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.

First Blood to the Seagulls. It's war...

They've been divebombing us for weeks, but today one of them drew blood. Poor innocent S, walking towards the car, was hit from behind by one of our mafia attack seagulls with both feet extended. With blood pouring down his face he returned indoors where his wounds were bathed and bandaged.

The chicks have hatched. They'd got out of the nest and wandered round to the wrong side of the chimneystack, causing havoc amongst their extended family. At least eight adult gulls swooped and screamed over our roof as we made a second attempt to reach the car. Only by dint of wearing strong hats and waving sweeping brushes at them did we manage it.