Relaxed

I dipped a bird by ten minutes a few weeks ago. A very rare one. And worse, some friends of mine who had arrived 11 minutes earlier were there to greet me, all big smiles. It would be uncharitable to muse on whether they gained more satisfaction from seeing the bird or from daubing the rear window of my car with the word “DIPPER”, but I think we all know the answer. I am relaxed about it, and that’s what today’s post is about – my uncharacteristically soporific state of mind.

I don’t actually know if I am a relaxed person normally. My family would probably say that I am not. Neither would the poor sods who work for me in London and Glasgow. The nature of my work and my hectic schedule outside of work should also both point to “no”, but somehow – and I have yet to comprehend exactly why – I am feeling more relaxed than I have for what seems like ages. Highs and lows are like water off a duck’s back, nothing phases me at the moment. Not even dips.

Self-inflicted injuries are beginning to grate mind you. One I could cope with, I only got mildly pissed off when I broke my hand which was a bit of a surprise to me as much as anybody. It is fair to say that I did not enjoy either of my colonoscopies very much, but this is just a part of life that no doubt I would have arrived at sooner or later, so I just accepted them for what they were. Necessary and unpleasant, but brief. And then the ankle. That was more just exasperation, and at that point I just wondered when it was going to stop. Had you suggested that any of these things were going to happen to me at the start of 2016, I would likely have freaked out, but actually my reaction has been more along the lines of “and?”.

I think I am beginning to subscribe to the theory of “It is what it is”. This is different to any kind of motto such as seize the day, live every day as if it’s your last or similar. That’s ridiculous. This is more just being resigned to whatever happens, and accepting that things happen for a reason. That’s not to say I’m disinterested in life, far from it, I am enjoying it a lot. I have simply reached a stage in it where I am content and comfortable, and the odd challenge or irritation doesn’t bother me. I've had rather too many challenges in a short space of time perhaps, but I am told this is the new normal and I have several more decades of it to look forward to it. Hence the quiet resignation perhaps as I just limp towards the next minor disaster and an acceptance that nothing really matters that much, and as long as we're all happy then everything's OK really. See? Relaxed.

Today has been a day of low accomplishment. Normally I would be annoyed at myself for wasting an entire precious day, but today I don't really care. It's fine, it's what weekends are for. The girls and I have spent most of the day being cozy in the house, watching birds come to the feeders in the garden. I had no urge to go out onto the Flats to see their brethren, I was quite content indoors. We left the house once, an abortive shopping trip for a birthday present for my nephew where I visited one JD Sports and three Sports Directs in the space of an hour, taking in Leyton, Walthamstow and Tottenham. Even this failed to raise my blood pressure, whereas it ought to have caused apoplexy. I am beginning to wonder if I am alright.....

I am Pomegranate

I've just been to a spa for the third time in my life. The second time was last night. The first time was at Heathrow about a week ago, which involved a lady trying to rip my spine out and which subsequently needed a great deal of Champagne to aid recovery, Luckily I had a nine hour flight, and so limped on board and mumbled something like "Grand Siècle and keep it coming" before collapsing. But clearly it wasn't mentally or physically damaging enough to put me off as I've just been twice on the trot. This is the new metrosexual me, and the most recent visits were wonderful. I'm not talking the kind of spa where people have bits of cucumber stapled to their faces, or are karate-chopped to within an inch of their life, though this is available too should you require it. The 'signature' treatment involves being lain in a bath and converted into a giant living piece of sushi with hebridean seaweed, but I didn't go for that either. Instead I went for something billed a thermal experience, with all sorts of different rooms of varying heats and latin names, as well as a couple of pools with SIGNIFICANT BUBBLES. In this respect it is somewhat similar to the turkish baths I once and never again went to somewhere in north London about ten years ago. Booked by a highly cultured friend keen on the finer things in life, and as a latin teacher someone in the know, a lowlight was entering one particular room to find one fat naked man whipping another comparably fat and identically naked man with some kind of stick contraption. I've never really recovered from seeing that and have not set foot in any remotely similar establishment since. Until yesterday.

I had a somewhat short turnaround from Poland to Glasgow, where I now am. Did I mention I went to Poland? No? Well, more on that later, but my three hours of sleep between airports did not have the kind of refreshing impact anticipated, and so after a solid day of work I retired to my hotel and noticed that it had a spa. I've stayed here many times before, so many times in fact that the loyalty points would get me a 52-piece cutlery set that I don't need. But I have never been to the spa. Colleagues who have also stayed here report that the spa is in fact the main selling point, whereas I had actually thought it was the bar. Not feeling in the mood for cocktails, and noting that the spa might have a relaxing effect conducive to the kind of sleep normally reserved for the dead, I shimmied into the provided bathrobe and headed to the dark recesses of the basement. And what a revelation! I enjoyed a pool with side-mounted and upper-back height water jets powerful enough to downgrade a certain lady at Terminal 5 to a mere tease, as well as a something billed as a vitality pool whose main draw was the ability to to create thigh farts at will and inflate my trunks in about three seconds flat to then cause a massive bubble explosion. Yes, I am very zen. There was a sauna which was too hot, and something called a saunarium which was bearable but incredibly boring. Top place however went to a steam room infused with pomegranate. No, really. It was like stepping into a tetrapak and then being microwaved. I swear that when I sneezed a pip came out. There was some guff on a sign near the door about pores, but reading it would have meant less time inhaling fruit. Wow! I am a convert, a slave to the lure of steam and tropical aromas. And with apologies to anyone visiting the Blythswood in search of purity, abundant health and things like that, pomegranate must have unique healing properties as the massive blister acquired in Poland slogging it up mountain tracks has almost completely disappeared. 

The Easter Holidays so far

Number of disputes: 23,872
Cumulative minutes on Naughty Step: 425
Tears (litres): 152.2
Balls lost: 8
School Runs: 0

The last statistic is by far and away the most important. No School Run = A W E S O M E. Life without the school run is just so much more pleasurable. The School Run isn't just the fifteen minutes it takes to travel to the school, it's the whole shebang. Getting up. Getting them up. Breakfast. Clearing up breakfast. Finding clothes within Mt Garment and getting dressed. Remembering EVERY OBJECT KNOWN TO MAN that will  be needed at school that day. Coats on, shoes on, bags packed. OK, are we ready? Right, out the door. Alarm set (for all burglars reading). Oh, we have collectively forgotten: string, cardboard, flashcards, instrument, PE kit, a fish costume, book, random object. *sigh*. OK, unlock door. Turn alarm off. Disarm crossbow trap (for all burglars still reading) , find string, cardboard, flashcards, instrument, PE kit, fish costume, book, other stuff. Repeat several times. Ready? Seatbelts on, off we go.

The whole process takes about two hours and is the worst part of my day by a country mile. It can be done in less time, I think my record is about 52 minutes from waking up to depositing children, but we forgot the string, cardboard....

Not needing to get to school, indeed not even needing to get up at all, is nothing short of superb. This holiday is particularly long. We have the regular two weeks plus weekends. Then there is a Bank Holiday, then an utterly gratuitous "inset day", the nightmare of working parents everywhere, so that teachers can take advantage of cheaper return flights. Then we have a ridiculous two days back at school, when I predict that about fifty percent of children will mysteriously be ill, Friday off for the Royal Wedding, another weekend, another Bank Holiday, and then school starts again - by which time it will be about August I expect.

So to say that we (I) am having a rather relaxed time at the moment is understating it somewhat. The holiday can last for three months, you won't find me complaining. I may need to referee an almost infinite number of trvial arguments between offspring, but it's still preferable to the daily School Run. The children are enjoying it too, and are taking each day at their own pace. Middle child in particular is taking full advantage of not needing to get up, and is just not getting up. The days when I could sleep for thirteen hours straight are unfortunately long gone, I am quite envious.


So let me run you through today. We all managed to get up by about 8:30, and also managed to make the mid-morning dentist appointment without being interrupted by a rare Plover. After that we made a quick trip into deepest darkest Essex so that the kids could add Woodchat Shrike to their lists (always go see Shrikes, rule #162), and were home in time for lunch. Then we watched Fantasia, with top honours going to Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice, following which we made a very cool Lego spaceship, and then played with it a lot. The kids amused themselves for a bit while I made dinner - stir-fry, well received - and then it was bed time. Easy.

 
Tomorrow, the plan is that there is no plan. Can't wait!

A short post apropos nothing at all

My life is excrutiatingly dull. There, I've said it. This week was the pits. I mean, pleasant enough in its own way I suppose, a bit of sunshine here and there, but I cannot think of a single noteworthy thing that I have done. And by extension, to blog about. Still, not to let that get in the way of a short post,  no doubt a corker.

My week
Monday: Bought a new camera. Played with it all afternoon.
Tuesday:  Birded Wanstead Park. Of note, Water Rail and Waxwings.
Wednesday: A blur. No idea. TMS?
Thursday: Cleaning. Might also have played Snakes and Ladders.
Friday: Went shopping, almost bought Sea Bass. Played with Lego. Haddock for dinner.

Scintillating huh?

Moving on, I'm still trying to compile a list of all bird in Wanstead ever. This week - can't remember which day - I read the London Bird Reports from 1940 to 1952. The good news is that they were all pretty short, paper rationing perhaps, so it didn't take long. In those twelve years Wanstead was mentioned perhaps thirteen times. Twelve of those were of breeding Herons in Wanstead Park, and the thirteenth was a uber-rarity, a record of a Buzzard flying over the Flats on September 26th 1949. Rather in keeping with this post. I aim to tackle 1953 to 1960 this weekend during a quiet moment.

But that's not what I wanted to tell you about. I wanted to tell you about Red-backed Shrikes sixty years ago. Sixty years ago, they were so common in London that they barely get a mention. Look at this, which is from 1951.

Thirty-five nesting pairs! You know, of course, how many now breed in the whole of the UK? Correct, none at all. It has been twenty years since the last known breeding attempt in the UK. I can't bring you a graph showing the decline, but you can visualise how depressing it would look. I love Shrikes, brilliant little birds - an adult male up on the Norfolk coast last June (huh?) eclipsed by some margin the Trumpeter Finch we had in fact gone to see. Forty-three pairs in London, sensational! I've seen one solitary bird in London in six years. There have been a few others, but I've always been busy. But that's not the point, the point is that back then they were common, just another regular bird. A Buzzard over Wanstead Flats gets more print time in the LBR.

There was an article on the BBC news today about birds of prey making a comeback. It - the article - followed hot on the heels of a scare-mongering gutter press story about Golden Eagles feasting on thousands of lambs in Scotland somewhere. Just what we need. A lamb is worth, on average, about two pence, perhaps three. That's what supermarkets pay farmers in this country for them. They then mark it up by about a trillion percent, making it beyond the reach of most people who would like to eat it, forcing them instead to eat £2.99 chickens pumped full of shite, but I digress. If you read and believe the comeback article, most of our birds of prey at some point have been utterly eradicated from our landscape, and every single one has now made a comeback, either by accident or by design. I'd like to add Red-backed Shrike to that list. Sod the Great Bustards, sod the Cranes. White-tailed Eagles I like, but Wanstead is hardly the habitat. Red-backed Shrikes on the other hand may find it to their liking with only a small amount of work, such as tearing up all the football pitches and planting hawthorns and mice.

Relaxed, of Wanstead

Well what a to do there has been over this apparent Slaty-backed Gull at Rainham. Cars queing pre-dawn, people from hundreds of miles away. A thousand of them, desperately trying to look through the chain link fence that normally has one or two people at best. A rubbish tip surrounded.

I've yet to go to Rainham this year, and after stepping off a transatlantic flight on Saturday morning, going straight there to join the throngs came low on the list of things I wanted to do. This isn't some faux cool as I haven't seen the bird, it is part of my new philosophy of birding relaxation. Kudos extraordinaire to the finder - it looks pretty good doesn't it -  not many people have a first for Britain to their names, but I can't get too excited about it. Bloody gulls.

I had an opportunity to go today, but it was tipping it down. As well as relaxing, birding needs to be fun. Getting soaked through at a rubbish tip didn't tick many of the boxes, so I stayed home and farted about with paperwork and stuff that I hadn't been able to do in America.

I have to say the scenes at Rainham from the weekend were pretty funny. A thousand people, dipping on Coldharbour Lane. Just the thought of it makes me giggle - sorry if you were one of them. Naturally there are a few claims of sightings. I wasn't there so have no valid comment to make, but the mantle has been well and truly taken up on the web, where a couple of pages of intelligent discussion on the wing formula of a potential first for Britain has now swelled to a further eight pages of drivel and diatribe, mainly from disgruntled dippers who, having not seen it, are trying their hardest to discredit anyone who says they did. I am getting to the point where I can predict exactly what the next person will say, which also makes me giggle, yet they just don't see it, or don't care. I am sure it will rumble on for days, and I will get many more laughs.

Anyhow, when I'm good and ready, and when the skiving masses have departed, I'll get over there. And as is usual at this time of year, I'll probably have a scan through the gulls. The first slightly dodgy Lesser Black-back that appears, I'm having it, no questions asked, which should be good for another eight pages.

More on my American trip a bit later, with plenty of photos of red and blue birds that knock weird gulls into a cocked hat!