My memory could be charitably described as ‘shocking’. So like many people, I rely on mnemonics to help me. But mine are always, for some reason, the opposite way around to the way you’d expect. On wiring plugs, I remember that Brown has got an “n” in it for neutral – so it isn’t, it’s live. It works really well – as long as you remember the last bit. My mnemonic for telling weasel and stoats apart is that a …
Category: mammals
I didn’t find them: they found me. Driving across the Somerset levels, two black silhouettes crossed the road a dozen yards in front of me, a humped scurry like two small hump-backed bridges on legs that moved with power and purpose. The landscape here is scarred by water, open wounds criss-cross the landscape which seems forever as though it could at any moment hold its breath and sink slowly beneath the surface like a child at bath-time. I drove …
It was, to put it mildly, not the most promising start to a day’s nature-hunting. It was the night the clocks went back, and they seemed to go back to the times of Noah. The rain overnight and into the late morning had been biblical, so thick and dense that it seemed like fog, erasing the view more than a few feet in front. I set off when it slackened slightly with every expectation of returning home, and nearly did …
There’s a certain smugness involved when you can say that you’ve actively contributed to the recovery of a threatened species. Most conservation measures involve plain hard work – laying hedges, trimming encroaching bushes, digging out invasive plants. Mine involved finding a chair and a good book. It’s the easiest contribution to nature conservation I’ve ever made. There’s nothing like being stuck indoors much of the time to help you see the jobs you’ve been putting off for years. I’ve been …
On Friday this week my wife and I went on our usual lockdown walk, following a path along a local stream. It’s a path I must have walked hundreds, if not thousands, of times. It’s easy to become complacent about your local patch, to assume that you have seen all there is to see, to overlook the gradual change as environments age, trees grow taller, bushes grow thicker, and the ground beds down under layers of bramble and rotting leaves. …
For weeks now, my wife and I have taken to walking every morning before we start work, not so much from a lockdown “permitted daily exercise” perspective as from a lockdown “stomach needs resizing” one. We walk a few different routes, but my favourite is down to our local lake. I like it because if we get a nice sunrise the waters reflect it, which is always cheering when all that the rest of the day holds is work. But …
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