Monthly Archives: March 2025

Citizen Science

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Green Woodpecker

Yes, it is rather a grand name for a process which involves staring out of my kitchen window and looking at the bird feeder. But it’s not a title I used so I thought I’d give it a go. Today’s entries for the BTO survey have hit a new low in terms of numbers and lack of variety, but they say all results are useful, even the things you don’t see.

We’ve had a good run recently with several new species and  several species we’d only seen before we started recording. None of them have been rare. During the week we saw goldfinches flying over, but they didn’t stop. Since moving in we’ve also seen a green woodpecker nearby (and know that Mum and dad had one in the garden when they lived here), parakeets and kites. We also know there’s been a sparrowhawk in the area. So there’s plenty of potential for future sightings, it’s just a case of keeping going and seeing what happens.

Male Reed Bunting

When we used to feed birds on the farm it took a while for the full variety to show, but once, for instance, we attracted Greater Spotted Woodpeckers, they seemed to become regulars quite quickly.

Part of the problem is the sparsity of habitat in the garden. There’s a lot more to do to the design as there’s only a narrow bed at the back and the shrubs in it overgrown. I want to do more with it, but I don’t want to disrupt their current habits all in one go.

I’ve already been looking at seed catalogues and I’m now going to have a look at books on plants for wildlife. Somewhere in the middle I’m sure we can find a balance. I’m aiming for wildlife friendly plants and a tropical field. With rhubarb. Rhubarb is sort of tropical, and it’s good to eat. I almost forgot that – the new garden design needs to be wildlife friendly, tropical themed, with fruit and veg. And it needs to be low maintenance. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Redpoll and Goldfinch on the Ecocentre feeder

Photos are from around the Ecocentre – as i say, we got a better variety of birds.

Zimbabwe Hyper-inflation Money

Elections – the Future

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

“I don’t know what weapons the Third World War will fought with,” Einstein is reported to have said when interviewed after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, “but the fourth will be fought with sticks and stones.”

I feel the same way about elections. I’m not sure how elections will be fought in the next few years, but in the next decade I fear most of them will become little more than auctions. It seems that there is competition all over the world to see what parties can make the most outrageous claims, in the manner of bidders at an auction competing to offer the most money.

 “In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there.”

Trump’s famous claim, based on comments by  J D Vance, who seems to have taken them from an “influencer”, who made it all up, seems hard to beat. But it isn’t . It’s been done before. I’ve seen and heard similar things in Britain over the years, and if I were in Lincoln 800 years ago I’d be listening to a story with a similar feel to it.  It’s not much of an advert for the human race that this form of racism is still popular, and that it still wins votes.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Apart from the  outrageous claims, there is the financial aspect of auctions too, and Musk throwing his money about has brought that into the process in an obvious way. You probably all know my thoughts of the uS elections – get rid of all the clutter that surrounds it, like voter registration, postal voting, televised debates and just make it into a straight auction. You could save all the campaigning money and use it to buy a result then, in the style of the old tax farming days, you could concentrate on using your presidency for personal gain.

In case you are worrying that I’ve become political, I haven’t. I’m just continuing the old themes of cynicism and farce. The fact this involves politics is purely coincidental.

Subjects for future discussion include racism, religion and eating dogs.

Banknotes – Zambia

 

Sunshine over Flat Fields

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January Afternoon – Country Park – this is the picture Julia used to make the one shown earlier in the week.

This morning, after a breakfast of cereal and fruit followed by toast and marmalade (I still half hope that the oranges in marmalade count towards my five-a-day) we noted the birds in the garden and went out. The Blackcap has not been seen for a week now. He has probably migrated back to Europe, as this is the right time of year for that. They have quite a complex migratory pattern and my head is still spinning after reading a paper on it. There is a lot of information on the tracking devices and the way the stats are put together and quite honestly, a lot of it is way over my head. You can’t rule out a cat or a better selection of food in another garden, but I’m pretty sure he has gone for the summer. Maybe another bird, one of the population that migrates to the UK in summer, will replace him. It is all very confusing. He is a male, in case you are wondering – they have black heads. The females have chestnut brown heads, but we have only seen a female in the garden twice.

Blackcap

Out trip out was to the Fens. I like the Fens, the massive flat area of land that used to be under water. Apart from the flatness, they have very undulating roads (caused by the movement of the ground under the road, and majestic skyscapes. I wanted to start to learn my way round again and also wanted some photographs for a research project. It was a lovely day, but spoiled by a couple of sets of diversions which made navigating difficult. We got the photographs, but the rest of the day was a bit of a washout as we didn’t get any photos and the only farm shop we found was badly signposted and we passed it before realising it was there. By that time it was late in the day and I decided to carry on home rather than turn round and go back.

In Chatteris, the market town where I wanted the photos, we stopped to use the toilets. They looked disused but Julia put 20p in the slot as required. Nothing happened. The next one along had a coin jammed in the slot. However, the disabled toilet worked on a RADAR key and I had mine in my pocket. There are benefits to being old and rickety. Disappointingly, they don’t work using radar, it is just the initials of the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation. They are more accurately (in my opinion) also called NKS keys – NKS being the National Key Scheme.

Rabbit at Ferry Meadows

 

A Bad Start to the Day

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Farmer Ted lectures on sheep

I just did 550 words on a lead medallion I have in my collection. I did a write up for the Numismatic Society Facebook page a while ago and thought I’d expand it a bit for the blog. As usual, I thought this was simpler than starting from scratch, and as usual, I was wrong. When I finished and went to the folder for my photos, I found I didn’t have any. Not sure what I’ve done with them. As usual, I have also put the medallion in a box, and it will take me ages to find. Not all is lost though, my brain  has had some exercise.

The dream is that one day I will be able to go straight to the appropriate box and find the medallion in minutes. Reality is still a little way off that ideal.

Narcissi, but I expect you knew that

I’ve been told off (gently) by Julia for becoming a recluse and sitting in my office/study/den/man cave all day. It’s quite an indeterminate room at the moment – not really productive or organised for an office, not studious enough for a study and not personal or decorated enough for either of the other two. Another that comes to mind is writing space, you often see that. But mostly I spend the time sighing and staring into space, so there’s not a lot of writing going on. It’s not the spare bedroom, because we already have one of those, so it must be the box room. Small pokey and full of boxes – yes, that sounds right. Life was so much simpler when I had no choices and worked in the dining room.

Primroses at Wilford, Notts

I’ve just been charging batteries, ready for a trip out. There was a moment of panic when I couldn’t get any of them to fit back in the camera, but that turned out to be a problem with my brain rather than the batteries. I convinced myself they fitted one way, when they actually fit the other way round. Senior moment or the beginning of a terminal decline? At one point I worried I had broken something in the battery bay. We did that with an expensive camera once and ended up having to replace it. Fortunately this is not the case here.

We are off out soon, as part of my non-recluse policy. It could be a great adventure. Or it could be an anti-climax.

This is the bookshop at Brierlow Bar before they finally ruined it

Photos are a random springtime selection.

End of the Month Again

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Julia’s manipulated image

The end of the month is looming. I have quite a lot left to write. I’ve been doing things for the Numismatic Society Facebook page, the military history newsletter and website, and similar things. in the last two months I have done 12 articles. They probably only come up to 6,000 words or so, but they all need research and photos and, in some cases I have to source illustrations from the net.

I’m now in a spot where I have to produce a number of poetry submissions and am finding that after two days grinding away on the laptop I am struggling. Time, I think, for a change of pace. Unfortunately, with five days until the end of the month, there isn’t a lot of room for wriggling.

This all seems very familiar, and I’m sure I said much the same last month. Yes, I checked, and I did.

As a daisy conservation measure we haven’t started cutting the grass yet

Sorry about that. I really must get a grip. I probably said that as well, didn’t I? Now that I’m retired and have lots of time, I really should be doing better with my productivity but it doesn’t seem to be working like that. I am going to have to start working more intelligently, rather than just spending all my time throwing words at a computer screen. I’m also going to have to prioritise writing for magazines that pay for contributions. That way I can pay for my subs to WP, Ancestry and the newspaper archive. It’s alright doing things for free, but let’s spend a minute looking at things.

Spring has finally arrived

I’m doing one article a week for the Numismatic Society on FB. It can seem to take forever while I’m doing it, and a number of the things have taken ages, as I’ve gradually uncovered detail then had to condense it to size. The idea was that I’d do a few hundred words (about the size of my average blog post) with a couple of photographs. What I didn’t allow for was the time it takes to research, check the facts and maybe source an illustration. Eventually, I thought, I would be able to drop it back to one a fortnight, as other people followed my example (or were worn down by my nagging) and started to contribute. But no, there are still just the two of us.

Julia, meanwhile, has been applying a cleevr digital whatnot to one of her photographs so it looks like something Turner might have done. She has also taken pictures of flowwers, so I used them to cheer my miserable, meandering, moaning blog post up a bit.

Trees and flowers

 

Dum Spiro, Spero

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I’ve just been reading a Spink auction catalogue for a forthcoming sale of Roman coins. It includes the description” otherwise with an exceptional, sumptuous honey-blue tone
overlying lustrous and largely original fields, all providing a fitting frame for the classic Tiberian visage”. Estimate is £3,000 – £4,000, so I suppose you have to employ the top drawer vocabulary for that class of coin.

You can, of course, find Roman coins for as little as £3 on eBay, but remember that this price is a reflection of the condition and rarity. They are common and they are clapped out and if you have a metal detector you are in with a chance of digging one up. The Romans were very careless about the way they buried them all over the place. They also buried things like the Water Newton Treasure. It’s not, in my mind, as good as a hoard of coins, but it seems to excite museums. We are actually living on the outskirts of the Roman town of Durobrivae and slap bang in the middle of the known pottery kiln area. For more detail, try here.

Silver Britannia coin

That was discovered seven miles from where I’m sitting. But closer than that are the remains of a Roman fortress, a villa, Roman pottery kilns and a cemetery. There are also Saxon and Iron Age sites, and we are slightly under 10 miles from Flag Fen if you fancy something Bronze Age.

Sorry, I’ve rambled off the point. In fact I have lost sight of it and can’t actually remember what it was going to be. I think, as I recall the title, it was going to be about how writing about things, particularly the coins and research, keeps me going and how I hope it will help to avert  dementia. Of course, it could have been about how much history is still underfoot  I have been thinking about that lately too.

The title? Now there’s a question. Do I offer a translation? If I do, I look condescending, if I don’t, I look elitist, assuming that everyone did Latin at school. In the end, it’s a common enough motto to assume that most people know it. This, of course, is a problem I sometimes have with poetry. I really dislike poems where the poet feels they need to explain with a footnote. If the poem needs a footnote to make it work, it’s a bad poem. Ideally it should work without me knowing all the details, and work even better if I do.

Anyway, that’s what Google’s for.

Pictures are a random selection.

Ruined aisle – Crowland

A Postcard with Three Stories

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How can an article for a society newsletter take all day to write. Yes, I’ve made some food and done some washing up, but mostly I’ve been sat in front of a computer screen hacking away at a few hundred words and altering a few photographs. Then there were the replies to emails, a couple of emails to write and some comments to read. I’m being gradually forced towards the conclusion that I’m a very slow writer.

The postcard I am writing about shows a shop wrecked in the bombardment of Scarborough in December 1914. It mentions that the wife of the shop’s proprietor was killed by the shop doorway.

The shop is Joseph Merryweather’s grocer and sub-post office. It was hit by a shell and Emily Merryweather was killed as she helped two customers take refuge in the cellar. Mr Merryweather was covered in debris. It must have been one of the worst days of his life. He seems, based on other photographs, to be the man in the apron, at the right of the picture. In 1939 he was still in the grocery trade and in 1945, he died, at the age of sixty. As I have started to say recently “that’s younger than me”.

Emily Merryweather

The shop is now an Indian Restaurant.

Mrs Merryweather’s younger brother was killed later in the war. He had emigrated to Canada, married and had two children. When war broke out he joined the Canadian army, having served in the British Army before the war, and wqas killed at the battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917.

And finally, the man who wrote the postcard? Pte \William Boalch. He was from |Guernsey, but served with the Royal Irish Regiment, as his address on the card shows. The Guernsey Militia mainly served overseas with the Royal Irish, because they had been so impressed by them when they had been based on the Channel Islands before the war. This was all new to me, but having noted from his records that there were a lot of men from the Royal Irish Regiment who transferred back to the Guernsey Light Infantry, I did some digging. Boalch himself, was wounded by a gunshot in the left arm and chest at Guillemont, during the Somme battles of 1916. He had spent ten months on the Western Front and would not return to the front, though he was kept in the army until the end of the war.

That, I thought as I tracked the details down, is a lot of stories for one small card, and most of them didn’t end well.

Apart from the name and address of the sender and the fact that six postcards cost 2d there is little of interest on this card – maybe a lesson to all us bloggers.

General Gleanings

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I found some nice stuff when moving things from one house to the next yesterday. Unfortunately, my feelings of joy were immediately dampened by a run of finding rubbish. The original plan was to leave that in Nottingham and have a skip to take it away. Unfortunately, over the years, things built up and became mixed and it’s become a lot harder to separate the two. This is particularly true at the moment, as I have a bad back and standing for extended periods can be quite trying.

The joy returned when I had an email accepting a poem. It’s a magazine that has published me before, but a new editor, who has constantly turned me down when acting as a guest editor at this magazine and at others. This counts as a small victory on two counts and validates the policy of increasing the number of submissions rather than cherry picking  the ones that are more likely to be successful.

The items were relatively modest, a battered white metal medallion, a worn coin and a 2d transport token.

The Nelson medallion is a membership token for the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners Society. The Society was founded n 1839, so it post-dates Nelson by a few years. This one is dated 1882 and has a number scratched to the left of Nelson’s face – 3157. The slot on the top allows it to be worn on a ribbon as proof of membership. The charity was set up to provide lifeboats and support for shipwrecked sailors or their widows, orphans and parents.  They decided to give up the lifeboats in the 1850s and specialise in the care of survivors and dependents.

The coin is a 1 Franc coin of 1808. The mint Mark “A” seen to the right of the date denotes the Paris Mint. The 1808 A coin makes up 49% of the coin’s mintage and is thus the commonest and cheapest one. Added to its worn condition and this is a coin with a lot of history but not much else going for it. In 1808 Napoleon tried to extend the trade embargo against the UK and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, putting his brother on the throne of Spain and starting the Peninsula war, which would, in 1814, see Wellington’s victorious army sweep into France across the Pyrenees. Sic semper tyrannis.

 

The token is a 2d ticket for one of the Liverpool horse-drawn buses of the 19th Century, probably 1850s – 70s, but I still need to do a bit of work on that one.  This is quite a dark, well-worn specimen, which is good in this context, as somebody mde some copies a few years ago, which always makes me suspicious of examples in good condition.

Pixelated Pottering

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Great Tit

It started well. I woke, blinked in the dawn light and found that I was fully functional, which isn’t always the case in the morning. Up, wash, clean teeth, on to the computer. Answered a couple of emails, checked comments on WP and played that addictive game with the snakes made out of squares. I really must give it up. Ten or fifteen minutes soon melt away. By the time I finished, snarling at the screen, Julia was making breakfast. I did some filing and she called me through.

We had cereal, blueberries and sliced banana and toasted fruit bread. (Julia had been seized by the urge to bake yesterday. We watched the birds for a bit (saw a Jay for the second time since moving in and the first time since starting to record for the BTO Garden Bird Survey). Washed up.

Back in the office I began to prepare previously taken photographs to add to a couple of posts I am doing for the Numismatic Society. I also did the final edits for the posts and assembled the emails, putting text and photos together and putting them in the “Draft” box. One I then sent. The other will wait until next week. Then I went to the list of my Facebook publications and added the titles of the two new articles to the list (in italics). The other one in italics on the list, I turned to ordinary letters as it is now up on the page. In the file of FB articles I proceeded to put that one in the “Published” sub-folder and moved the two new ones from “Documents” to the file of articles awaiting publication.

Long-tailed Tit

Though it seems like a long time when you have to read the  boring detail, it actually takes even longer to do than it does to describe.

A bit more filing, this time spending a little time on sorting things out, answer some more emails, chase some cubes around the screen, search for, and fail to find, a letter from the tax office, and it’s time for lunch. I haven’t even written a list of jobs to do yet and I’ve frittered away half a day on things of little importance.

With deadlines looming, I need to be writing poetry, not corresponding with insurance companies and people who sell lemon trees.

I made egg sandwiches for Julia using the leftover egg mayonnaise from last night and had cheese and tomato myself. We had Afternoon Tea yesterday with my sister, hence the large amount of sandwiches in our diet. We will be back to proper food tonight – sausage casserole.

Blue Tit

During lunch we saw a coal tit on the feeders. We haven’t seen one since before Christmas, so that’s another new one for the survey.  I’m now back at the keyboard blogging about all the things I haven’t done, but as I close in on 500 words I really must get down to some useful work.

It was during lunch when I was complaining I didn’t seem to be able to get anything done and referring to “working” in the “office” that Julia pointed out that all I was doing was pixilated pottering in the spare room. She isn’t wrong, but it’s still a stinging criticism.

When this is loaded I am going to look for a sausage casserole recipe. And still no poetry written . . .

Little Egret

 

A Flying Start and a Crash to Earth

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Last night I left it late to post, so late that it was actually the next day. Or today. As usual, I get my timings hopelessly mixed.  So today I am getting off to a flying start by writing early. The problem with that, of course, is that I don’t have anything to write about concerning the events of today.

Pause . . .

Do you remember when you used to get a message that said “Buffering” when you were on the internet? It’s been replaced by the endlessly moving circle. I’m feeling a bit that way as I sit and think.  If I were a classically educated man I would now mention Ouroboros, the snake that eats its own tail. But I’m not. I didn’t encounter the concept until I watched an episode of Red Dwarf. I used to get a lot of science knowledge from sci-fi books and films. The trick is knowing what is true and what is made up. Imagine the results if you believed it all.

I thought it might make a good sci-fi film The President’s Father Must Be Sterilised, (working title – the final one will be much snappier) where a government department, faced with closures, mass unemployment and immense personal tragedy (I will weave in tales of a Mexican wife scheduled for deportation (with her children suitably caged), and a man selling a kidney to afford eggs to feed his dying father) uses all its resources to go back in time and administer a vasectomy to the father of Donald Trump.

Aha!

A title with a double meaning, though lacking subtlety – Trump’s Nuts.

And there we are, a post written, an hour I won’t get back again and a possible Netflix series about a doctor who time travels with a scalpel and a sense of social justice, causing mayhem and unexpected consequences throughout history.

But for now, in a return to reality, I must write poems.