt at a transport strike last week everything is clogged up for at least a week. Back to the mechanic to tell him and get battery tested. Battery pronounced dead so it’s back to the shop to get a new one for 125euros.

Fitted chains and off we go right up to where the temporarily 2WD 4x4 couldn’t go. Dragged new battery and battery charger, 98euros, on sledge back up to the house. Found phone on kitchen table. Nice when something goes right.

Dug out and fitted four chains to tractor, put in new battery and off we go with our home made snow plough to clean the track. Dog runs with eyes closed and smacks into tree. Scooped up dog, parked tractor, took car with new chains down to village.

Dog runs with eyes closed

Because the schools are run by imbeciles the both the schools we are interested in sending daughter to have their presentations on the same day at the same time. Well thank your for your consideration. So down to Pinerolo to get Flo to baby sit while wife gets kids from school. Then wife to one meeting and me to another. Then leave 4x4 in village and drive kids up, onto tractor and off we go back home while ploughing the track. Easy no?

Saturday and Sunday

Life has a good sense of humour.

 A couple of weeks ago we took the car to the mechanic to repair a noisy wheel. Then the 4x4 stopped working. Got the 4x4 fixed but driving optimistically up a narrow vertical track the next day on the way to see some friends the 4x4 stops working half way up. Invented two new swear words.  Back to mechanic. Leave mechanic 90 euros heavier  a couple of days later with a fully functional 4x4, I tested it to be on the safe side. Yippee.

So on Saturday when it started to snow heavily we didn’t bother canceling our dinner date with friends because we had a fully functional 4x4 plus 4 snow tyres, plus relative shovels, bags of salt gloves, hand warmers etc. and a piddly 10 cm of snow had never been and was not going to be a problem, was it?

Truth be told after eating an, even for me, exessive quantity of tangerines I had a bit of a gurgling stomach but what the hell the company would be excellent as usual and the meal was fonduta so lots of dipping of tatties and onions and tomoatos and stuff in melted chesse and not to be missed; the stomach would settle. In fact soon the still gugrling but otherwise stable stomach was full to bursting and sometime after midnight we got the kids into their pyjamas, loaded them into the car and set off through snow back to the house.

Unfortunately... on the very first hill up from the level towards the house the 4x4 appears not to be working agian. Bollocks. And of course though a normal car might have got up, because the Kia is a rear wheel drive it would be almost impossible to drive up a mole hill in the snow. Naturally by this time it was snowing really heavily with about a foot of the horrible stuff already on the ground. Usually when it snows we leave the 2WD down in the village whcih is what we had done today so after a brief discussion I was disgorged into the snowy night in a light jacket and the most excellent green converse all stars recommended by alpine climbers worldwide and  a fortunately a pair of tehnical hiking trousers to hike back up to the house while wife and kids went to crash out at zibbia’s. I was to sleep at home and come down next day with the snow chains for the 4x4 which were up at the house, pick up the 2WD and take the chains to the 4x4. Lots of waving, bye bye, see you tomorrow... and oh my god, the squits. I must say I’ve had some eventful walks up to the house in the past but a 40 minute up hill climb with stomach crushing squits was a first. But when you have to, you have to, 4 times in 40 minutes. Sorry about the detail but it’s relevant to the successive and important loss of a trowel described later.

On path awaiting snow dump

Next day we had a whole bunch of the wife’s colleagues coming up for lunch so I had to be down before 8.30 to fit the four snow chains, load up kids and see if the car could get up the hill in order to warn the potentially incoming guests before they were actualy incoming.

As it turns out guests, wisely, cancelled but meantime after four hours sleep I was already plunging merrily down in the dark in 40 cm of snow to rejoin the sleeping family. Fortunately with four snow chains in teh rucksack plus a bunch of other stuff progress despite the snowshoes was slow. And I had to retrace my steps from the night before to remove piles of now frozen dookie which reverting to my ape ancestry I lobbed with joyous ahas! into the morning darkness. The final pile of dookie I couldn’t lob it as it would have gone in someboady’s garden so I hiked up the road to the woods and lobbed it there. I put the trowel down to put my rucksack back on, a tree shed it’s snow and I promptly lost the trowel. If anyone finds it, please keep it.

Had a nice breakfast in company at friends’ house and then got the chains on the car, loaded kids on board and set off for home yet again.

First part was OK, but as it got steeper traction was but a mere memory and we only got 3/4 the way up and that with chained wheels grating holes through the snow and into the tarmac and the whole car juddering violently. There were spectators and ‘twas rather embarassing engine at 3000+ but moving at a yard a minute. When finally and with difficulty we parked the car because the imbecile neighbour had parked right in the middle of the parking place, huge quantities of steam were coming out from under the bonnet. The walk up to the house was fun even if a little slow with the fresh snow up to robin’s waist.

Unfortunately someone stole the snow chains for the 2WD and being Sunday we couldn’t buy others but, we had the tractor. Unfortunately, the  tractor battery was dead and being Sunday we couldn’t get it charged. So made a snow person instead.

Tractor on Sunday morning

Snow person

Terror flashpoint...

From the beloved British Boredcasting Craporation - “Global terror potential flashpoints in 2012

Britain's hosting of the Olympics this summer will, we are told, see "the biggest security operation in this country since the Second World War". Some 13,500 military personnel will be on duty, a Royal Navy helicopter-carrying warship will be docked near the venue, ground-to-air missiles will be deployed and RAF Typhoon fighters will be on standby to provide air defence. None of which should be needed, if all goes to plan. But the Olympics are classed as a "trophy target" for anyone looking to damage Britain and security preparations are being made on the basis of the national terrorist threat being at "severe", the second highest level in a table of five.”

I had to share this in case anybody managed to miss it, best snigger I've had all year. With a very noticeable and distinct lack of actual european and american terrorism  hitting the headlines over the last 10 years, made even more distinct and noticeable despite this terrorist void thanks to the continual baseless scaremongering by the media, the BBC’s ‘terrorist hotspots 2012‘ made me laugh.  If you want to go to have a holiday in some parts of Africa, go ahead with my blessing (natural selection and all that), maybe you’ll find a bit of terrorism there, but to include the UK in the terrorist hotspot list is just laughable. Is calling yourself a ‘trophy target’ not just a wee bit presumptuous, a wee bit like giving yourself airs and graces? Seriously, does anybody outside the tabloid reading part of the UK really believe that people are still bothered by the UK anymore? Save your money you government imbeciles.  Try using it to give a new-year’s bonus to some of the poorer OAPs or maybe try training some more medial personnel with it so that my mother doesn’t have to wait three months to get an x-ray.

“...anyone looking to damage britain”???!!!  Don’t make me laugh. Instead of worrying about imaginary terrorists worry about the real bloody government which has damaged the country and killed and caused suffering  far more and far more thoroughly that any act of terrorism could ever do. Or worry about the 13,500 friggin’ trained killers let loose on the city; I’d be worrying more about them than the bloody terrorists, that is of course if they actually allow them to carry weapons. Mind you, thinking about it,  much better have these 13,500 soldiers, warships and aircraft faffing around the UK than blasting the lives out of poor  peasants in afghanistan or somewhere.

Sport! Phua! (Spits copiously on the ground). Pity the mother wasn’t a sports woman maybe someone would sit up and take notice then.

Tadeusz Menert

Dear Ted,

A brief story and something you might have remembered... Many years ago, when I lived in Kensington two Poles crashed a party in our flat. It was a busy flat, Heidi, Trisha, Peter, Scott, Rob, Belinda and myself and nobody knew these strange Poles or where they came from or how, even,  they’d managed to find the party -which was in a grotty basement flat in Holland Park Road- at night and with the curtains closed. The party was a good one and next morning you were still there crashed out on the floor when we all woke up. And after breakfast which, without asking, you made for everyone and which is when we all started ask each other who the hell you were,  you both sort of got assimilated into the fun and ended up moving in, sort of.

The flat was small, two bedrooms, walk through kitchen and a lounge and an ice cold damp bathroom. Heidi, sometimes Trish, and Peter had the big bedroom, Scot and Belinda the smaller bedroom, Rob I seem to remember didn’t really live anywhere fixed, usually in the lounge when Trish wasn’t in there otherwise wherever he fancied. I was living in the walk in wardrobe exactly the size of a double bed, and because there was no room for you and Pole No.2, Trish, who was living in the lounge at the time moved into the wardrobe with me leaving you the lounge.  I never did thank you for that.

As I remember you stayed for ages whilst waiting for a response from some government agency or other. We  had a meeting after a few days, you never knew this, because we thought there might be a risk of being raided on your account and most of us smoked weed at the time or had something illegal going on and they were strange times even in London, but  we all moved our stashes out into the garden, stopped behaving illegally for the most part  and despite your despicable habit of wearing grey v-necked pullovers, voted unanimously for you  to stay, you were such great company and seemingly in need of some friends.

I wish I could remember your friend’s name, but he didn’t speak English much so communication was limited but either way you and friend were both political refugees seeking asylum for things you wrote (or did, I think, in your friend’s case). In the brief time you were in London we became good friends, friendships at that time were serious business, and I remember some great and rather strange times together especially repeatedly jumping off the top of Silbury hill. And though I haven’t seen you for almost 30 years I don’t think it really matters, I still consider you a friend and one I’ve always desperately wanted to hear from again just to know how you were and what you were doing and whether you’d made a good life for yourself.

You’d been told if you actually got asylum that you’d probably have to change identity and I remember a lot of manly hugs and backslapping to cover up tears both of happiness and sadness when you told us you’d been granted asylum in the US and would be leaving. I gave you my parents’ address but never heard from you and you gave me  a slip of paper with your friend Katerina’s(?) address on it but you never heard from me either; it’s easy to lose slips of paper. Of course you couldn’t give an address in the US because you still didn’t know where you’d be going and so more or less you just... disappeared. That was back in the day when finding people was almost impossible, especially in the states and especially for someone living in Europe. And anyway, we all thought you’d have changed your name and disappeared into anonymity.

The flat was glum after you’d gone and nobody else occupied the lounge to replace you and eventually everyone went their separate ways. I’ve lost contact with everybody now, Peter went back to Spain, the girls shacked up with various blokes, I went to Italy, but I’m pretty sure all of us remember you in the same way.

When I moved to Italy and got a computer and internet I searched for you many times, and kept doing so as the technology got better and better over the next 20 odd years. I never had any luck though. We all knew you as TED not TAD but I  still knew there was an ‘a’ in your name but thought Tadeus same as a German friend of mine and drew  blank after blank in my searches and I’m not that hot on the computer anyway as you might have guessed.  It’s been a few years since I last tried and now with all the improvements in computers and facebook and all the online details now available and the habits of blogging and twittering etc. I thought I’d give finding you another damn good try. As it turns out you came up straight away. First hit.  I write Tadeus Menert and up comes ‘maybe you meant... Tadeusz Menert’ only 1 in the US and blow me if I didn’t come across an article published by a guy with, sort of,  your name in 1988. And bam! there’s a photo of you, smiling the same mustache-laden  smile  still with a v-neck pullover and looking happy with your wife and son. I found you. After all this time I found you! In the USA! You made it!!! The whole family too and without having to change identity!! I’m really happy for you

So next step, find an e-mail for you, which shouldn’t be a problem now I knew your name like wot it should be wrote. But the very next hit on Google I find an obit for you. Oh dear God an Obit. 17 months too bloody late. How horrible. I always hoped to meet up with you again. Now what? Now nothing. A story with a lively beginning, an invisible middle and a shockingly abrupt end late in the night accompanied by the whirr of an ageing computer and a click of a mouse button. Shit. I’m sorry I missed you.

So I’m not sure where I‘m going with this. There's a lot I would have liked to know about your life but how do you condense the questions of a life into a page on a blog and anyway why would you want to, blogs don't answer back and besides  there’s a high risk of getting sentimental and tasteless. So I’ll stop. I just wanted to mark your life in some small way. So that’s it. I’ve always sort of missed you (time mellow things out). It looks like you had a good life and I'm glad about that.  Bye old friend.

As an afterthought I dug out the photo of you mid-air above Silbury hill one of the funnest and weirdest days of my life. Perhaps adding a photo is tasteless,  could be, but I’ll put it up anyway. It’s my blog, my memory and my friend.

Bloody Maps!!!

Well bollix to you Fraternali editore map makers. Can’t you get ANYTHING right, even on new maps? What is so difficult?  There’s me wandering about up steep narrow paths in search of rock shelters and the usual rock carvings following, unusually,  the bloody map in lieu of  my regular guide Baldrick who is still faffing about making bagpipes and stuff and then I find that the bloody map is so out that, were it not for the snow and cold and steepness of the paths, it would be comical. It wasn’t comical and if the mapmakers suddenly find their testicles flapping about their knees yes it was me and well you deserve it you incompetent dicks. Up and down like a whore’s drawers I was just to end up at the same place I started out from.

In fact the day didn’t start out that well. I slept in late, couldn’t get the dog in the car and on the way up, just at the start of the path I was rounded on by a quite a large and savage dog which calmly whipped through a hole in the gate to bark menacingly a few feet away and it was only by waving the trekking pole about that it kept its distance. A stupid old hag came out of the house to call the dog whilst waving a bloody great stick at it. Most efficacious lady. In fact the dog more or less ignored her. Still I did get past and on the way back down armed myself with a  stout hazel rod which I sharpened to a seriously wicked point and unsheathed knife ready to slice bits off the dog after I had impaled it. I’m beginning to hate dogs.

Not too happy with cats either. Coming down my dog, which lives with cats so is quite unafraid of them suddenly bolted like it had seen a ghost. It’s always doing that the damn thing. It far puts the willies up me I can tell you.  I didn’t know what it was at first so went, cautiously, for I am not a courageous fellow,  to investigate and blow me if it wasn’t the biggest cat I’ve seen for a while lying on a rock hissing and spitting and waving its paw at me. Sensibly I thought, I followed the dog and gave it a wide berth. Skirting a cat is definitely a first for me; definitely not the sort of moggy you go up to and stroke.

Anyway after getting back to the starting point for the second time I ditched the map and followed my nose and of course found the places I wanted without a hitch.

And, naturally, I just got to the furthest point on my travels when it starts to snow.  Still I had a late lunch sitting in a rock shelter watching it which was nice, before the slippery decent which wasn’t. I actually think I have found a use for the cup markings.  Tangerine holders. It’s notoriously difficult to hold two tangerines and peel one and a cup mark makes a perfect holder. Sitting in a rock shelter gazing out into the falling snow with no human sounds was fantastic and actually a lot warmer than I had supposed so I just sat there munching tangerines and doing nothing. Loverly. Something deeply relaxing about falling snow. It’s a sort of lighter version of fog and cuts out all noise without totally cutting out visibility.

I came across a wonderful cheese drainer buried under bracken and a few other bits and bobs which I’ll be writing up on the carving compendium blog but worth mentioning here for its oddity and for the time it’s going to require of me to find out what it could conceivably be was a stone disk 40 odd centimeters in diameter. It had two depressions on each side but not central and not deep enough to serve as a fulcrum and it wasn’t worn either so nothing like a grinding stone. I do love a good think.
Sorry  about the page layout. Friggin' bloody blog bloody spot. It's rubbish. I hate it. Once it gets an idea like white text in it's stupid brain, that's it. Nothing to do but accept it. An trying to do a simpel thing like arrange the photos is impossibly time consuming. I hate blogspot and if anyone knows a good alternative, please let me know.  

Silly, silly Woozle

So went on another hike today totally forgetting of course that I would be walking up the north side of a hill to get where I wanted to go. It was bloody freezing. The ice was amazing. At a certain point I was forced to cut up through the scrub on a  70° slope, pulling myself up grunting and swearing on stunted alder and forcing the ruckack under low branches to get round a frozen stream and waterfall blocking my path. 40 minutes of frozen hell all the time seeing the brilliant warming sunshine everywhere I wasn’t. Then, just as I got over the top onto the sunny south side having clawed myself up a path that was more like a frozen river bed than a path, the sun disappeared behind a huge cloud. And stayed there. My thermometer  plummeted to minus 5.8 and gradually the LCD faded and disappeared. Then the wind whipping off the snow at the end of the valley got up and my intention to have my lunch of haggis, potatoes and samosa sitting in the sun changed somewhat. I ended up marching up and down eating as fast as I could. It must have been about minus 10 plus wind chill. Bolix. Mind you if for once I’d believed the weather forecasters I would have been prepared for that. They said -10 at 1500m at lunch time plus wind-chill. Doh!! The lunchbox got so brittle I put my finger through it picking it up. I’m not insured.

Before I abandoned the place for the much warmer north side again I managed to find a wonderful  solar wheel carved on an isolated rock so the trip was worth it.

Any way. The wind of course changed direction just as I dropped over on the northern slopes and started battering the gloomy frozen side I was now on. After a treacherous descent with every item of clothing I had on, hand warmers in both gloves and eyeing the dog with a view to skinning it for an extra layer I got back to the stream and waterfall I’d avoided before. No way was I going down through the scrub again. It took me 20 minutes to cross the stream digging out foot steps in the ice with my knife and using my tried and trusted technique of anchoring the rucksack and using it to support myself in case of a fall. Then it took ages to unhook the bloody thing from  the other side using long sticks as the sticks kept breaking. So when eventually I got out onto the dirt road I was a little, shall we say,  tense. I took my shoes off  for a bit of barefooting to ease my neck muscles and tripped lightly (or should that be trudged?) along the road to take some photos of the little waterfall’s big mamma. I just got round the corner when there was a movement high above me and someone took a shot at me. 20 years butchering people for money in the military meant my reactions were honed to razor sharp and even before the echo had stopped... no hang on, I was never in the military, I must be confusing myself with somebody else. Well, no matter, I dropped to the ground, smashing my willy on a jagged rock in the process and rolled, rucksack and all behind a rock. The dog had raced off and hidden too. Man’s best friend. Phua! I scanned the horizon for my assailant up where I’d seen the movement. I slipped my sheath knife out of the rucksack. Quite what I was going to do with it I don’t know. Rifle against ice-blunted Finnish hunting knife? Yeah right. So there I was lying on the freezing ground, feet gradually turning blue,  behind a rock, along a road in the middle of nowhere knife in hand preparing to... well I’m not quite sure really. What a sight that must have been. Thank god nobody came round the corner. I waited for ages scanning the rocks then, as my brain got the extra blood that my feet evidently no longer wanted, my brain started to work. a) why would anyone be shooting at me? b) why did they stop? c) why didn’t they get me? I mean if it was me I’d have hit the mark first time, it’s not as if I’d been moving fast, d) I’d seen no tracks of anyone in the area. Could I have been mistaken maybe? Maybe it was  hunter? No, hunter’s don’t walk, they drive and again, no tracks. But the dog did shy violently and run off as fast as I’ve ever seen her move so it must have been something. And I did hear the shot and it was close. Actually it was a shot and ricochet - bang feeesssh!.  I was just thinking I might have been mistaken when the dog finally appeared and went cautiously, ever so cautiously  to the river and made various attempts to overcome her fear and investigate whatever it was that frightened her in the bed of the stream. So the shot didn’t come from above after all. I raised my head, threw the rucksack out from behind the rock then got up myself. No more shots. I went to investigate where the dog was investigating. I must admit though to keeping an eye on where I’d seen movement. There was a huge pool covered in thick ice. The whole sheet of ice had collapsed with a large boulder at the bottom under the ice. It became obvious that the movement I’d seen was the rock wheeling down from high up having bounced from god knows where and smashed vertically down into the ice with a crack like a rifle shot and a ton of shattered ice collapsed down feeesssh!

I did feel just a tad foolish. Mind you it is the hunting season and I was wearing a bright yellow jacket and red trousers so easily confused with the local wildlife. Oh well. never a dull moment and all that. No witnesses at least.

Moderate wimpishness

It’s been a while since we’ve seen boar round here. Last year, or was it two years ago, we even met a bunch of hunters who  said that there weren’t as many as there once were. I can’t see the hunters having much impact on the boar population so presume they just got bored and perhaps nipped off to france or something. Anyway it seems they’re back.

I’ve been sleeping out a bit recently and being a lazy sod (I like sleeping out, don’t like the discomfort) I’ve been kipping on the sun lounger out on the patio. Last night the dog occupied the sun lounger instead of me and comfortable and warm and safe she just kept barking. For ages.  You always know when she’s barking at boar because that is just what she does, barks at them but won’t, sensibly I think, go near them. When boar  get too near her though she growls,  so as soon as I heard her barks punctuated with growls I quickly grabbed a torch and opened the back door to take a look and bugger me if there weren’t a bunch of them 4 or 5 yards away. I counted five but judging by the noise from those that had already passed me there were a lot more. I don’t know if I’m happy about this or not. From a wildlife point of view I am. I like the idea of boar. From a solitary wanderer of woods point of view, less so. Especially if they’ve started going around in large groups again as was the norm when we were in the old house.

They passed on up the field behind the house and started rooting about and making one hell of a noise in the top field so I grabbed a torch and challenged myself (a bit like with lightning) to man up and go say hello. Well to be honest I first went up on the roof so I could get a good look at how many there were. Lots I think is a fair description. Big is another fair description. Then armed with two torches (no way is some ornery boar bitch going to get the better of me again in the dark. If I’m going to get charged again I want to see the gory details) I leapt off the roof  poleaxed-gazelle like and steeling myself to see how courageous I was or am, went up into our late veggie plot 20 yards or so from the rooting piggy hordes and then flooded them with  light. The lound rooting noises all stopped suddenly, which was not nice, there was a tense silence (on my part) , one of them came to the wall to investigate and while it just stood there the rest just simply carried on where they had left off.  At that point I must confess I lost my bottle and retreated generally accepting of and content to be a wimp. Well in my defense it’s not a nice feeling to be noticed by a freaking great boar while you're unarmed in the pitch black with only a couple of head torches for defense. So trainee-wimp then.

Tabatha is ill today so didn’t get a chance to go up and see the damage they did so I can savour that tomorrow. Poor Tabi, tomorrow was her birthday party and today was the general rehursal for her ice show. She’s an elf. Bed today, bed tomorrow. Poor kid.

Nothing much, just a hike

What a bloody good day.  An absolutely excellent day. I went hiking up to a shieling searching for rock carvings. Whilst cataloguing some other carvings the other day, at the bottom of a freezing, sunless valley I kept gazing up glumly to see this shieling bathed in gorgeous sunshine while I was freezing my rocks off in a windy gully. That, I thought, that is where I’ll find carvings. So basically today I went up to find a carving or carvings and hopefully one or two which lined up exactly on the rock below but I wasn’t quite prepared for the variety of carvings there. It was such a good day I even found the carving I was looking for, perfectly aligned, plus a whole lot of other strange stuff too (which will obviously get a write up in my rock-carving blog).

Some days start off badly and others like today, excellently. The dog jumped into the boot without me having to lift her in, not even a mini fart escaped her hairy cheeks for the whole trip, the kids went off to school without a hitch so that by 8.50 I was already leaving the car  behind me and hiking up the track.

As I crossed the river where they’re shoring up the banks with huge excavators and thousands of tons of rock and even more of cement probably the construction workers even waved and/or said hello and stopped rolling lorry-sized boulders about so I could pass. Then the miserable woman with the goats wasn’t about yet and her dogs though one was unleashed, just gave a cursory gruff woof or two, or three as we passed. From then on, as usual,  it was just me and the dog and  a couple of chamois, a roe deer and birds a various. Wilda was even happier and got a feed off a dead red deer stag. She came out (literally) looking like something out of discovery channel. It was a bit smelly and a way off the path so didn’t investigate but I imagine a hunter missed the mark perhaps.

Despite a summer of no hiking, and no serious barefoot, I thought I’d give it a go today. I must say, the path which winds up to the shieling through rhododendrons and stunted alder has some amazing views and a weird atmosphere to it but  the ground was like vertical tundra, frozen solid for most of the way so me ikkle tootsies got a bit chilly and slippery so apart from a wee bit didn’t try coming down barefoot.

 The shieling too is really odd, it looks like it should be lower down, step through the houses and onto a bus sort of odd. Obviously it is well used in the summer and a couple of the houses are well done up and habitable. Goat droppings everywhere and carvings dotted here and there amongst the houses. Just through a gap between two houses and you come out onto a most inspiring expanse of flat rock overlooking the valley below. Sitting there gazing at the view it was very obviously very quiet. Something we’re no longer really used to , even where we live there’s still background noise of some sort but there total, ear smashing silence. Wonderful.

Derby Blue Succhi di... Qualcosa!!

Once in a while a bit of spleen venting becomes necessary. Today it became necessary. I just bought a bottle of Derby fruit juice. We like the Co-op’s peach and mango juice but I like coconut more, so when I saw a bottle of derby mango and coconut juice I whisked it off the shelf and into the trolley.

After a few hours in the fridge and with the addition of a few ice cubes and a straw (after 50 you start to regress to childhood, it’s quite legal) I opened it and poured a generous quantity into a tall glass and sat down to gaze at the mountains and concentrate on the taste explosion alluded to by the dancing figures on the front of the bottle.  However, it just tasted like a watered down version of apricot juice. How odd. I read the label a little closer. What it actually said was albiCOCCA (apricot), albi in smaller letters and different font -cocca in letters twice as high and MANGO in huge black block capitals. Cocco is coconut in italian and cocca is just the second half of albicocca. Not bothering to put my glasses on in the supermarket just to buy a bottle of juice I didn’t even see the albi- part probably because the wispy letters were so small  in comparison to the ‘COCCA’ part and the ‘a’ in cocca actually did look like an ‘o’ from my distant glassesless viewpoint. So the product looked like coco(nut) and Mango. My bad but in my defense who the crap divides up a word like apricot?  What a stupid way of doing things. But then I used to work for an advertising company so shouldn’t be surprised I suppose. Thinking about it, who the crap puts “unconventional fruit” in English on an Italian product too? Is mango unconventional? And what about “Frutta del Sabato sera” (Saturday night fruit)? Doesn’t that just sound like product advertisers desperately scraping the bottom of a very big barrel? Had me giggling though which is positive.

However, concentrating on the lack of taste explosion I noticed again that the taste was definitely and noticeably watered down apricot with a marked lack of mango taste. I examined the label again. Mango was written in bold capitals and from a distance stood out more than anything else leading me to presume (never presume Woozle!) the existence of a consistent mango-ey taste. So I read the ingredients. That’s when I exploded. Nobody in the house at the time thankfully. No damage to property either. I’m losing my explosive touch.

Ingredients: Water, Apricot puree 17%. (Sorry, what do you mean 17%? surely you mean 37%? or 47%! No? Oh! it really is 17%. Oh!  Oh well! To continue...) apple juice 11%, and.... mango puree ... wait for it... 2%. TWO PERCENT??!! WHAT THE F.... How can you call your product apricot and MANGO (in big bold capitals) when you have 11% apple juice and only 2% mango? Of course it doesn’t bloody taste of mangos, there aren’t any mangos in it. Call it apricot and apple. That there’s only 30% fruit in the product altogether is bad enough but  2% mango in a litre is nothing, that’s 20ml, or one and a third tablespoons of mango in a litre.  Maybe a better name would be ‘Derby Homeopathic Mango, and Apricot’.  How do they get away with this shit? They even have pictures of a mango and an apricot on the front of the bottle, not an apple in sight. How come the co-op is selling this stuff (I feel a letter coming on). 

But there’s more. Just above the ingredients the small print informs us that this is an alcohol free drink based on (warning bells ring) apricot, apple and mango, in that order (fruit 30%). So not a lot of fruit. But  why not put that on the front instead of hidden away on the side (rhet.)?

Anyhow. There’s even more. I turned the bottle round and discovered one of those ubiquitous signs of a worthless product worldwide, the fake label announcing to the world that this bottle of watery shit was “voted product of the year 2010, the Consumers Reward Innovation” award. INNOVATION!!! WHAT INNOVATION? 2% mango is not innovation. Watering down apricot juice, sorry, pulp, with apple juice is not innovation, it’s trades description violation.

Another little label informs us that the sample was on 8,014 consumers “on selected products”. Turns out that this actually is a real prize though about 40 other products won the same prize and of course the award applies to the whole range of derby blue products. Meaning of course that it’s real fake if you know what I mean. I didn’t see product range of the year mentioned anywhere. ‘Product’ of the year being singular and any normal brain would take that to mean referred to the product in hand, not the product line. Anyway NOBODY, nobody, not even you, can taste the bloody mango in this stuff I can guarantee that. So none of the 8,014 consumers probably even tasted the stuff. Just to give a comparison, co-op’s peach/mango has 32% peach and 10% mango and you can barely taste the mango in that. Lying cheating bastards.

Makes a mockery of trading standards and even more of a mockery of these Product of the Year nominations (which by the way, the companies have to pay four and a half grand for which explains EVERYTHING)? The words bordering on and fraudulent  spring to mind.

So, yet another company on my boycott list. 

As a post script I tried an experiment today. I added two tablespoons i.e. more than 2% of strong  blueberry juice to a liter of apricot juice to see if you could taste the blueberries. Anyone want to bet on the outcome?

Threads

I just watched a film that had quite a profound effect on me at the time when it first came out somewhere around 1984, ‘Threads’ by Barry Hines.

First time round I still had some faith in people though even back then hardly any in politicians, governments, the military and their concept of ‘authority’. I naively thought that the ordinary people would eventually see through the charades, the corruption, the lies and deceit and that things would change. What was my excuse you may ask. Well I was young I suppose and knew very little of history.

Now  though with a historical perspective and having had more than 20 years to see first hand how useless, contemptible, self-serving and basically evil politicians, governments and especially the military continue to be and how incredibly blinkered and credulous the voting public still is, this time round it had perhaps an even greater effect on me.

First time round the scenes and causes depicted in the film did actually seem possible, but because I was young,  single, with no kids I wasn’t that concerned. I of course would have survived, after all I had read the Nuclear Survival Guide cover to cover and had a sharp knife and some string.

Now though being older and seeing the americans and brits STILL thinking and acting like they own the world and still inventing justifications for their political games and still conferring upon themselves some sort of divine right to police the world it seems more than possible we might one day be reduced to having to work for food that is being witheld by those very people, following some unquestioned and unfathomable tradition, we appointed to shepherd us. Baaa! Even more so in consideration of the fact that US politicians and those short sighted people who keep voting them in all seem to hold a fervent belief in  what I find to be a frightening concept of nation and a terrifying belief in an invisible bronze age sky daddy in which they trust and are directed by.

Sure it might not be a cataclysm like the NBC attack in the film, it might just be economic  tension brought about by the thieving banks, or, if you believe such a thing actually exists, international terrorism or maybe civil disorder resulting from the panic after the importance of some minor and inconsequential epidemic has been blown out of all proportion by the government and media. Either way it was never really even the human tragedy depicted in the film that affected me, we all get to die one way or another,  it was and is the thought of the high-handed arrogance of the, at that point,  culpable and even more unnecessary government to take possession of emergency powers, ruling by the threat of violence rather than because of mandate and creating more and unnecessary misery in an already miserable situation that had and has me spitting venom.

I have seen for myself in the years since 9.11 the new and unjustifiable powers the governments have been allowed to give themselves on the basis of a perceived but wholly fanciful threats, and my appreciation of the reality value of the film has changed somewhat.

 Anyway, enough of my waffle. It’s a film that really is worth watching. It’s a bit slow in the beginning but worth the wait.    

http://retrovision.tv/freevideo/threads-1984

Yet another bloody blog

So after days, literally,  of Baldrick and myself hauling ourselves up and lowering ourselves down vertical bits of mountainside in the hunt for a particular prehistoric altar stone, elaborately carved on three sides which some years ago had apparently been broken and shoved over the edge of somewhere by the digger when they were widening the interestingly steep road up from the Nora, we managed this time to get Riccardo Dosio  up to identify the position it used to occupy as he was lucky enough to have seen it in position.

The only way up is by 4WD so we went up in the Kia which fortunately has a low roof so Baldrick who is a tall bugger and annoyingly always wants to walk everywhere, bashed his head repeatedly on the roof as I slammed the thing over the biggest rocks I could find and into the deepest channels. Deeply satisfying.

Thanks to Riccardo we found where the rock used to be and fortunately after very little I managed to find one half of it. And on a return visit Baldrick seemed to have found the other half or at least another deeply carved stone. As soon as the weather lets up a moment we can inspect them better. Both bits need turning over to see clearly though we’re going to have to figure out how, but the photos as is gives an idea of how deeply (unusually) carved they are.

Riccardo also showed us a couple of other locations we would never have found since the road widening. So well over a year since our heroic and dare I say productive exploits at the Augiard I’m back to recording positions, angles, alingnments and measurements again.  But this time I thought I’d do it on-line. So as the barefoot thing has drawn to a close with the snow covering all  my various barefoot stomping grounds I’ve started yet another blog listed top right on this page under the inventive title ‘My Other Sites’. I’ve called the blog Woozle’s Rock Carving Compendium but agree it does sound a little like a junior school project.. No matter. It’s the content that counts, not the packaging. Or have I got that wrong?

I’ve put some stuff up already though I’ve still got to write the intro but will eventually get round to it as soon as I get a moment. I’ve got so much stuff it’s going to take ages to get it all sorted out and online but  now the summer is over and the bad weather sets in I should have more time.

Bird ringing at the Vaccera by the Istituto Nazionale per la Fauna Selvatica “Alessandro Ghigi”

God save us from meddling  environmentalists. As a committed birder for the last 40 years and having in my youth and before my awakening to deep ecology helped on ringing operations I was appalled at the treatment meted out to the birds up at the Vaccera yesterday by so-called ornithologists from the national institute for wildlife “alessandro ghigi”. Twenty years ago leaving birds in the nets for  15 minutes would have got your operation closed down immediately, and rightly so, but nowadays there seems to be no control and little concern. Like everything else, care for things gets worse not better. Even so, I would never have expected such a level of incompetent negligence from a ‘national’ institute. Thinking about it though any national institute that has to add on the name of it’s founder on the end already seems to my British eye at least, a bit amateurish. The thing is, if you feel the overwhelming need to interfere with the local bird life to the extent you do your capturing at a popular and well frequented spot like the Vaccera, on a Sunday, at least do it bloody right! Be respectful to the birds and to public opinion by doing a good job. There were a couple of other concerned and horrified people about too, visibly disturbed at the plight of a trapped bird left for too long which does the reputation of competent and professional  ornithologists no good at all.

Personally, this time as every time, I  take the bird out of the net and release it (and bugger the ringers) but while doing so this time unfortunately the ‘ornithologists’ arrived to stop me. If they had been there  in the first place I wouldn't have interfered. They say they were out back of the bar at the other nets (they had far, far too many nets with far too few people (not) manning them) but to all of us it seemed like, as it was lunch time, they came out of the bar (I suppose we’ll never know). Anyway whatever they were doing 15 minutes in the net is barbaric. Fifteen or more minutes in the net then how ever long they keep them in the bag  plus the recording time all adds up. In all the  ringing operations I have seen (admittedly a good few years ago) there’s always been  for each run of nets at least one  recorder and one ringer. All I counted at the Vaccera were four in total, with just the one girl occasionally walking up the line of nets on her own to presumably (but not obviously) check for caught birds. That’s is nowhere near enough.  So Alessandro Ghigi, hows about you get your act together a bit more. Read a couple of manuals, study a bit about avian stress levels. You like birds? Then think about their welfare a bit more and the real-world validity and appropriateness of what you do.  One bird I saw at the top of a net further away from the bar and which I thought was dead, upside down and immobile when we arrived was there for at least twenty minutes but fortunately seems to have managed to free itself (so not dead then:-)). It makes my blood boil. Shameful. This sort of ornithologist needs a good whipping and no supper. Unfortunately this cavalier approach to wildlife has increased all over the place even in the UK with the times birds are left in the nets and bagging and handling times and  becoming longer and longer and the voyeristic almost pornographic activities of the ringers becoming more pronounced.  Time to outlaw this barbaric practice which to my mind seems always to be run by boderline bird-fondling hobbyists rather than scientific professionals. The recording of biometrics by them seems to be standard practice regardless of whether it's of any use or not. Is there a stated purpose to these captures? I presume not as it was not evident at the capture site and despite looking I've found nothing on line. Therefore to what purpose this disturbance? The suffering of the birds would be greatly reduced by limiting handling to only tagging them and noting species and sex. With a  1% recovery rate of ringed birds what's the point in recording a lot of data in the first place unless it's vital data? Grrr! Some animal fondlers are just never happy unless they are probing and prodding and handling and exercising their power over animals that have no say in the matter (good example in shamefully cavalier video below). Reading the bumf put out by this institute it does rather seem that these people  are desperately trying to find some shady scientific justifications for their hobby rather than actually doing something scientifically important. We are destroying habitat at an alarming rate and please someone tell me what the measurements of a birds wing length have on that. It's just  suffering inflicted for no reason. 
Better stop. My liver is about to explode

The Loaded Dervish

I think I already mentioned  that I bought myself a long board (sort of a longer version of a skateboard) to fill in the gaps between injuries received from stacking the mountainboard. Well the mountain board has been out of action for a while now as the brake is anything but reliable and keeps breaking which takes all the fun out of it and invariably leads to me breaking too so I’m now in the process of figuring out whether the brake is actually defective or installed wrongly and whether it’s covered by guarantee or not. Not really relishing slamming into rocks and trees at high speed  I have stopped riding till I sort it out. In the meantime as the family are at the seaside for 10 days I’m off longboarding most evenings. Fortunately it is a slightly less damaging occupation than the mountainboard. at least at my level. Being a bit too blasé though and not concentrating as I probably should I have had a couple of rib smashing falls to rival the mountainboard crashes but I have curbed by initial madness now, taken my age into consideration and realised that I’m no longer invincible and instead thinking I’m on a smaller version of the moutainboard and  trying to negotiate hills that I am in no way competent enough to even think of tackling I am now riding a short, shallow bit of road learning the basics, like stopping, which does seem to be a sensible move.
Finding places to go longboarding in the Pellice Valley is not as easy as I expected. Everything is steep and the only gentle slopes around are either too busy or in horrifically bad repair to be an option with my current lack of braking capability or full of spectators so I’m sort of stuck with the bit of quiet road I’ve found down by the river. I hope all this will change when I eventually learn to brake and to stop and can tackle more interesting bits of road. At the moment I’m getting a definite buzz out of carving. It’s not a sort of sensation that you get any other way, playing with gravity at ground level without snow, well not in my experience of  life anyway. When you get it right it’s amazing and the board, a Loaded Dervish same as in the video I’ve linked to, is really responsive. I’m quite surprised considering that a short while ago even standing on a balance board was a challenge, that I can stay on the bloody thing at all so anything more is pure bonus balance. Just about every evening I find I can push the board and my balance just that little bit further than the evening before, curve just that little bit tighter. Looking at the clips on you tube it doesn’t look too difficult but believe me age, lack of flexibility, definite lack of courage (stupidity is different) all take their toll. I thought that scrubbing off speed by sliding the back wheels out when carving would be simple. It looks bloody simple. It’s taken me a week just to master the board and myself to be able to do that enough to actually slow down a bit.

I’ve fallen in love with longboard dancing (featured in the video) in fact this video was what decided me, instantly, that longboarding is what I wanted to do. I can do a few of steps, badly, with no grace or finesse at all but I’m working on it and it’s fun trying. Just tried a road near the house which gives me a good moderately slow run to practice on so I’m improving.
I took Flora there the other day (photo). What it took me a week to learn she accomplished in about half an hour. Grrr!!. Next time I’m going to get her to put welding goggles on to balance out the odds a bit.

 You will of course be surprised at just  how similar my physique is to that of Adam and Adam in the video. This is the result of intensive training.

I finally managed to get a decent photo or two of the snake so here they are. It’s rather a daft beastie. It hangs off the wall in what looks to be rather an uncomfortable position with its head under an ivy leaf with its body  on clear display. You can  go right up to it and as long as it doesn’t see you it stays just where it is; as a defensive strategy it does seem rather ineffective. Could it be related to ostriches somewhere down the evolutionary line? I’m not sure how long its going to survive though what with the local gardeners wanting to kill it, the weirdo neighbour who kills any snake he finds and puts them under spirit and of curse the non-human threats, cats and the dog and neighbours cars etc. It lies out in the road, right across the road actually and as it is deaf as a post, probably has a receding jaw bone or something I can see it lasting very long. I mean you can start a cement mixer right next to it and as long as its head is under a leaf, it doesn’t stir. I’m not sure that it makes a distinction between car and cement mixer.