Charles Chaplin

It's easy to forget Charles Chaplin was also a well-respected composer, although his arguably most famous piece, the theme from the film, Limelight, is a tune many people will recognise though perhaps fail to put a name to.

I discovered a copy of the piano music for this theme in a box of music I acquired through FreeCycle. Here's my first draft of it as a piece for recorder quintet (Tr Tr T B B). Still needs a bit of proofreading, and most of the dynamics are still missing, but I think it'll work OK, and by the time Piping Hot Recorders reassemble after the festive season I should have a working version of it for us to try.

Listen to Limelight

This is an mp3 file created from the wav file generated by Sibelius Kontact player, so it's a bit artificial-sounding, to say the least, but somewhat better than a midi file I suppose. Not sure about the supposed 'recorder' sound, though: sounds more like flutes to me. I guess we'd better do it for real.

Nothing happened today . . . ?

I used to keep a diary when I was a kid. A page to a day, it always was, and at the start of each year I'd busily fill in everything that happened over the course of a day. Some days were full of things and others read something like this: " Got up. Had breakfast. Went to school. Came home. Did homework. Went to bed."

By the time February came along, those sort of days had degenerated into: "Nothing happened today." And by the beginning of April, most days would be completely blank. If a lot was happening in my life, I was too busy to write it down, and if nothing much was happening, I couldn't see much point in writing, yet again, "nothing happened".

Somewhere in the attic there's a box full of such diaries. Fully documented Januarys and Februarys, skimpy springs, and a big blank space for the rest of the year. Occasionally I'd write up my diary when we went on holiday, as there was no homework to do, and probably no TV to watch either, but other than that . . .

But is a blog the same as a diary? Probably not. And in those childhood diaries I suspect I had the wrong approach, anyway. It doesn't have to be a description of what you did all day, does it?
(Today - took the dogs for a walk in a waterlogged field; went to Sainsbury's; visited Steve's dad; watched yet more old episodes of Friends; read graphic novel; got legs squashed by heavy cat.)

So what is a blog for? Sharing my opinions with a largely uninterested world? Proving some sort of point? I really don't know. Why am I doing this? Um . . .

OK, here's a question: Is there any point in my arranging Charlie Chaplin's theme from Limelight for recorder quartet? Oh, wtf, I'll do it anyway. It's fun.

Stormy weather

Through the night the wind howled, the thunder crashed and the rain battered the rooftops. If you opened a window you could hear the roar of the waves crashing on the shore, just a mile away. I just couldn't wait to get down there with my camera!

There's not a lot else you can do in weather like this, and if you live near the sea it would be a crime to pass up such a fine opportunity.

Took over 200 photos in the end. Some of the better ones can be seen here. The sea is usually quite calm around here, so it was quite exciting to see real big breakers, crashing over the promenade or the pier. Anglers, hardy souls, were out in force in their gaily coloured jackets. I saw a swan, apparently surfing for pleasure, great flocks of seagulls (mostly the smaller gulls rather than the evil herring gulls) and oystercatchers.

Eventually the sun came out, making the big waves blue, but still just as loud and stormy. But the colour and quality of light that comes after a storm is quite beautiful, and even Maryport looked lovely for a little while.


It's a shame that Flickr was having an off day. Suddenly everyone was finding that only some of the photos they were uploading could be accessed, and chaos reigned around the globe for a while until they fixed it and we heaved a collective sigh of relief.

Laser cats

Picked up a laser level thingy in a sale for £1.87 - cheap fun for the cats! I've had them chasing it up and down for hours. It projects a line, rather than a point, so they don't know which end of it to catch. Great fun. And better still, it uses ordinary AAA batteries rather than those expensive coin-shaped ones that usually go into laser pointers, so it's cheap to run. I like it.

BODY PARTS PROBE!

Seen outside Tesco today
As my Aussie friend ObLiterated observed: "I bet the Coal Workers'll have something to say about having their body parts probed :)))"

FLOOD WARNINGS
Many people in this area are waiting nervously tonight for high tide, to see whether their local river will burst its banks (again) and flood their houses (again). It's the same places, too, that were inundated last time - the Warwick area of Carlisle, parts of Keswick near the River Greta, parts of Cockermouth near the River Derwent, and so on. The council knows what can happen, and yet not enough has been done, and people will once again lose property and have their lives disrupted. Of course it doesn't help that new houses continue to be built on flood plains.

This is what happened last time:

Above - Waterloo Street, Cockermouth, during the January 2005 floods.

On becoming a pack leader

Above: my pack
I'm reading Cesar Millan's book about dog psychology, Be A Pack Leader, which I got for Christmas. (Is someone trying to tell me something, do you think?) Having watched some of his TV programmes I can see where he's going with this: all I have to do is convince my dogs that I'm the leader, and then they'll be happy, well-rounded, well-behaved animals who will walk obediently behind me and never again get overexcited when they meet other dogs outside; Pace will no longer snarl if you come near her when she's eating; Ghyll won't try to eat the mail as it comes in the letterbox; Pace will at last be prepared to make friends with the cats; they will both sit quietly and benignly when the phone rings or a customer turns up at the door. It seems to involve saying, "tch!" to them each time they overstep the mark, but sometimes they're making so much racket they'd never hear it. Obviously there's more to it, but I've only read Chapter 1 so far so I haven't reached the clever bits yet.

Cesar Millan is Mexican, living in California. The 'Cesar' bit sounds Mexican enough, but 'Millan'? Has he got Scots ancestry, d'you think? He certainly has a way with dogs, but of course what he's really doing is training people, and some of the people on his TV series are as thick as they come, treating their dogs like children - no, no - if you treated children like that they'd be out in the streets causing riots.

I'd really like it to work. Both dogs have caused so much chaos in their own individual and not at all endearing ways that taking them out for a walk in a place where there might be other dogs about now requires a good deal of courage on my part. Sometimes the mental effort involved is all too much. Mostly they're brilliant dogs, but . . . if only they were more like cats.

Above: dogs should be more like this

NOT A PANTO EXACTLY . . .

. . . more a Christmas production, The Borrowers at Keswick's famous Theatre by the Lake is quite a clever version of the popular children's book. It's hard to portray characters who are small enough to live under the floorboards on the same stage as others who are full-sized "human beans" but they did a passable job of creating the illusion of different sizes by using a variety of techniques including our favourite - the miniature puppet versions of the Borrowers, whose little arms moved, and who seemed able to walk around the stage. We never quite figured out how they did that.

The kids loved it, and that's the main thing. Some of the adults, though, found the seats too small and too close together - Steve and I were both very glad to get up and walk about in the interval - me, because the seat was too high for my short legs, and Steve because there wasn't enough space for his longer ones. I seem to remember the seats downstairs in the stalls being a lot more comfortable - something to remember if you're planning to book there.

KESWICK SHOPS CLOSED AGAIN
Once again, though, Keswick missed a trick by not opening up for business on a bank holiday when a lot of potential customers were wandering the streets looking for something to do. I'd hoped to grab an espresso in one of the excellent coffee shops that have sprung up in recent years, but they were all shut. The few cafés that were open were doing a roaring trade, funnily enough, and the only other shops open were the outdoor gear shops, which, I suspect, never close at all, as of course there is a constant demand for yet more fleece jackets.

The Christmas Season

INTERNET DODGERS

The obvious questions are, (a) why would anyone want to dodge the internet and (b) assuming such people do exist, why do they need a café in which to do it? Oh, and is that somewhat pissed-off looking Santa one of said Internet Dodgers? At least they've got a satellite dish, so while they're studiously avoiding the internet they can amuse themselves with sky TV.

EVEN CHRIS IS AT IT NOW
Hmmm. Even Chris has now started a blog, and plans to write something every day! I can't believe he'll keep it up: well, I didn't manage it, did I? The minute life started getting busy, and things worth writing about started happening, I ceased to have time to write them down, and the blog got forgotten.

However . . . let's see which of us drops out first, eh?

CHRISTMAS DAY

This is Smokey Joe, my in-laws' new young lurcher. She's a nice wee dog, and seems - so far - well behaved.

Pretty decent Christmas. Nothing awful happened, despite having 8 people (with a 60-year age gap between the youngest and the oldest) and 2 dogs present, as well as 2 more dogs and 2 cats absent (i.e., left at our house while we had Christmas dinner elsewhere). Even finding the poor cats had been left outside in the rain all afternoon didn't cause any particular trouble. They just came inside on our return, licked themselves dry and settled down for the evening. Everyone got at least some presents they were really happy with, nobody was sick, nobody fell out with anyone else, and even my flat tyre was only a little bit soft and worked fine once we found a garage with a working air machine.

We are now looking forward to a family trip to see The Borrowers at Keswick tomorrow afternoon.

BANG

You know, I love fireworks. I love big brassy displays like the ones at Edinburgh Castle, or over Whitehaven Harbour. There's nothing quite so exciting as those awe-inspiring pyrotechnics.

However.

I'm not a dog. I'm not a cat either, though I have to admit I'm one of those people who wouldn't mind coming back next time in feline form, so long as I can live with a nice soft-hearted old sweetie. Cats and dogs hate fireworks, and we have two of each.

I took the dogs out before darkness set in, hoping there wouldnt' be too many bags and crashes, and it seemed fine to begin with. We went off down the lane as dusk fell, and by the time we were coming back up it was nearly dark. I could barely see the dogs. There was enough light in the sky to see the path, though, and not wanting to damage my night vision I was reluctant to use my headlamp. From time to time I called the dogs, and they came running back, so I knew they were nearby.

And then one time, only one dog came back. No sign of Ghyll. I'd seen him disappear into the gloom somewhere in front, but he wasn't responding to shouts or whistles. The headlight didn't help either. We searched high and low, but there was no sign of him, so I put Pace on her lead and we hurried back home, whistling and calling his name all the way.

Almost back, my phone rang - Ghyll had returned home alone, causing Steve to think some awful fate had befallen Pace and me, of course.

We were glad that he had the sense to go home, at least, but I've no idea what spooked him. There had been a few distant fireworks, but nothing major. I guess my idea of major is different from his. I think I'll wait until after the 5th before taking them out in the dark again.

So, the dogs were safely back indoors, but the cats had been out all day and there was no sign of them at all. This is their first Guy Fawkes, really, as last November they'd been too small to go outside. Up and down the veg garden I went, fluorescent lamp in hand, shouting, "Pussycats!" as I went, but the bangs, by now, were nearby, and loud, and cats are small and able to vanish inside a hedge, so there wasn't much chance of finding them.

Finally Aineko came running back inside, but it was an hour later before her nervous brother made an appearance.

I guess we're lucky. All of us - 2 humans, 2 dogs, 2 cats - are safe and well and indoors tonight, but you can be sure the casualty units of hospitals up and down the country are full up this weekend with silly kids who've got too close to explosives and didn't know any better than to get injured. Some of them will die. Some will be scarred for life. They deserve better from us, who are a bit older and a bit wiser and a bit more experienced in life.

It really is time we banned fireworks from general sale. It's crazy allowing ordinary people to set these things off in their back gardens, let alone letting them fall into the hands of people who may be far too young to understand the dangers. Big licensed displays can be put on in every town and village: if everyone in a community contributed to their local firework fund the money they'd have spent on their own back garden squibs, can you imagine what a nice big show they could put on? And surely it's more fun to stand around in the company of your friends and neighbours enjoying something like this all together?

Sure, the dogs & cats would still be scared, but it would be just one night, not a fortnight leading up to it as well.

"Dreaming of the outdoors"

Don't you just love those instructions translated into English by well-meaning manufacturers, who not only don't speak English, but don't even use our alphabet?

Here's a little gadget I picked up at a stall on Keswick market. Looks like it might come in quite handy - a little LED lamp that holds on to your head with elastic, leaving your hands free. Just as well it's easy enough to figure out how to work it without instructions, though.

Let's see now.... How do we fit the battery?

BATTERY REPLACEMENT

1. 2 Twist off the shot's direction
2. 2x Cr2032 3V Lithium Batteries [Yeah! This bit makes sense!] auording to cubic use. [huh?]
3. Please remove the batteries when it will be enlightened.

Right. I think I've got that. I think. Now what?

FLASHING MODE [ooh this sounds fun]

1. Tw'st off the "on"'s direction
2. Can testing the shot' salfitude

Lower down we find,
Turforwation of product, which of course is something I really needed to know.

I was pleased to see on the front, though, a label saying,
DREAMING OF THE OUTDOORS" which I thought was rather sweet, and they sign off with,
Had a wonderful time. the chinese manufacturing!

Now, how many Western manufacturers (assuming there are any left) send you on your way with such a pleasant sentiment?

Dogs, too

Took the dogs for a quick dash down to the river early this afternoon, but got slightly delayed by Chris phoning - I kept expecting the signal to disappear, so I walked more slowly. (No, I realise this doesn't make very much logical sense, but there you are, that's how it happened.)

Amazingly, we still had a signal by the time I reached the field at the bottom, beyond Roseghyll. It's quite interesting trying to carry on a telephone conversation while (a) taking photos and (b) attempting to throw sticks in the river for your dogs without (c) dropping your phone in the water or (d) getting your camera wet. I'm surprised I didn't throw the phone for the dogs to retrieve while taking photos with the stick and talking to the camera.

At one point Pace found a small plank, which she insisted I threw for her. It was so heavy it went whizzing off downstream rather fast, and Pace almost went with it. Visions of Baby Roo flitted through my memory.


Above - Pace finds a plank


COWS
Last week, it was cows. The cows think they own the field. Well, I suppose they do spend more time there than we do, but still....

You go down to the water's edge to throw sticks for your dogs, get the dogs nice and wet, and then, when you're ready to go, you find the field, previously apparently empty, now contains a herd of curious Fresians, staring languidly down at you.

I don't mind cows. They're slow and harmless, and the worst thing they do is create mud and shite in the places I want to walk. Other than that, they're just fine. And they've got rather nice eyes, too. Ghyll, however, isn't fond of cows, and gets somewhat spooked by their silent gazing. So he barks at them, rather loudly, until they shrug their shoulders in an impenetrable bovine way and wander off.


Above - the cows who think they own the field.

Bigger Prey

Last night I went out in the garden after dark to get something from the car. The Security light went on, and I looked across the cobbles. There was Aineko, out in the middle, crunching something. At first I thought it was a bird, but as I got nearer I realised it had fur. Oh. My little cat had killed a small rabbit and was in the process of eating it, head first.

Right. OK. I can handle this.

So I sort of slunk away back to the house and left her to get on with it.

Above - could it have been this one?

Rabbits are a pain in the bottom around here. They eat everything we try to grow in the veg garden, and dig holes. They're a bloody nuisance. They are also incredibly cute. It's very hard to reconcile these feelings. I remind myself that cats are predators, and rabbits are prey, and this is the way things are supposed to be. Rabbits are not an endangered species. They don't behave like the ones in Watership Down. It's perfectly OK and fine for Aineko to eat them, and I should be proud of her.

I suppose I am, sort of. Just don't make me watch her do it.

I went out later and found a few furry bits. Most of it was gone.

PERCUSSION DISCUSSION

We've just got hold of a pile of old magazines from 1976, called Crescendo International - magazines for musicians. Fascinating stuff.

Having reviewed the gig at the Keswick Museum recently, (See here) where the musical stones were played, I thought it might be interesting to copy part of one of the articles from this magazine, in which the stones get a mention. This is from the August 1976 issue. (It cost 55p and on the front cover there's a photo of Mel Tormé singing and playing the piano.)

It's a discussion between two people I hadn't heard of - James Blades (photo left) (1901 - 1999) and Emil Richards (photo right) (1932- ). James Blades, despite being one of the most celebrated percussionists of his time, was best known for striking the gong at the start of Rank Organization films. Emil Richards specialises in playing percussion on movie soundtracks, but has also played with people such as Frank Sinatra, the Doors and George Harrison.

I come in at a point where they're discussing ancient and ethnic percussion instruments, including things like the cymbals from the Old Testament that Praised The Lord...

ER:...In Santa Barbara, California, there's a museum that has a set of stone chimes from Peru; I'm dying to hear them, but they won't let you play them.

JB: It's a pity you haven't the time to go up to the North of England, to Keswick, in the Lake District, where they have a tremendous five-octave marimba made of rocks from the famous mountain called Skiddaw; it's on the edge of Scotland and England, and they used to light a fire on it as a warning that the Scots were invading. This family of stonemasons found huge rocks that rang; they spent thirty-seven years, and they built this lithophone - it would be wrong to call it a xylophone, because xylo means wood.

This instrument is in Keswick Museum, and they gave me the privilege of recording it. I put it on my LP, and I played Fossils from The Carnival of the Animals, following it up by saying that had Saint-Saens had this instrument available, he probably would have used it in the place of the xylophone.

The interesting thing about this is that I got friendly with a geologist who's spend his life studying the mountains of England and Scotland. And he found that this stone was from a volcanic eruption that had happened many, many thousands of yaers ago; the molten lava came out of the top of the mountain, and at the position where it cooled, the stones rang. On no other part of the mountain, higher up or lower down, did the stones ring. There are only five places in the world where these ringing stones can be found.

The next time you come to Britain, if you have the time to spare, I will take you to Keswick; you can play the stone instrument, and you can make a recording of it.

ER: I wonder if there would be any extra bars, that we could take home with us?

JB: Ah! The only extra bars, I'm afraid, have actually gone, because the man in charge, who I made friends with, gave me a piece of stone from it. He claimed that this could be into billions of years old; as the years go on, the stone becomes more compressed, and gets harder.
. . . .
Now, when I went to this Keswick Museum .... the man in charge said, "We have much material downstairs that might interest you." And he found a bass drum that was tightened with one key, and the rope pulled all the keys, made in 1837; also a bass drum pedal, that you pressed the pedal foot, it operated on a rope, and it pulled the beater on the drum. Then he showed me - which I tried to get, but I couldn't - two pairs of fork-shaped beaters, with which these brothers Richardson had played this stone instrument.

In about 1850, they took the stone instrument to Buckingham Palace and they played it to Queen Victoria. She liked it, and she sent for them to play it again; they used to play overtures, waltzes and other period pieces. In the meantime, they had gone further with it; they'd put this bass drum with it, with the pedal, and over the top of the stone bars they had arranged little bells. But after they'd played one piece, the Queen told them to take all the other things away, and only play on the stones - becaue that, to her, was the music. Isn't it amazing? That was in 1850. They toured the world, including America, with this instrument.

And - if you go up to Keswick with me - there was another, that this geologist made from the only rocks that were left, that he collected. He had a big photograph shop, and he kept it there. He sold the shop, and it is now a shop that sells what I call junk - all these things that the boys and girls buy: souvenirs, queer sorts of dresses and all the rest of it. I went into the shop, and I said to the man: "Where is the big instrument, with the stone bars?" "Oh, I've got no time for that," he said, "it's in the cellar." I tried to buy it from him, but he was too busy selling souvenirs; he didn't want to have any bother with me - he was polite, mark you. But if those stones aer in that shop, you could still get 'em - in that cellar. And I could take you to the shop.

ER: We'll get 'em. We're gonna get those, for sure!

Steve, who spent much of his youth in Keswick in the 70s, thinks the 'big photograph shop' may have been the place that is now Maysons, down on Lake Road. At the time he knew it, it was no longer a photographer's, but hadn't yet become Maysons. Which set of musical stones was in their basement we're not sure, but the only other set he knows of is in the hands of a local family who were friends of his family's. And there are, of course, two sets in the museum, so it's possible the second set there is the one that languished in the shop basement for many years.

CYCLING THE BACK ROADS

There are roads you never use in a car. They don't go anywhere. . . well, they don't go anywhere you'd normally want to go. People live down those roads, in farms, or isolated cottages, of course. Farmers use these lanes to take their tractors from field to field, to drive sheep from pasture to pasture or cattle from grass to milking parlour. They are good places to walk your dog or go for a jog. And they're havens for small animals - red squirrels, feral cats, pheasants, rabbits, barn owls are all common sights, and if you look closely enough there are the little scuttling shrews and mice as well as small hedge birds like dunnocks and wrens.

Cycling quietly along you even notice a black beetle scuttling out of your way, or a huge shiny slug, stretched across your path, laying down its sluggy life in the cause of greater slugdom.

It's nice getting off the main road on your bike. The wild flowers that line the hedgerows smell sweeter - ah, meadowsweet! - and the diesel fumes are far away. Too quiet for me, though, so I start composing a song as I go, singing at the top of my voice and trying to memorize the lyrics to scribble them all down when I get home.

I stop to look over a little hump backed bridge that crosses the River Ellen - my River Ellen, that flows quite near our village, through a field where we often take the dogs. It's narrower here. Just a gentle, inconsequential little river of little interest to anyone who doesn't live near its banks. I like it, though. I notice that Aspatria Angling Club wouldn't allow me to fish here. I guess that means it's a good place to find fish. Just as well I prefer to leave them in the river.

There are some long-disused lime kilns somewhere near Wardhall Guards, a strangely named spot on the OS map and near where I'm cycling. Russell Barnes, who knows about these things, has a couple of photos of them on Flickr but I can't find them. Maybe next time. I do find some huge piles of white stuff in a field - could be lime? Not sure what it looks like, but I do know there's masses of limestone in this area.

Sore leg muscles the next day.11 miles may not seem far to those who cycle a lot, but for me it's a lot. Next time, though, it'll be further!

Addendum April 15th 2008
Apparently I misunderstood the Aspatria Angling Club sign. Never having been an angler, I wasn't aware that for only £20 you can buy a season ticket to fish away in these waters to your heart's content. Gosh! A bargain, and if you're good at it it's probably a lot cheaper than going to the local wet fish shop. My apologies to AM Rankin, and here's a link to their website so that potential fisherpeople can find out exactly what's in store for them: Aspatria Angling Club website

Maryport Blues Festival 2007

Everyone wants to hear about Gary Moore... well, what can you say? He was great, of course. Brilliant performance. Here's a photo:

He doesn't half milk some of those songs, though. You think he's coming to the end, and then he's off again, with long long notes and howling bluesy passages, and then surely it's going to finish this time - those sound like final chords - but no - off he goes again, dragging it out, piling on the agony. If he wasn't such a bloody good guitar player I'd have been off browsing the music stalls by that time, but when someone plays like that, well, you've just got to forgive him.

It's handy being small. People actually push you to the front. All the medium-sized guys get stuck at the back, trying to take photos over people's heads, while wee folk like me can push their way through and end up getting an exceptional view.

I was about 3 rows from the front when Gary Moore was playing, but when Eric Bibb was on, I got right to the front. Did I hear you ask who Eric Bibb is? Fabulous acoustic blues guitarist, with a unique singing voice. Son of Leon Bibb, who was a very well-known American folksinger back in the 60s. Eric grew up in a house in Greenwich Village where people like Bob Dylan or Woodie Guthrie would pop in from time to time. He was surrounded by fine music, so it's not surprising he grew up to be a fine musician.

I was thrilled, though, to find he was being backed by two of the finest musicians money could buy - Danny Thompson on bass and Larry Crockett on drums.

Danny Thompson has played with everybody - well, everybody that matters, anyway. Let's see - to name but a few from his extensive back catalogue which goes back to 1964 - Alexis Korner, the Incredible String Band, Davey Graham, Marianne Faithful, Julie Felix, Pentangle, Cliff Richard, Donovan, Nick Drake, John Martyn, John Renbourn, Rod Stewart, John Williams, Bert Jansch, Ralph McTell, Sandy Denny, Lynsey de Paul, Tom Paxton, T Rex, Kate Bush, Loudon Wainwright III, Billy Bragg, Sam Brown, Richard Thompson, June Tabor, Kathryn Tickell, Tim Buckley, Alison Moyet, Ali Bain, Nigel Kennedy, Savourna Stevenson, Norma Waterson, Kate Rusby, Peter Gabriel, Paul Weller, and many others. Is there any other musician you can name who's performed with such an assortment of stars from many branches of music?

As for Larry Crockett - well, what an exceptional drummer. I hadn't come across him before, but I was well impressed. Read about him here - www.lcrockett.com . He, too, has played with a huge variety of big names over the years, and once you see him play, you understand why he's in such demand. This guy uses a really minimal drum kit in ways I've never seen drums used before. He's never still. He turns his sticks over, and uses both ends, he tickles the cymbals and brushes and touches his instruments creating gentle sounds that are as far removed from the output of a 'normal' drummer as you could get. Never once did I see him just sitting there, as drummers usually do, bashing away rhythmically with a spaced-out look on the face. No, Larry was aware of every note Eric was playing, and enhancing each note by what he did on his drums. I was amazed. Oh, and he's quite beautiful too!

Exploring the Bowness marshes

Solway Railway embankment 2
Originally uploaded by allybeag

Long ago, a railway bridge used to span the Solway Firth from Bowness to Annan. It's long gone, but the evidence remains. On www.local.live.com you can trace the route of the defunct railway all the way from Aspatria to the Solway coast, and then again on the Scottish side from Annan northwards.

It's very strange, marshy ground by the water's edge here, near Bowness. The dogs leapt gracefully from lump of grass to lump of grass, but for 2-legged humans it was much harder going. I hoped to get up on to the embankment from the side, but the tide was in, and it's surrounded by almost impassible marsh so I had to give in for today. I'll be back another day though!

Man has fire

Our mate Dave has recently bought a new house in Carlisle, and today held his grand housewarming barbeque. Since all the rest of Britain seems to be inundated with flood waters, I was convinced an outside party was a silly idea, and asked our pet Sun Goddess to do us a wee sun dance. In the event, though, she didn't read my request in time, and it didn't matter, as we managed a nice sunny afternoon without her help. I guess we deserve a break here in Cumbria, after last year's catastrophic flooding. It's someone else's turn this time.

So, what is it about blokes and barbies? They'll spend half an hour or more fighting to get the thing lit, then get fed up waiting and stick the food on top anyway, even though it's still not hot enough. They believe that pouring fat on the charcoal to create smoke speeds up the cooking process. They'll happily stand in the garden all afternoon watching a miniscule bit of flame sputtering under half a dozen sausages.

We women, now, if we're hungry, we put the food in the kitchen cooker, cook it and eat it. Done. And... in the end, the blokes ended up doing just the same. The sausages, burgers and kebabs went in the oven, got cooked, and were laid on top of the BBQ supposedly to keep them hot. (They didn't. They cooled down.) And the smoke wafted and gusted round the garden, making sure everyone got a turn.

Halfway through this non-cooking process I got fed up and took a wee trip to Asda as I'd heard they were selling the new Harry Potter book there for a fiver, but of course they were sold out. The kebabs still weren't ready when I got back. Mind you, they were worth waiting for. Absolutely delicious. Yum. And certainly nobody would have left hungry - there was loads to eat besides the hot food.

Since Dave's a Carlisle United fan (I was about to say the Carlisle United fan, but that's unfair - there must be another one) and his brother, who's also going to be living there, is a Workington Reds fan, I created a picture as a housewarming gift, showing a fictional tackle between two players from Carlisle and the Reds. I suspect this would be impossible in real life as they play in different leagues, but this is a bit of fantasy, so why not? Note the group of fans behind the Cumbrian flag, by the way...

And today's pest is...

...Himalayan balsam. Yes, this pleasant-looking plant, which was originally introduced to this country as a garden plant (just like giant hogweed - see below) is now in danger of taking over our rural river banks and smothering our indiginous wild flowers.

Went for a wee wander on my bike at teatime - up the main road past Crosby Villa, down into the dip, up the long climb known locally as 'Slowly On', and turned right up a narrow road I'd never been along before. It leads down a long hill towards the River Ellen. As I whizzed downhill I thought to myself, "you'll pay for this when you have to use your muscles to get back uphill on the way home," but it was lovely to fly past meadowsweet and red campion, cow parsely and knapweed, and many other wild flowers with their gentle scents.

Halfway along there's a turn off to the right, that takes those who wish to do so to Cockermouth, and this road crosses a little hump-backed bridge across the river. I stopped to have a look, and found a huge swathe of Himalayan balsam all along the river bank. Pretty stuff, but lethal.

(There was also the carcase of a dead cow on a little island in the river, but I thought you'd prefer the photo of the Himalayan balsam to the one of the mouldering bovine.)

And the steep uphill stretch? Yes, I found it all right, on the stretch up through Oughterside towards Prospect before rejoining the main A596. Oh well, I keep reminding myself that every time I pedal my way up something like that I'm getting fitter.

Slug Slalom on a pushbike

Must be something to do with all this damp weather we've been having, but there do seem to be more slugs about this summer than usual. Now when I'm trying to be a gardener, I despise them and their leaf-nibbling habits, but from an aesthetic point of view there's something quite wonderful about a nice big black slug, with its surface of Klingonesque corrugations and its wet shiny coat. They remind me of tiny wee bikers, black and tough.

They're everywhere this year. Trying to avoid standing on them while walking is bad enough, but this afternoon I discovered a new sport - slug slalom on a pushbike. Because the rural roads are busy, and the rural footpaths are almost unused, its safer to cycle on the path around here. Easy enough to dismount on those rare occasions when you meet a pedestrian.

Today, however, all the local slugs had come out to promenade and show off their black shiny finery. Sure, there's plenty of room to get your wheel between them, but it involves quite a bit of weaving to and fro. So I wove and meandered, to and fro avoiding slugs with great care and diligence. I don't think I squashed a single one. Hurrah!

Unfortunately, so concerned was I to miss the slugs that I almost didn't notice the scattering of broken glass. Coulda been nasty, that.

THE DEAD ORCHID

Someone left a dead pot plant behind in the flat Chris was staying in last year. I took it home, pruned it a bit and kept it wet, and now look at it! This is not a dead orchid. Isn't it pretty? Thank you, nameless person who abandoned it!

WILDLIFE FOR FRIDAY

They've devastated our vegetable crops this year, but how can you be angry with something as cute as this? It appeared, for the first time, in the front garden this morning, and spent a long time working on the long grass. If they want to mow the lawn, that's fine. Bring your brothers and sisters, little Bunny! Bring your aunties and uncles, your parents and your children! Let them eat grass. But leave the bloody veg alone.... what's left of it.

LAST WEEK'S JAUNT TO EDINBURGH

Spent a couple of days in Edinburgh last week. This was in order to meet up with some people I hadn't seen since I was about 20, but all sorts of things happen, of course when you're there.

A TRIP TO TESCO'S
Going grocery shopping with my son has always been fun, ever since he discovered, at the age of about 3, that he could get his name shouted out over the tannoy if he wandered up to a member of staff and pretended to be lost. Nowadays he sticks defenceless women in shopping trolleys and gives them a quick hurl around the car park. (But then again, just how defenceless is Jenny, really....?)

GIANT HOGWEED AT FORT KINNAIRD
I was surprised to see this stuff still growing in Edinburgh, and in such large, obvious clumps too, after all the work people did in the past trying to eradicate it. Squads of people went out, hauling it up by the roots and burning it. But here it is, growing at the roadside next to Fort Kinnaird, one of those big retail parks that have sprung up around the town since I left. Giant hogweed was a serious pest in Edinburgh when I lived there. It infested the banks of rivers, railway tracks - anywhere that the seeds could be transported. The sap can cause skin lesions if exposed to sunlight, and children used to uproot the stuff to use the stems as telescopes or pea-shooters. You can imagine the results. Why is it being allowed to grow in such a populous area?

THE WAVERLEY
We used to hang around there when we were young and even more foolish than we now are. It's hardly changed. Every Saturday night there was folk music upstairs, and in those days, in Edinburgh, the folk scene was the cool place to be. (Yeah, I know, from our ever-so-knowing
21st-century viewpoint that might be hard to believe, but really, it's true.) We played music, folk and blues and stuff, and there was good Scottish heavy beer, and certain other substances, and everything else you might associate with groups of young people - and some not quite so young - under the influence of such substances. As time passed some of us went here, and others went there, and others stayed put and drank themselves to death, or just got old. Some survived, others disappeared, but most settled down, had kids and played music to them. We all lost touch.

The nice thing about the internet is that you sometimes find people again, quite unexpectedly, even when you're not looking for them. Jim (above) and I found each other by chance, and although neither of us now lives in Edinburgh we thought it'd be fun to track down a few other old reprobates and get together in the old place. Amazingly, this actually happened, and was so successful that we're hoping to do it again soon. I was surprised to see Jim's astonishing hair, but even more surprised to find that Harry (above) is now 74 and still - after a brief respite of a few decades - a master of the blues guitar. He has always looked younger than his years.

There are other photos to be seen here - some of these are the ancient black and white ones which started this whole thing off when I published them on Flickr, and people started creeping out of dusty corners, giving themselves a shake, and declaring their memories of Sandy Bell's, Stewart's, the Waverley and other somewhat disreputable musical pubs of the late 60s and 70s.

A BIG EMPTY HOUSE AND FOXES ON THE LAWN
Camping overnight in a big empty house with hardly any lightbulbs should be a creepy experience, but it wasn't really. I had my torch, and a comfy bed, and a MÖRKER table lamp from Ikea. What more could I ask for? Foxes, of course.

You open the shutters on a fine Tuesday morning, look out across the lawn, and see a family of 4 big healthy foxes cavorting on the grass by the shrubbery. That's the way to start your day. It really is. And even better, you discover your camera is lying there beside you, just waiting to be used.

I watched them for about half an hour as they chased each other across the grass, engaged in play-fighting, and scrambled up and down on to walls like cats. Eventually they went off in search of food, which kindly Edinburgh people tend to leave out for them. No huntsmen with hounds here.

I was interested to note that their behaviour is far more cat-like than dog-like, despite their canine appearance. They are quiet, graceful in their movements and have the ability to climb and jump and land elegantly. Like cats, of course, they're predators. Here in the country they're not popular, as people keep poultry, but in the cities they have found a safe haven. Good luck to them, beautiful wild creatures that they are.

There are more foxy photos here

The PH Ceilidh Band's First Gig

Well, it went fine last night. 5 of us plus the caller took to the Kirkgate stage, and after a certain amount of faffing about with mics and lights managed to produce a pretty good sound for a scratch band. I know I made loads of mistakes: I hope I wasn't the only one.... but so long as you keep the speed up people keep dancing. We'll get better.

It was an end-of-term event for a bunch of teachers from a local school, and they were all up for a good time so the floor was never empty. It was a lot of fun, but amazingly tiring. Don't know which takes more out of you - playing the music or dancing all night.

So. There ya go. If you want a ceildh band, you can now call on us.

SEAGULLS: THE LATEST

Questions have been asked.

Well the chicks are now enormous, and ready to fly off any day. They have taken to hopping from roof to roof, and sit on the apex stretching their wings and making loud bizarre squeaking noises. The adults are still in protective mode, but don't seem to be attacking up quite so diligently. Today I watched 5 adults trying to see off a flock of swallows which are nesting in our barn. This had very little effect. There's not much a big clumsy seagull can do in pursuit of a nippy elegant wee swallow, which can fly at top speed towards the tiny broken pane of glass in the barn window and swoop straight inside without even slowing down.

THE DOGS ARE DIFFERENT

When we encountered a place in the fence at the top of the field where I could climb over into the next field, I saw the wire was bent down in such a way that other animals must have used it before. I clambered over, and pointed to the top. Ghyll jumped up and down, examined it a bit, put his paws on it, had a wee think, and then, quite elegantly for a border collie, leapt very neatly over it.

"Right Pace, " says I. "Your turn next." But Pace steadfastly kept all four feet on the ground and refused to budge. She tries to find somewhere to squeeze through, but it's hopeless. Ghyll and I try to encourage her to attempt a jump, but she's not interested. OK, she's getting on years a bit, and she's quite a heavy dog these days, but I thought she might have at least tried.

Ghyll and I return to Pace's field, and wander back the way we came, contemplating. I realise that although Ghyll will jump a fence, and he's slim enough to slither under a gate, he won't swim under water like Pace - in fact, he won't swim at all, whereas she'll jump into any depth of water with no qualms, and swim to the bottom to retrieve a toy. I also realise that a few weeks ago Pace discovered how to negotiate a cattle grid, quite a clever feat for a quadruped. Ghyll had to be manhandled through a gap in the fence that time.

Between them we have one perfect dog. I guess I'll just have to keep them both...

Keswick

KESWICK THROUGH THE SEASONS
I've lived In Cumbria for nearly 11 years, and I've been visiting Keswick on and off for more like 18, so I'm pretty familiar with the place by now. One of the things you notice is that during the tourist season all the shops are occupied with some business or other - some old, long-established ones (those these, sadly, are dwindling) and others belonging to optimistic enterprising souls hoping to start up the next Big Thing in town. A few of these survive but most vanish as soon as the tourists do.

When you visit Keswick in the winter there are always a number of empty retail premises, but in summer they're always in use. The only exception was 2001 during the nightmare year of Foot & Mouth disease, when visitors had to be discouraged from coming to the Lake District in case they spread the disease across the bare, sheep-free landscape.

EMPTY SHOPS?
OK. I've set the scene. Now, it's July, surely one of the busiest months for a town like Keswick. All the shops will be occupied, won't they? But they're not. Shop after shop is empty, with a 'To Let' sign on the window. It's eerie. There are plenty of visitors strolling around the market place with its fancy new tented stalls, but fewer shops for them to spend their money in. I wonder what's going on?

Piping Hot's Scratchy Ceilidh Band

We've been invited, rather suddenly, to become a scratch ceilidh band. Well, a few of us either play for another ceilidh band at the moment, or have played with ceilidh bands in the past, so it's not exactly an alien concept, but it's going to be a nice change from playing recorder music with intricate harmonies.

J, a friend of B's, is a caller, and needed a band, so here we are, practising for a gig at the Kirkgate in a couple of weeks' time. And we are actually going to get paid for it. Gosh.

J turns out to have been one of the founder members of Belfagan, way back 26 years ago. I thought her name was familiar. It's a small world around here.

So it's B on accordion, K on fiddle, S on flute and R on flute and recorder, with me providing a steady rhythm on guitar. I am impressed by R and S who sight read accurately music they haven't seen before at top speed on woodwind instruments. I couldn't do that. I'd have to go home and practice. (It's dead easy to rattle out a few guitar chords, but playing the tune is much harder.)

We sound bloody good. If it goes down well on the 18th we might want to do this more often, though I don't know how S2 would feel about a rival ceilidh band in the area, especially since it uses a couple of his musicians...

S, B and I decide to have a separate practice session next week to work on some of my songs to play in the interval. It looks like our little virtuoso folk trio may end up being called Sheeps in the Oven.... (more on this later).

Seagull Update

4.45am I looked out of the back window to the most glorious golden dawn. The light streamed through the windows and woke me up. I was glad it did. I hung my head out of the back window and watched my beautiful rooftop foes flying in big circles round and round the garden in the early morning light. Their big white bellies caught the golden light and they glowed like angel birds as they swooped round.

The most dangerous time is when the chicks are out on the roof, exposed. Picking these times times to take the dogs for a walk means taking your life in your hands.

We were chased this evening by a very angry gull, which swooped repeatedly at us as we walked away from the house. You'd think it would realise we were going away from its nest, and therefore decreasing the danger to its chicks, but then, seagulls are not very bright.

By the time we were returning, dusk was setting in, and I hoped the birds would have settled down for the night. No such luck. Quite a long way off, the sentinal on the chimney stack spotted us and came charging over, swooping low, divebombing me. I had a hat on (of course!) but no weapon, unless I could have thrown a collie at it...

We slunk along by the wall, under overhanging trees and shrubbery, but it wouldn't leave us alone: I could see the whites of its eyes it got that close. (OK OK, birds don't have whites in their eyes - it's a figure of speech - all right?)

There's an exposed stretch between the last overhanging tree and our barn, and I just didn't have the nerve to cross this open ground without something to protect me, so I phoned the house and asked my other half to come outside with a Big Stick please. He soon emerged with a long-handled hoe, and before he came into view I saw the seagull turn its attention to him as he went out into the back garden.

Safely escorted back indoors I heaved a sigh of relief. Fortunately we don't have to go outside again tonight.

The chicks are getting pretty big now. If you go up the top end of the garden and shelter under a tree you can watch them, stretching their fluffy wings and trying to figure out what being a seagull is all about.

CONCERT AT THE KESWICK MUSEUM & ART GALLERY, 28th JUNE 2007



THE ROCK ORGAN
(See also my later post - here with a 1976 reference to this instrument)
Well I enjoyed the concert a lot more than I expected. I’d gone along mainly out of curiosity, hoping to hear and see the famous musical stones being played by someone who knew what they were doing. In the end the stones were the least interesting part of the gig, mainly because, surprisingly because the instrument is so BIG, they were almost inaudible and were mostly drowned out by the fiddlers and the Lancashire step dancer.

Jamie Barnes, the museum’s Curatorial Assistant and House Manger, played them, and so far as I could tell he probably played them very well, albeit with rather piddly little rubber mallets which probably did nothing to increase the volume of his output.

EVELYN GLENNIE AND THE ORIGINAL, SMALLER, ROCK ORGAN
The instrument normally stands just inside the door of the museum, and most of it was still there when I arrived: they’d only taken about a third of it - the easiest part to move, I suppose - into the art gallery area. This meant they’d left the ‘black notes’ behind, restricting somewhat the sort of tunes that could be played.

With this part removed, though, you can see, hidden underneath the rest of the beast, the little, original, 17-note rock organ, which was made before the more famous behemoth. It sits on a little sort of barrow thingy. When Evelyn Glennie came to play she tried both instruments with a variety of beaters, and apparently pronounced the smaller, older model to have a better tone.

THE LAKELAND FIDDLERS
The Lakeland Fiddlers started the concert with a selection of long-neglected Cumbrian tunes. These were almost exclusively hornpipes to begin with, and most of their repertoire, in fact, seems to be dance tunes. As well as a number of fiddle players the band also has a guitarist, a bodhran player and one of the oldest double bass players on the circuit - I’m told he’s 83 but he doesn’t look a day over 70. The audience obviously loved them!


CAROLYN FRANCIS & HER BORDER PIPES

The fiddlers are led by the talented and versatile Carolyn Francis, who is also a member of Striding Edge, one of Cumbria’s top ceilidh bands. As well as leading the fiddlers with style, she also plays a rather unusual set of border pipes, which she had specially made for her by Julian Goodacre of Peebles. Modern border pipes are
bellows-driven, and have the unusual feature of stopped end-holes, making the fingering quite bizarre to us ‘normal’ woodwind players, as you have to lift just one finger at a time and replace it before you lift the next one. These older, mouth-blown pipes had more or less died out, but have the more sensible open ended
chanter.

ALEX FISHER, LAKELAND STEP & CLOG DANCER
Alex Fisher the virtuoso Lakeland step & clog dancer, was recording a DVD about the history of clog dancing, and so we were treated to a fascinating trip through time as she described and then demonstrated the various types of dancing.

Lancashire is the natural home of clog dancing, but it was also found in other industrial areas such as Yorkshire, the Midlands and Glasgow. Lakeland step dancing, though, wasn’t traditionally done in clogs. The men did step dancing and turned it
into a very competitive art form. The first World Championships were held in 1880, and won by Dan Leno, who went on, like many others, to lead a career on the music hall stage.

A PACKED HOUSE
The concert was much busier than the museum staff had expected, and the biggest audience they’ve had for years. With over 100 bums on and off seats they soon ran out of chairs. I guess the rain might have driven a few damp tourists inside, but most people seemed to be really enjoying themselves.

This time it's Aineko who has caught the shrew

It was still alive when I found her playing with it. It didn't survive much longer.


If you're interested in these sort of things, click on the pic to see the rest of the set.

Hiding in the bushes, I point my camera skywards

They're so graceful in the air... until they come swooping down towards you, big feet extended.



This ugly critter, however, is the reason they keep attacking us.



Only a mother could love it... but its mother has many friends and relations willing to injure anyone in its defence.

On me bike

That's the third time I've cycled into town and back in the past week, having got the bike serviced last week. The first time was quite hard work, especially on the long uphill stretch on the way home, but today I realised my cycling muscles have remembered how to work, and things were much easier.

I'm going to keep at this, regularly, and when the winter creeps in with its foul weather and early darkness, I'll be ready for it, fit and lean (well, I can dream, can't I?) and able to keep pedalling away right through the year.

I need to find a better way to carry eggs on my bike though. Despite being in a nice strong eggbox, one of them broke and another cracked. The dogs enjoyed the yokey drips that fell between the slate on the picnic table.

Reinforcements

Monday is bucket day (bin day? What exactly d'you call it in England?) around here. I put on my hat, picked up a nice long hoe, and marched round the house to the front pulling the first wheely bin. They saw me of course. By the time I'd got back to collect the second bin there were the original 2 seagulls on our roof, 6 more wheeling around above my head, plus a ninth arriving from a southerly direction.

It'll cost her a fortune in bread to feed that lot...

No wonder those gulls like it here

seagull_feeding
Originally uploaded by allybeag

I watched the neighbour this afternoon preparing a bowl of food as lovingly as though she was feeding her pet cat. She laid it on the picnic table and stood by, watching indulgently, as one of the fiercest gulls landed ever so gently and started feeding.

Next week - inviting crocodiles to swim in your garden pond.

Belfagan in Hartlepool

Saturday 23rd June and we were off to monkey-hanger country, as it's rather cruelly known, to celebrate a remarkable achievement. Redcar Sword Dancers have been practising the same dance for 40 years - a long-sword dance called Greatham - and invited us to come and dance with them in the North East.

EARLY
It's a long way from West Cumbria to Hartlepool, and getting up at 5.30 when you normally rise at 8 isn't easy, but it was worth the effort.


Only 3 dance teams were present at Hartlepool Historic Quayside, and in many ways the small number was a good thing as it became a very happy friendly event over the course of the day. Jet Set border morris from Whitby wear sunglasses and black dresses instead of the traditional black facepaint, and look very stylish because of it. Redcar wear bright red military-style jackets with ribbons attached all over.

TALL SHIPS
We danced by the berthed tall ship, the Trincomalee, with a flat blue harbour stretching out under the hazy morning sky. I thought of how it all must have looked in the days when Hartlepool was a bustling seaport with huge traffic jams of 3-masted sailing ships filling those now flat, empty waters.

THE REDCAR MUMMERS' PLAY - CALL FOR THE DOCTOR!
Redcar performed their famous mummers' play, which, like many of its ilk, involves some poor sod having his head removed as the sword dancers revolve around him. He lies dead on the tarmac and the doctor is called, who boasts about his many achievements, before borrowing my bottle of Badoit mineral water (a much cheaper brand will do, actually) which he duly pours into the open mouth of the spluttering victim. The play closes and the dancers move smoothly on into their famous dance, Greatham, which seems to be their main reason for existence. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they actually know several other sword dances as well, though to the untrained eye they all look very similar: the only distinguishing feature is the fact that the tune's different for each one.

LUNCH & A SEARCH FOR CAT FOOD
Lunch was arranged at the local pub - Jackson's Landing - but not being able to eat the gluten-filled food I gobbled a couple of hasty rice cakes and sloped off in search of Pets At Home where I had to buy some catfood before we started the afternoon session. Big shopping centre here, but as confusing as Livingston if you want to get from one set of shops to another. You go round a carpark, find you're in the wrong bit, re-enter the main road only to find it's a dual carriageway so you have to drive all the way to the next roundabout, go right round it, double back on yourself and try the next set of shops to see if the elusive petshop is in there. Of course, it's not, so it's back out onto the dual carriageway again, up to the roundabout, turn around, back down.... finally I got to the right shop, got the catfood, and then had to do the whole thing again to find my way back to Jackson's Landing where Belfagan, Redcar and Jetset were still in the midst of a leisurely lunch. Whew.

THUNDER & LIGHTNING
The rain started before everyone had finished eating. We sat staring out of the windows as it battered down on the harbour cobbles: lightning flashed and thunder rumbled. Someone announced that the coach had arrived. Oh joy. A trip to some godforsaken country pub where we're expected to dance in a car park in a torrential deluge. I got up at 5.30am for this?


DANCING IN THE RAIN
The bus driver was dead nice though. He did his best to park as close to the door as possible at each place we visited. We were conveyed to 3 venues - the Raby Arms at Hart Village, the Wellington Inn at Wolviston, and then to Greatham itself. At one spot we musicians donned our polythene ponchos to protect our instruments while Belfagan danced with umbrellas instead of garlands. Jet Set danced under the trees, but Redcar refused to get their swords out in case they got rusty.

DANCING IN THE PUB
We were invited to dance indoors at Wolviston, causing great surprise to the locals who had turned up for a quiet Saturday lunch, as we lurched between their tables, bells jangling and swords clattering, bumping people with our accordions and saxophone as we passed.

Greatham was supposed to be having a Village Feast, but rain had stopped play. A few oddly-dressed people were spotted still wandering the streets. (No no - there's nothing odd about our dress! We always dress like this - it was everyone else who was odd...) Redcar recently won some sort of award for dancing Greatham, and we feel it's well deserved. Surely after doing it every week for 40 years they should have got the hang of it by now.

JAN'S BIRTHDAY CAKE

As we all piled back on to the bus we agreed that despite the rain we'd had a really very nice time. There was more dancing back on the quayside, where the rain had stopped by this time, and then all of Belfagan made our way across to MacDonald's where Jan's surprise birthday cake was produced, candles were inserted, lit and blown out, to the sound od great cheers.

So the dancers departed - 8 people in Helen's commodious car. Stuart and Margaret went off to spend the evening with their Redcar pals. Bridget departed to catch up with her 5th granddaughter who was born earlier in the week, and I sloped off to TK Maxx and Asda. Heigh Ho.

ALL I WANTED WAS A CUP OF BLACK COFFEE
There was a long drive home ahead of me and I needed caffeine. Asda has a café with a self-service hot drinks machine - you know the sort of thing - you stick a mug under a spout, press a button, and tea, coffee or whatever comes spurting out. You take it to the checkout where you pay for it. It was dead quiet, which was good as I'd not have to queue. I filled a cup with black coffee and headed for the till. Um. Nobody there. I looked around. Nobody anywhere. One completely deserted café. I suppose I could have (a) gone to customer service to demand that someone take my money or (b) left the cup and gone off without it. If I'd tried (a) I'm certain they'd have told me the café was shut and I couldn't have my coffee, which I'd cling on to desperately while they tried to force me to hand it over. And (b) would be just plain silly. So I chose (c) - drank it very quickly and left the shop. I realise I am now admitting publicly that I owe Asda for one cup of coffee, and if they'd like to bill me for it I promise I will pay up.

The Rural Idyll

The cats have discovered the joys of the summer moth-hunt, and can be hard to persuade indoors at bedtime. They have also discovered their good fortune in coming to live with a family which keeps its car parked off the road in the back yard - a perfect hidey-hole if you don't want to be caught at bedtime.

When I went the other night to get them in, they were both under there, making friends with a high-pitched squeak of some sort. At least I thought they were making friends. Turned out they were bullying it. After I'd grabbed amenable Aineko and taken her indoors, I had a better look at the more elusive Oscar and found he was messing about with a somewhat disabled shrew, which was too weak to escape. No way was Oscar going to let me catch him. He knows exactly how wide the car is and how far under it I can reach.

On my knees on the cobbles I peered under the car and watched as he picked up the shrew in his mouth, walked a few steps with it danging from his jaws, dropped it again, prodded it a bit, and picked it up again. It squeaked piteously. "It's Nature's Way," I thought, quoting those couthy Sunday Post wildlife articles of long ago. "It's the Law of the Jungle", I told myself, as images of Shere Khan padded through my imagination.

"Leave the poor wee thing alone, Oscar!" I cried, not really expecting him to comply.

Well, if I couldn't grab the cat, perhaps I could grab the shrew. It was too damaged and bemused to run very fast. All I had to do was wait until the next time Oscar dropped it within my reach. An opportunity soon presented itself: I stretched in under the car and soon the soft little animal was in my hand....

Ow! They've got sharp teeth, these wee buggers! Fixed in a death grip to my third finger the rodent hung on fiercely as I stood up, yelling and shaking my hand, trying to make it come loose. I ran across the cobbles to the grass and shook it furiously off, where it lay panting and unable to do more than crawl for safety. "Ungrateful so-and-so! I was trying to rescue you, and this is the thanks you give me!"

So, there I was, standing stupidly in the middle of my garden at midnight shouting at a half-chewed shrew. Inevitably, I was spotted. Within seconds an angry seagull came swooping down off the chimney stack, screeching and screaming at me. Within a few more seconds I was back in the house, ducking for cover.

Oscar, totally laid-back, stayed under the car, looking slightly bewildered at his lost playmate but otherwise quite unperturbed.

Yes, eventually we did get him inside, but by this time I was kitted out in my safety garb with a big hat and a long-handled hoe. The seagull returned to its outpost grinning maliciously, daring me to go out again.

We called in a man

We called in a man - a pest control man - who said he could easily shoot the seagulls. Just give him a ring if we wanted him. Oh, and by the way, were the neighbours OK about this? We had to explain that one set of neighbours are anything but OK about it. He looked thoughtful. By the time we phoned him back a couple of days later, he admitted that he wasn't at all keen to shoot the birds now. It would be fine if he could get a nice clean shot at them, but one of them ended up wounded and didn't die cleanly, the neighbours might well call in the police or the RSPCA and put in a complaint.

I could see he was worrying about his professional reputation, but I was also concerned about injured birds from a welfare point of view. I didn't like the idea of shooting them in the first place, but reluctantly accepted that it was probably necessary, and only if they could be despatched swiftly and painlessly. Now there seemed to be a chance that they might suffer a lingering death, not to mention the fate of their flightless chicks left to starve. Much as I dislike them, I couldn't subject them to such a fate. It's not their fault they're seagulls, after all. They're just doing what seagulls do.

So we continue to sneak out into our own garden, quiet and sneaky, wearing big hats and waving hoes, sweeping brushes and other implements over our heads, and the gulls continue to swoop, screeching down towards us each time we venture outside.

Whitehaven Maritime Festival 07

Whitehaven Maritime Festival 07 busking morris bunny
Originally uploaded by allybeag

It happens biennially, so I forget each time how tiring it is. It's all right for the dancers, who only have to carry a pair of clogs and perhaps a bottle of water. They don't have to humph great hulking saxophones about town all day.

You park at the top of the hill at Bransty, and walk down. It takes 6 minutes to get from the car to Tesco's, at the bottom. On the way home it takes 14 minutes to do the same journey back up to the car, what with the steep slope and the sore feet. Oh yes, and it takes over half an hour to get through the heaving mass of fast-food guzzling humanity on the quayside before finding the rest of Belfagan.

There are tall ships and short ships, jetskis and aerial display teams, actors dressed as pirates and people dressed as pirate ships, an old seaplane, buskers and jazz bands and singers and dancers and yachts decked with flags. The chip vans do a roaring trade; the pubs' clientele overflows into the street; stalls sell German sausages, Chinese teddy bears, Cumbrian foods, hippy garb, toys, pirate flags and model boats.

We play and Belfagan dance, up on Sugar Tongue. The crowd is happy and relaxed and enjoys the show. It's OK, but my feet ache and my bags are heavy and it's a long walk back. Each time I say, "never again," so why am I here?

The Enemy

the_sentinal
Originally uploaded by allybeag

Looks all sweet and innocent, doesn't it? Don't be fooled.