Author Archives: quercuscommunity

Pictures of Birds

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Male Reed Bunting

I decided to make the theme of today’s photos “Unusual Birds on Bird Tables”, Unfortunately I then realised that the Reed Buntings are both pictured feeding on the ground. I am sure I have shots of them on the feeders somewhere, but I can’t find them.

Female Reed Bunting

My day was marred by two things. One was missing out a book we were supposed to send. The other was dropping a cap badge on the floor during packing, and not spotting it until I’d sent the rest of them off.

The problem is the volume of phone calls. We have had a lot today and each one has stopped me working, even if it’s only a few minutes. The real problem is that each one seems to wipe your memory and you find yourself forgetting what you were doing. I ended up making several mistakes – all associated with phone calls. Well, apart from the cap badge, that was just carelessness.

Pheasant on bird table

I think I’ll leave the birds to complete the blog now. They are more interesting than listening to me ramble on.

Nuthatch

It’s time for bed now, and I’m tired. I really should have written this sooner, as I’m now just searching for words to make the numbers up. We were lucky when we worked on the farm, as the mixed habitat provided a rich variety of birds. I should really have kept a list while we were there. To be fair we ddin’t get Moorhens, Pheasants or Nuthatches on the feeders – I just got carried away and included some shots from Rufford Abbey.

Greater Spotted Woodpecker

However, that would have involved decisions. We had plenty of regular visitors to the area around the Ecocentre, that never used the feeders. Green Woodpeckers fed on the lawn at the front, a Spotted Flycatcher used the grove of trees at the back and we had Buzzards and Kestrels over the field behind the feeders, though never closer than 50-100 yards. We also had House Martins and Swallows picking up mud to build nests, but rarely feeding in the area. It’s easier to leave things vague in many cases, so you can include as much as possible.

Redpoll on the Ecocentre feeder

To Beard or Not to Beard?

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Soldiers in the British Army are now allowed to wear beards, Prior to this only Pioneer Sergeants and a few other soldiers such as Pipe Majors and Goat Majors (oh yes, military tradition is  grand thing) had been allowed to wear beards for the last 100 years or so. Until WW1 moustaches were theoretically compulsory, but an influx of young soldiers made this impractical. There are, of course, good reasons for a lack of facial hair, the main one being that gas masks won’t seal on bearded faces.

The Regimental Mascot of the Mercian Regiment (which used to be the Sherwood Foresters, our local regiment) is a Ram rather than a Goat and he has, in these pictures, smooth-chinned handlers, but I decided that we should stay local. The Goat of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers is much more impressive. Our Ram is Lance Corporal Derby XXXII – one of a line of 32 mascots dating back to the 1860s. Actually, I just noticed their Goat major is clean-shaven, I may have been misinformed about beards, but it is always good to get Regimental mascots into a post.

The reason for this change is simply that recruiting is becoming more difficult and beards are in fashion. I do have personal experience of beards and recruitment – when I moved to Nottingham I began the process of  joining the Special Constabulary, but it was at the time the then Chief Constable decided that he didn’t want bearded Specials. As a result, and having had my beard for about eight years by then, I decided to keep the beard and use my spare time for something less civic-minded.

The policy on tattoos was recently relaxed too, for similar reasons.

I could go on to be political, but I won’t. I just thought that I should mark the day that the British Army decided to let soldiers wear beards.

Photos Courtesy of the MoD.

 

 

Another Senior Moment/Forgotten Title

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Julia, South Pier, Lowestoft, Suffolk

The day started with porridge, fruit and toast. I’m really trying to give toast up on weekdays but Julia keeps making it. Eventually, I suppose, I will have to start refusing it, but I like toast and I don’t like to waste food. I could, I suppose, just scrape off the marmalade but without marmalade there is little point in toast so I may as well just give it up. Really it’s just a delivery system to facilitate the eating of melted bitter, cheese or marmalade. Nobody I know would want a piece of dry toast, though if any of you, I’d be happy to know.

It continued with a trip to the dentist to drop Julia off, followed by a twenty minute interlude writing notes in the car park at the surgery before it was time for my blood test. This went well – two attempts on one arm with no success, but the first attempt on the second arm struck blood and we soon had three full tubes. It was a big day today, I had a special envelope from my last trip to Rheumatology and that needed two tubes. It had red writing on it, so it must be important. I got weighed while I was there. I’ve lost 8 lbs in the last eight weeks. Not spectacular, but a useful loss. No stupid diet, just ate a little less. I make no grandiose claims, and may yet disappoint myself, but at this point I am happy with this loss.

Julia on the patio

I’m writing this to the accompaniment of whistling, clattering scaffolding and the low annoyance of a radio. Yes, it’s building season again. The young couple next door are having something done, though I don’t know what. They are always having something done. The people diagonally across the road are having a loft extension. I sometimes wonder why people buy houses in this street if they need so much changing.

Julia just rang. She just bought an advance ticket for her Canada trip. Nottingham to Norwich and then on to London is just £28. Yes, £28. She was amazed. The man in the ticket office was so surprised he double checked it. It seems that there’s an offer on. At least part of the Canada trip is going to be cheap. She’s on her way home from town now. I am going to do the washing up. Then I expect we will sit in the front room, watch TV and (in my case) nap. There are worse ways to spend my time.

Love Locks at Bakewell

 

 

Plans and Problems

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I finally sat down and worked out my leaving date. I have six full days and two half days to go. It’s still slightly flexible as one of the others has to go to a funeral and I might be doing an extra day to provide cover. It’s a relief to get it sorted.

This week I work as normal (if a 3 1/2 day week is “normal”), the week after I do a normal week but swap days to work Monday, which allows me to go for my Urology consultation on Tuesday. That is going to require my best underwear and a stiff upper lip. Then The week after, I will do one or two days, depending on the need for cover and the rest is holiday.

I will lead a modest existence in retirement, but it won’t actually be a step down from my current wages, with the added benefit that I don’t have to do anything to get paid.

Julia, Sutton-on-Sea

To be honest, my poor pension planning has been a matter of regret over the last few years, as has my lack of career planning, and the general wasteland that is my life in retrospect. Still, it’s too late to worry now so I’m going to concentrate on enjoying what remains.

It seems that when I move I will have to have a new rheumatology consultation, and will have to arrange for a bulk lot of pills, because the new practice won’t prescribe any until I’ve been seen by a specialist. As we have seen in the past, a few weeks off the pills leads to crippling disability for months, so I’m not keen on that. I had naively thought the prescription would just carry on. So much for the concept of health care being national.

So, with one set of problems resolved, another set heaves into view, and  life’s rich pageant rolls on in all it’s lumpy glory.

Julia – looking sophisticated in Bakewell

It is, of course, possible that regular readers may have seen my photos before and assumed I was already retired. Julia says it isn’t going to be easy to tell when I stop work . . .

 

The Day in Retrospect

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It’s 16.05. I have booked a blood test, decided which walk-in centre I will go to for my COVID booster and written a blog post. I have caught up with some WP reading, skimmed the news and made lunch. Earlier today I spent two hours in the back room of a shop drinking tea. It’s not an impressive list of activity and I really should have done better. Specifically, I should have sorted more books and started making some lists of things I need to do before moving.

However, I’m now going to run into the kitchen and make it look untidy so Julia thinks I’ve been doing things.

As I wrote that, she rang. It’s as if we are linked by some cosmic bond. I confess to laziness and she picks up on it from miles away, rings, asking if I have been cooking.

“Yes.” I said.

“No you haven’t.”

How does she know that? Can she read my thoughts at a distance? Is she bugging my computer? Or does experience lead her to suspect I have sat here all day and done nothing?

There’s something uncanny about the woman.

Later this week I am going to start selling on eBay. I have a lot of low value rubbish lying around and it will probably be better to sell it than to give it to a charity shop. I will do a test run and see. If it works I will carry on. If it doesn’t, I can change to Plan B.

Plan A – sell it on eBay.

Plan B – don’t sell it on eBay.

There are obviously a few of the finer details that I need to work on, but that will do for a start.

A lot of stuff to sort through . . .

Variety of Weather

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Around lunchtime yesterday Julia remarked how nice the weather was compared to the forecast.

This morning at 5.20 it was lovely and bright, though I didn’t really appreciate it as I hobbled to the bathroom with half-closed eyes.

At 7.10, as I sat on the side of the bed wrestling with my socks, the rain was positively throwing itself at the bedroom windows.

First of the Marigolds

Then it brightened up a bit, then the hail started. It’s now 12.07. The sky is blue, the wind is cold and the weather is dry.

On the way home, after dropping Julia at work, I noticed that wind has stripped most of the magnolias, but a laburnum has started to blossom. it’s a bit early, but so were the magnolias.

It’s 12.14 now (I’m not writing slowly, I just got sidetracked reading about laburnums). They sky is grey, rain is tapping on the window, and only the cold wind remains constant.

Sorry, I took a bit of a diversion there. That’s the trouble with the internet. I’ve read a number of trivial news stories and noticed two more lots of rain. I’ve also made and eaten lunch.It’s now 14.14. That’s a coincidence, I just happened to look at the clock on the computer and thought it was worth mentioning. Or was it that I subconsciously saw that and decided to look. You never know, do you?

Red Kite

 

Here’s a view of Ospreys, and here are some Peregrine Falcons. The Ospreys are on Camera 2 and the Peregrines are still neat and tidy. As the season progresses they gradually amass a pile of dismembered pigeons and a variety of flies. I’d hate them outside my window. I’ve just been watching the raindrops on the Nottingham camera. Then I looked up to watch the raindrops on my windows. Amazing, isn’t it? All that awesome nature and technology and all I can do is discuss the weather.

Here are more Cathedral cameras if you want them.

Buzzard

Of Books and Battles . . .

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So many things to write about, and very little actually written.

This seems to be the story of my life. I actually settled down and finished two short articles for the Numismatic Society Facebook page. They took ten months, most of which was procrastination. The second stage was to piece things together slowly, followed by editing and thinking. Or, in other words, self-deception and procrastination. Then I finished them off in an evening. That’s it. Ten months wasting time and an evening of work. If you can call sitting at a keyboard work.

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Somehow, the decluttering process has ground to a halt and I seem to have done little apart from make the house more cluttered.It is one of life’s ironies how this happens. Tomorrow all the old and damaged books that aren’t wanted by charity shops will be off to waste paper. It is time to be ruthless. Most of them should have gone years ago, but they came to me in various ways and I didn’t have the heart to do it. Now, when it’s a case of them or me, I am finally developing the necessary killer instinct. Nobody wants books on fifty year old sales techniques. My Dad didn’t want them, which is how I ended up with them. I don’t want them but somehow they mutated from being old books to being part of my life. It’s stupid really, and probably reveals more about my mental state than my reading habits. Just because you remember things from childhood doesn’t mean you hve to keep them. After all, I remember polio, but I wouldn’t want it.

I actually tripped over a pile of books a couple of nights ago. I manged to grab a chair and avoided an actual fall, but if it’s war they want, it’s war they can have.

I’m going to put the kettle on, open Fahrenheit 451 and plan a surprise attack on . . .

. . . well, it wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you, would it?

Stack of books burning

Sleeping . . .

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My life, at the moment, is like a science fiction film – I keep waking to find that significant amounts of time have disappeared.

It happened a few days ago when suddenly realised I hadn’t posted for several days. Then it happened again when another couple of days went missing. I know I was around as I wrote three paragraphs for a new post. Unfortunately, due to the nature of time, they aren’t relevant now as the “yesterday” they refer to is now “the day before yesterday” and to go through it all amending timings and using the correct tenses for things is more than I can enthuse myself to do. Fortunately, with it being in my normal rambling style, it’s no great loss to literature.

However, compared to this afternoon, this is nothing. This afternoon, having arrived home around 1.30 and sat down with a book to read about eels and ponder the progress of my afternoon, I regained consciousness three and  a half hours later to the sound of Julia’s key in the lock.

My afternoon, which had been meant to include a light lunch,  a little cookery, two phone calls and some note taking for an article I’m thinking of writing, turned out to be a blank interlude. I hadn’t even felt tired, so I’m not clear how I switched off so completely. I’m hoping it is to do with my urological problem, and the numerous associated nocturnal bathroom excursions. If that can be fixed fairly soon it will be a help.

I remember the three months of blissful, undisturbed sleep I had after my last visit to Urology. It came at the cost of tubes and bags (I didn’t even know there were “day bags” and “night bags” until then) but it did involve unbroken sleep so it was worth it. Well, almost unbroken sleep. There were a few nights when the tubes kinked, or I woke up tangled in the tubes, or, once, after a night of unrestrained tea drinking, I woke around 6am to find the bag was full and everything was backing up . . .

If it isn’t to do with this, it may be due to another medical condition and after looking several up (cyberchondria strikes again) I’ve decided that I don’t want any of them.

Photo by FOX on Pexels.com

 

 

 

 

And suddenly . . .

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Sheep, as far as the eye can see . . .

. . . it’s three days since I posted.

It just seemed to happen. It’s not that I’m short of things to talk about, just the opposite in fact, but I just have trouble sorting my thoughts out. At the back of my mind there is the thought that I could be blogging thousands of words a day instead of the (intermittent) 250 I set as my target.

One of the things I have been thinking about is the many opportunities to work for no reward. I was browsing a website where a writer, who already seems to have a well-paid job was offering their literary services and directing people to the recommendations of various bodies about fair pay for artists. This person was active in education, which I always find ironic.

Lambs, everybody loves lambs.

When we used to host students on the farm we were paid, grudgingly, £5 per student. It couldn’t be more than that, we were told, because the students couldn’t afford it – the college wasn’t even paying. For that they had at least twelve hours of input from us, plus insurance, hot drinks, materials and access to animals, and paid us £50. The college, meanwhile, was spending millions on new buildings.

They wrote to us at the time offering their expertise on a consultancy basis. It was £75 per person per hour.

I demonstrate the secret of my success in Egg and Spoon racing

Words definitely do not fail me at this point, but I won’t use the ones that I have in mind. I wanted to reply that if they wanted to carry on using our facilities they would have to pay two staff for six hours each – a total of £900 compared to the £50 they were actually paying.

I was not allowed to send that reply.

They also sent us a Modern Slavery Declaration to sign, as we were one of their “suppliers”.  So we didn’t just get paid a pittance, we were expected to fill out paperwork to justify ourselves. Ironic again, you may think, that they were so concerned about modern slavery whilst sitting in an office wearing clothes produced by child labour and intent on obtaining our services for next to nothing.

Their staff didn’t even come prepared. We had to provide lunch for one of them, who assumed their would be shops in the village, and on another occasion one reached over my shoulder as I was working at my desk and took one of my pens.

So much to say, so little time . . .

Cute kid or spawn of the devil?

The Promised Second Post of the Day

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Several years ago I was a member of the Poetry Society. The poetry in The Poetry Review was a bit highbrow for me, and I’m not very sociable so the constant emails from the local group were a bit irritating. This was particularly so as they circulated my email address to every other member of the group, which resulted in some spam. It wasn’t a massive problem but I could have done without it.

Eventually, after disappearing without trace when I entered the National Competition (members got a second entry free), I sent some submissions to the magazine. Well, you have to try, don’t you? I was rejected. I didn’t mind that, I’ve been rejected plenty of times. I did slightly mind the tone of the rejection, though I’ve been rejected in a patronising manner more than once. I’m sure it will happen again, particularity in a field where many practitioners have two or three degrees.

What I did mind was the suggestion, contained in a link, that I might like to make use of the Poetry Society’s  editing service. I can’t remember how much it used to cost, but it wasn’t the cost that annoyed me – it was the inappropriate nature of rejecting poems and then trying to sell the services of the society.

Much the same thing happened today. A magazine that turned me down a few weeks ago has just written. I can, it seems, send them £3 and they will send me the title of the poem they were interested in. And next month, if I send another £12 they will tell me why it was better than my other poems, give me their thoughts on it and, possibly, advice on developing it. They left the £12 until the end.

It may well be that I need to take advice, but it’s the manner in which it’s offered. Plus, to be honest, I have had some good advice on haibun from various editors, who have done it all free of charge. Some of them are very successful and have multiple collections published, so it’s good advice.

And that’s what I want to moan about.

Sorry if it seems ungracious to editors, but after one from a haibun magazine spent several emails on suggesting improvements (two major and several smaller ones) the other one suggesting that I should pay £3 just to find out which was their preferred poem, followed by £12 more for a few thoughts, hit a raw nerve.

I know they have costs to cover. I’m in three societies, have subscriptions to five magazine regularly buy single issues of others and buy about half a dozen poetry books a year, so I’m trying to spread a little money around. However, I’m sure that haibun magazines have just the same costs as the ones trying to charge for advice.

My Orange Parker Pen