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. 

Moaning for Britain

My job, as many will know from the Peanut Challenge, is at Canary Wharf, aka the Avian Desert. I live in Wanstead, and if you didn't know that then frankly there is no hope. Between these two cultural Meccas is a place called Stratford, and recently some funny white buildings have been popping up.

Yes, Britain is proud to be hosting the Olympic Games. We have spent years planning it, and it is almost upon us. We have chosen the most utterly pathetic mascots the world has ever seen, we have attempted to insult as many nations as possible before the games actually begin, we have more MacDonald's personnel than security, and the public transport system is crumbling around us. Yup, we're about as ready as we can be.

London 2012. A showcase for what makes Britain great.

Seeing as how I work in Canary Wharf and live in Wanstead, I have to go through Stratford to earn my crust. My normal commute is a shade over 40 minutes. So by Thursday evening I would have expected to have spent a very pleasurable five hours and 20 minutes on public transport. So far this week that number is closer to ten hours, including walking home from Stratford one evening as the problems were beyond resolution. And the Olympics haven't even started yet. People wonder why I've been moaning quite so much. There's one reason right there. No, I didn't get tickets.

Any other gripes? Well yes, thanks for asking, there are quite a few as it happens. The first is an enormous Police Base on Wanstead Flats that has eliminated a good proportion of the patch and cut my morning birding in half. It's been present for a month, and is planned to be present for about another two months. I can only imagine the state of the area once it's all gone. Then there are the missiles on the Fred Wigg Tower. The only reason I can't see them from my house is that a tree is in the way. I don't like missiles very much at the best of times, and having them that close in case some nutter decides he is going to make a statement to the the world makes me quite uncomfortable. I feel like I'm in the line of fire. Two more reasons why I'm not embracing the Olympics.

Anything else? Yes. Helicopters. There are helicopters everywhere. All day and all night there are helicopters buzzing around. Try to work, helipcopter. Try to sleep, helicopter. In my dreams all I can hear are helicopters. And sirens. And people. There are people everywhere. I know. It's London and there are always people everywhere. This is true, but there are more people everywhere. In my current frazzled state it doesn't take much.

Thankfully I have the perfect remedy. I'm going to Norfolk at the weekend to photograph waders. I think Titchwell will be perfect.

Some Things

I just read this post by Emma Waffle. It is about nothing at all really (hope she does not me saying this) but is excellent nonetheless. That it contains a link to Peregrines helps perhaps - a closet birder if ever I saw one - but for a post that is essentially wittering on about stuff, well done. It probably helps if you have been reading the preceding waffle, which I have. Just as you have on here. So I am going to shamelessly copy the format, if not the style. Or the parts about lipstick, though I do have a skin tale to share. Oh yes.

Good things:

1. It is not raining, though this may change*. It has been raining almost non-stop for about the last week, and I am fed up with it. It was largely inevitable once Thames Water announced a hosepipe ban. The same Thames Water who lose a full 25% of all water they supply on a daily basis - this is used as a marketing tool, as in we only lose 25% of all our water every day. Before replacing however many miles of leaky pipes last year it was running at over 30%. Well done I say. Not that I need the hose now of course, as last time I looked a wader scrape was forming about half way down the garden. If the next time I look out I see a pair of courting Avocets I won't actually be that surprised. The rain has made birding all but impossible. Wanstead is sadly lacking in sea and south-west headlands. We have no alternative when the weather closes in. If I lived near the sea, I'd be down there like a shot. In fact, in good weather I'd probably be there too, but that's not the point. Constant rain equates to no birds. And to getting wet whilst not seeing them. All things being equal, I'd rather it were dry, though the downpours are helping the local ponds which are desperately low. And preventing the local youf from burning any more of the Flats.

2. This morning I saw a Ring Ouzel, or, I should say, another Ring Ouzel. That makes three this year so far, and is very pleasing. My Ring Ouzel cup overfloweth.  Verily. What great birds they are. This morning's was a female, and decided to plonk down in some broom only a few yards from Nick, Tim and I as we conversed about what a shit spring it had been. It then afforded us some of the best views of an Ouzel I've ever had for at least thirty seconds, before slipping into cover. Reaching for my ever-present camera, I discovered it had no battery left. Well that's excellent, what great planning. Honestly, my camera has one of the beefiest batteries I've ever seen - it's good for well over 2000 shots, even in sub-zero temperatures. I brag about it constantly, and then get caught short with a 2.5kg camera-shaped paperweight 500 yards from my house.

3. Chateau L has a cleaner again, though not a fairy, and will shortly have a gardener. This may sound somewhat decadent, but I view it as job creation, a responsible move for a more robust economy. When I lost my job a few years back, our cleaner lost hers the same day, which was very sad, both for her and for us, but particularly for her. Well, and for us equally now I come to think about it, and especially for me, as her responsibilities became mine. I did my best** but really my heart wasn't in it. Whilst the house looked superficially tidy, underneath the surface lurked terrifying amounts of grime. When I went back to work, I resisted getting help - I thought we could do it ourselves, and the novelty of actually having money coming in, rather than just going out, well, I wanted to keep as much of it as possible to spend on optics. The house began to look like Beirut on a bad day in the 1980s, and so I have now seen the error of my ways, and launched my very own economic stimulus plan. In any event, it is impossible to have a nice house when you have three children, as they are able to trash it far more quickly that you can clean it. They are of course also able to trash it far more quickly than a cleaner can clean it, but there is that fantastic period between the cleaner leaving and the children arriving home from school when it looks amazing. The one flaw in my plan is that I'm at work earning money to pay the cleaner, so I don't ever get to see it in this state.

4. I have more wine than I can possibly ever drink. I can't tell you how good a thing this is. Somehow I have managed to plan ahead, which is something I rarely do. I got one of those lovely emails the other day which said something along the lines of "Dear Mr L, the delicious, drinking-now-but-will-also-keep-for-a-couple-of-years White Burgundies that you ordered two years ago and have entirely forgotton about have arrived in the UK and are ready to be delivered to you in exchange for a moderately small amount of tax." It's lucky these wine merchants are honest folk, as I had entirely forgotton about them. Happy days.

Bad things

1. I am not well. Specifically, I have an unspecified stomach complaint. This started this morning, on Wanstead Flats, though as I was looking at a Ring Ouzel I made light of it. I did mean however that rather than dice with death - or worse - on public transport, I decided that working from home might be the safest and least disgusting option. My stomach has never really been the same since a trip to Thailand in the late nineties, when I experienced the worst case of the runs in my entire life, up to and including now. Somehow I survived a flight to Sydney, and sought help straight away. I'd encourage you to look at this link about bacillic dysentery, particularly the symptoms bit. One of the syptoms is apparently death, so I suppose I got off lightly, but every now and again, and I have no idea what causes it - inferior Burgundy perhaps? - I get a bout of dodgy tummy, and today was one of those days. I like to bare all on this blog.

2. Unconnected to the above, but equally pleasant to anyone who combines blog-reading with eating dinner, I have a large spot on the back of my neck which actually hurts when I turn my head. I cannot see it in order to be able to describe it to you, but I suspect it is bright red and throbbing. I have not been a greasy teenager for many years, and I would like to think that my hormones are so calm now as to be practically dead, so it is highly unfair that I should have a zit on my neck that a fifteen year-old would be embarrassed by. At least it is not on my nose.

3. There has been some kind of birders tiff in within the publications section of the London Natural History Society. I have no idea what has happened, a friend merely told me that some acrimony had occured. Highly strung these birder types. But why is this bad news? Well, for two years I compiled a section of the riveting read that is the London Bird Report. This tells you that on June 23rd eleven Blue Tits were seen in Hackney, and other important things of that nature. Whilst I wasn't working, I felt that I ought to put a little bit back into London birding, and volunteered to write a couple of sections. Rarely, and this includes work, have I been so bored, but I manfully struggled on and only delivered my sections a couple of months late. I had tried to make my accounts of Blue Tits in the capital a little more pithy than my predecessor, and was ruthlessly edited. I do not like being edited, and after two years, and finding myself working once again, decided I would pass on a third year. I thought nothing more of it until I heard about this spat, and very shortly afterwards received an email from someone drafted in as an emergency editor, with a neat little table showing who wrote which sections in 2008, and who was writing sections in 2009. There is a nasty little blank space in the 2009 list where you can see my name against it for 2008; the implication is clear. So I am currently agonising about whether I should volunteer again. On the one hand, my conscience tells me I probably should. On the other, birding is about enjoyment, and I know I will not enjoy it.

4. I keep on getting letters from the tax man. Whilst unemployed I did not seek a single penny from the public purse. Now that I am employed again, I am being instantly and relentlessly pursued. You already know my feelings on how my taxes will likely be spent. Anyway, I have a neat little pile of brown and very governmental envelopes sitting on my desk. None of the ones I have so far opened have contained good news. "Dear Mr Lethbridge, we are pleased to be able to tell you that you have been opted out of the tax system, and will no longer need to pay us anything. Please do not reply to this letter."**

That is all.


* Before I even finished this post, this happened. Stair rods.

** This might have been in a dream.

Back at school

Today I shouted at one of the teaching assistants at my kids’ school. I am officially nasty me again. Thanks banking. I didn’t actually shout, but after needing to knock on the window at middle child's classroom five minutes after the bell had rung with no effect, when the door finally opened around 3:37pm, I was in no mood for mucking about. Sorry we’re a few minutes late was the feeble statement on opening the door.  It’s a bit annoying actually, I stated matter of factly, I have three children to pick up in three different places. Well we’re only just after half past, came the tart response. The classroom clock said otherwise, but I said nothing. I felt like I was getting told off. We’re working very hard, we’re doing the best we can. Again I said nothing. It was for the best, as whatever I might have said would not have gone down well, and with the rest of the parents standing behind me, no doubt aghast at my bluntness, I was already Captain Bastard.

What the dopey assistant failed to realise is that to be seven minutes late letting the children out wastes 210 minutes of thirty parents time. That’s three and a half hours for the mathematically challenged. Parents’ time is extremely precious, and teachers, as a rule, seem not to recognise this. It’s OK for them though, the school day runs from 9 to 3:30, and they get about 13 weeks holiday a year, and then a further week’s worth of gratuitous inset days that, per class, each time use up an entire month of parents' holiday.  In my current job I get five weeks of unpaid holiday and zero inset days. I am trying to juggle a full-time job around the daily school runs, and I have three kids to pick up, and when one kid is released late, I am thus late for the other two. And so it was today, and Pudding was the last in her class to be picked up, and I only had fifteen minutes to get to the girls’ Ballet lessons and get them changed into their fetching pink and white checked leotards and frilly dress things, rather than the more realistic twenty plus. I just don’t have slack time any more, every minute counts.

I am surprised how quickly my demeanour has changed. A month ago I was nice me, relaxed me.  Now…oh hang on, now what? I am being shouted at by a deaf old woman. FFS. I am in the local community centre, where the afore-mentioned ballet is taking place. The car park is ingeniously laid out, two spaces deep. This being London, you park where you can park, and it seems that my Land Rover is blocking this old woman’s 1983 Fiesta. I was a little tardy to realise what she was asking the assembled room, so peeved am I that I have become a shit again, so didn’t answer straight away. More fool me. “Well will you move it, you are blocking me in”. Yes, I’ll move it, I replied meekly, repect your elders and all that. “Yes, move it now, you’re in my way, come on, come on.” Right. As I followed her to the carpark, two paces behind her, she was loudly telling her equally deaf friend about how awful it was that she had been blocked in, how she had asked several times, and weren’t people terrible these days. She probably doesn’t realise how close she came to having her Fiesta crushed. It would have been so simple. "Oops, was that reverse? Sorry about that. Shall I put it in the recycling for you?"

Today is clearly just one of these days where it all goes wrong. I’ve just looked up and seen a sign posted to the wall, two foot square, addressed to “BALLET PARENTS”. It reads thus, and the capital letters are important: PLEASE DO NOT BRING RAISINS FOR CHILDREN TO EAT HERE. IF THEY ARE EATING OTHER SNACKS, PLEASE ASK THEM TO SIT DOWN THUS, HOPEFULLY REDUCING THE MESS”. Grammar aside, it is the kind of officious notice that makes my blood boil. Especially today. I’ve just looked for raisins in my bag of kid paraphernalia, and am irrationally annoyed that we don’t have any, as I would like to wantonly scatter some all over the room. I’ve totally forgotten what I was saying now. Oh yes, my new, unimproved self. It makes me unhappy. I liked being calm, relaxed, and in control. Trying to also fit nine hours of work into a day and something has to give. In my case it seems to be calmness, relaxedness, if that is even a word, and being in control. I felt bad about having a go at the teaching assistant. She probably was doing her best, and while it wasn't good enough, I should have just rolled with it, and accepted the additional stress this caused me. Much as I want my life to be stress-free, and this is what I particularly enjoyed about the last two and a half years, I think I just need to accept the fact that it isn’t going to be like that any more. Reality is biting. I should remember to try and not bite back.

Time for a Change?

My life is currently a heady mixture of bug photography and domestic servitude. It was a surprise then to get a text containing Wanstead bird news whilst lounging around in bed drinking tea this morning. The exciting and unexpected missive was that a Common Tern was possibly heading my way. I managed to drag myself out of bed and peer out the window, but it was all still a bit blurry. I am of the age now where perfect vision does not simultaeneously occur with the opening of one's eyes, and by the time I could actually see straight the Tern was probably fishing in Walthamstow. I got back into bed and finished drinking tea.

Muffin meanwhile was busy doing the moth trap. A short while later he scampered upstairs with an Isle of Wight Wave. Probably extinct said Waring and Townsend, but this fact didn't bother him - it was one. My brain was not sufficiently engaged to argue with him, except to say that we weren't on the Isle of Wight, but by the time breakfast came around it was a Dwarf Cream Wave instead so all you moth-ers can rest easy.

The school run complete, and various more disgusting elements of the kitchen cleaned, I was free to start bug-hunting again. Flash on, and away I went. Sadly it was hard work to even find a bug in the neatly trimmed garden of Chateau L. A few flies, a spider (probably the catchily-named Tibellus oblongus), and a ladybird were all I could come up with. The spider had an egg-sack though, which was pretty cool. Or it could have been dinner, not sure.

All these bugs have made me decide that I'm going to go out birding again soon. I've been pretty slack of late, and most of all, I think I'm missing it. Wader season is about to start, and there seem to be Crossbills whizzing around all over the place. A few early starts could see me cash in. Or see nothing.

And finally, it would be amiss of me not to say a big thank you to my 100 Acolytes. The momentous three-figure day was yesterday, approximately two and a half years after kicking off. That I still have anything to say is remarkable. Even more remarkable is why any of you return here day after day, but it is extremely gratifying. So please don't leave, it would be very sad, not to say somewhat humiliating, especially after writing this. To show you how much I love you, here is a photo of a fly.

What, you would have preferred a Ladybird? Oh go on then. I am feeling indulgent.