Nauseatingly cute

On a recent visit to Martin Mere wetland centre, the experience included practising photographing the ultimate in cute, wee furry things.  The day we visited there were lots of folks who'd brought their animals and their crafts to display. Many owners were willing to allow visitors to hold or stroke ferrets, birds and baby coo's and pigs and such like.The meerkats were problematic to photograph as they would not sit still and smile for the camera.

Some beasties were closer up than others, and the just as cute but feathered instead of furry were enclosed in their own ponds but further away from the enthusiastic photographer.

Flamingos in their shed.

No picture records my not quite distant enough encounter with Priscilla the death inducing tarantula. I spied Priscilla across a hut I’d entered following my discovery of how soft chinchillas are.  I was a little off balance from narrowly avoiding verbalising my thoughts that I could now understand why heartless people made them into coats thus upsetting the terribly nice owner and ruining any credibility I have as a vegetarian.

But Priscilla and my near death experience…
All arachnophobes have dramatic tales to tell (as opposed to being drama queens) and seeing what I first thought was an ugly pattern on a chap’s jumper turned out to be blood-chilling to the extent I was capable of emitting only a feeble squeak. Sig Other congratulated me on keeping my cool. I later admitted it was shock not cool I felt.  Actual end of life was averted by staggering over with whatever aplomb I could muster to cuddle a cute python.  Equilibrium mostly restored, I carried on to the next building which held an assortment of birds of prey.

The outlying parts of this waterfowl sanctuary are home at the moment to vast numbers of pink footed geese.

And the final cute pic was taken when the otters were being fed.

Mythical beasties

I spent a few days in the highlands last week partly seeing how far north I could manage to travel from my base in Dornoch, but also to entice some shy beasties out to play.

The first night was spent at Fort Augustus which is on the Caledonian Canal as it runs into Loch Ness. Nessie was present only in the artistic interpretation shown above. Neither did she turn up as hoped when I stopped at Castle Urquhart on the shores of the Loch.

I was miffed, as I’d grown up hearing about my grandfather’s sighting of the monster some 80 years ago. Sig Other commented acerbically about family traditions of visits by mythical beasts, at which point I harrumphed and shut up. Loch Ness

Despite travelling a fair bit around and about, no dolphins appeared to me either. Lots of cavorting seals by the shores of numerous firths. Those photos are still in Sig Other’s camera.

Although the wildlife was largely in absentia, the sun was out and the beaches were as advertised with foamy surf and few other humans around.

However, I did achieve one goal of my trip and that was to find an old friend whose address I had lost in a long ago house move. I am quite proud of my amature detective efforts as I nipped into the public loos in Tain and asked the women guarding the facilities if they knew of my friend. Delightedly they said yes, and pointed me in her direction. (Tain is a small town.)

Even better, B seemed happy to see me despite the shock she must have had at me arriving out of the blue after some 14 years of silence. Kettles were boiled, high-speed gossip exchanged and I left with her contact details.

Although I felt some trepidation at boldly knocking on her door, I was reasonably confident of a welcome. We’d long ago agreed that as neither of us were any use at keeping in touch, that no matter how long it was, we’d pick up our friendship when we met again.

She said something rather touching … that “I carried a part of her past and she carried a part of mine”. We met in our first careers more than thirty years ago. This was a turbulent time for both of us professionally and personally, thus we were important supports to each other during these years. I no longer have anyone else in my life who knew the highs and lows and neither does she, so a renewal of our contact means some good/bad old stories can be dusted down and reappraised in the light of maturity and distance.

But this is also a reminder to me to trust in the bonds of real friendship no matter how stretched these might become.

Er, I’ll stop now as I suspect I'm beginning to channel Francis Gay's* column.
http://www.sundaypost.com/frangay.htm

*Another mythical beastie!

Oop N’awrth

Another of my ‘always wanted to do that’ tick-the-box activities is to visit the mysterious hinterlands adjacent to the M60 motorway. I persuaded Sig Other to accompany me to Bolton, situated on the A666 a short distance from the M60, for a day out in this north England industrial town.

In the centre there is a square outside the rather glorious architecture of the town hall. A temporary exhibition was housed in a marquee in the square. On entering, I found a small, but fascinating display featuring items of interest on the lives of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people which was part of GRT History Month.

http://www.grthm.co.uk/index.php

Like many (I suspect) I am ignorant of the history of these minority ethnic groups in our local and European population and have no appreciation of lives lived, in some cases, so differently from my own. The link above goes to a truly educational site where I spent a considerable time being enlightened and humbled by the history of people who have contributed in many ways to our society.

The Bolton exhibition highlighted some examples of GRT people’s lives in north England where people live(d) and travel(led) on the canal system, while others bring their circuses and fairgrounds round the cities. Other exhibition boards outlined the terrible destruction of GRT lives in the run up to and during the holocaust. The link above gives harrowing details about this often neglected aspect of those years.

On leaving behind the exhibition, we walked about the town centre which in terms of shops is largely interchangeable with anywhere else, except for the statue of Fred Dibnah cast by sculptor Jane Robbins.
http://www.janerobbins.com/gallery.html

Bolton also has a little aquarium in the basement of their library building. It has been there since 1941 and now has a collection of fish from international waters. The long tailed knife fish is particularly impressive.
http://www.boltonmuseums.org.uk/aquarium/fish-collection/giant-green-knifefish/

The countryside around Bolton is hilly and when I visited, it was looking its best in the sun. A run through the hills on windy country roads then back down the A666 completed this day out.

Wee Abused Scottish Beasties

You’ll have noticed the very public row between the SSPCA and the RSPCA over the latter’s alleged appropriation of donations from people residing in Scotland and the lack of awareness that they do not work here.

In terms of fairness, and at times in the charitable sector all is fair in money and fundraising, I think the SSPCA have a valid point when they complain that the RSPCA fail to make it abundantly clear that they do not rescue animals in Scotland, therefore any money raised in Scotland is not spent here. This takes away funds which donors might have expected to go towards helping abused Scottish animals.

I have some, if not conflicting thoughts about this, then a degree of disquiet. I suffer from a knee-jerk reaction of amazed distaste when I hear of people leaving enormous legacies to animal charities. In my view there are other more pressing causes which do not parade cuddly mutts/bunnies/goldfish to wring the heartstrings of the soppy, therefore otherwise deserving causes fail to attract the money they need to provide services which are not popular or are completely misunderstood. For example, lots of agencies seeking to help adult women are hideously underfunded, but crucially, the ethical ones do not try to raise money by trotting out ‘victims’. They know that this is demeaning to women who have suffered whatever problem their service is needed for and is ultimately counter-productive, as there is a perception that over-use of ‘victims’ leads to potential donor-fatigue.

Some well known children’s charities have spent years and an advertising budget possibly well in excess of the total available to ethical women’s charities in portraying helpless children at the mercy of known adults. Sadly there can be an unhelpful patriarchal message in there which encourages mother-blaming. That is contrary to a sound feminist analysis of the nuclear family and the coping strategies employed by many struggling mothers.

And that brings me to another aspect of my disquiet which is that given these large charities are using similar advertising strategies to the RSPCA, and there is frequently a separate but similar Scottish version, are they also poaching funds that people in Scotland are assuming are going to help Scottish children?

Some of the articles reporting on the SSPCA/RSPCA issue are trying to recommend that these Scottish agencies join their English/Welsh counterparts in an exercise to maximise their efforts. This as usual displays ignorance of the separate English/Welsh legal system and the completely different social/welfare structures in those two nations from the Scottish systems.

So, parts of my political world-view are negotiating some kind of reaction to this with other parts of my political world-view. I think this is a peculiar personal form of intersectionality. Damn, nothing is straightforward, is it?

Typically, the Guardian finds the most bizarre commentator to do a comment is free piece on this.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/04/animalwelfare-animals

The comments below this article are priceless! But they demonstrate another issue which is that many people have no concept of how charitable agencies operate and complain about misuse of donations. Sigh, such dimwittedness and possibly from the same mindset that would be all for unrestrained capitalism.

Disclaimer:
I don’t advocate neglecting abused animals and I personally frown upon kitten-drowning, eating flesh and all such nastiness, I merely prefer to direct my charitable impulses elsewhere.

Moggy Bloggy

I’ve spent the last several days living with a brace of cats. Judging by many people's blogs, it appears almost obligatory to do a blog extolling the delights of feline friends accompanied by pictures of unbearably cute cats artfully posed to maximise their attractiveness to cat aficionados. This post has the photo, but a combined lack of photographic ability and disinclination to pursue these moggies until they decided to drape themselves in an appropriately cute display of teeth and claw, means they are not representatively as cute as they are in real life (in their owner’s eyes, anyway).

I’m not a cat person. I’m marginally more a dog person, but owing to an affliction of sneezing caused by mutt & moggie hair, I do my best to avoid hairy beasties. This makes prolonged space sharing with other people’s pets an increasingly difficult experience. A few hours is fine, otherwise I have to resort to dosing myself with hefty amounts of antihistamines thus dulling my senses enough to live with my friends’ beloveds.

However, when I’m feeling especially uncharitable I find myself referring to these companion animals as furry parasites. With this attitude, I decided to take the cats in question in hand and sort them out. My aim was to turn them into productive members of the household and credits to society.

I cornered them in the kitchen, (without resorting to bribery with food), and gave them their instructions for adding to the sum of human knowledge. They were told they had until the end of the week to crack the secrets of nuclear fusion. Time passed, but no scientific progress was forthcoming. The cats never even bothered to go online and access the Journal of Nuclear Fusion.
http://www.iop.org/EJ/toc/0029-5515/45/10A

Perhaps I wanted more of them than they could achieve, and on my next visit their task should be more meaningful to the average kitty-brain.

Brief Lancastrian Encounter

This weekend, in the last gasp of our dreich summer, I went to Morecambe. I’ve wanted to go for ages because what I can see of the sea from the M6 motorway looks so inviting.

The sun shone on Saturday as Significant Other and I set off towards Lancaster on the way to Morecambe. This is not the best signposted city and we got snarled up in the shopping traffic in the city centre looking for the way to Morecambe. The upside being a view of some great buildings and old narrow streets and now I want to go to Lancaster for a weekend to explore it.

Morecambe itself, in common with so many seaside towns is fading (well, more accurately, has faded) although there is some lovely art deco architecture.

The old Midland Hotel has been refurbished and looked a bit out of my price league. Checking out their website confirmed that!

The Winter Gardens are being renovated and a look inside showed what a major task the Friends of, face. They are hoping for grants and in particular lottery money, to help. I hope they get this as it is sad to see the ruin of such a fine building. I was not allowed to take photos inside, but there is a good slideshow of the interior on their website.

http://www.thewintergardensmorecambe.co.uk/densmorecambe.co.uk/

It was warm as long as we stayed out of the sea breeze, and I was chilled walking out to the end of the Stone Jetty. The jetty, built in the early 1800's, is all that remains of Morecambe’s harbour where ferries from Scotland and Ireland docked. This area is now renovated and covered with sculpted birds and jokes inset into the paving. Sig Other found the jokes amusing.

View towards the lake District

Local lad Eric Morecambe is celebrated in a statue surrounded by verses from “Bring Me Sunshine”. I took this photo for my mother who is a fan.


No visit anywhere seems complete without seeking out the second hand bookshops of the area. I spent nearly an hour in the one on the prom. I’d have spent more money had the owner bothered to create any order inside the shop. Obviously a stranger to labelling, or even the alphabet; such haphazardly mingled genre must cost this chap dear.

In contrast, the chatty owner of the jewellery shop next door had me investing in some starfish shaped earrings. I also learned why my silver jewellery tarnished. Apparently it is because I don’t keep it in little cloth bags.

We headed out of Morecambe to Carnforth which has the distinction of having the railway station where Brief Encounter was filmed. We were too late for the visitor centre as it closed at 4pm, but, again, they have pics on their website.

http://www.carnforthstation.co.uk/

I think a longer visit centred in Lancaster is definitely called for.

Sunday was expected to be wet, but the sun came out and so we took off to Dunham Massey, an estate owned by the National Trust with a house and extensive grounds including a deer park. I’m glossing over any mention of venison and Sig Other was well warned off referring to Bamby Burgers.

I usually have no luck with wildlife, so I was resigned to a fruitless wander round a country park with nothing but a few sparrows on view. Not so! More and cuter deer than I thought possible, posed for the camera. Although they are wary of people, and those children who galumphed after them had no hope of catching them, the deer are clearly used to humans and coexist with the crowds during opening hours.
How many deer in this picture?

Very cute deer.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-dunhammassey/w-dunhammassey-seeanddo.htm

Fallow Deer

And finally, some autumnal fungus.

Absent Osprey's

I took some pics during our dismal summer, and this is one from a trip to South West Scotland taken at 10pm near midsummer.

This one is from a trip up the A9 to try to see the Osprey's. They failed completely to turn up after me making an effort to go visit!! I'd only been meaning to for the last ten years. I later discovered they were all getting the celeb treatment by BBC's naturewatch. Clearly I didn't have the right equipment or charisma of Bill Oddie and his team of intrepid bird fanciers. Bitter? Me?

Well, I got lost that day and took several hours to find my way back to the car park at Loch Garten. At least it was hot and sunny and the scenery (minus Osprey's) was at its best.

Getting lost meant I could take some other pics. This one is of a part of the Forest of Garten which is being allowed to return to bogland. I was there just as the dragon flies were hatching.

More bog in the Forest of Garten. I had one unsettling moment when reading the information board in the carpark. There are over 100 different kinds of spiders in the forest. As an arachnophobe, I find this an inexcusable excess of nature.