All Quiet On The Home Front

The household has suddenly become smaller again, I took Ms Whiplash (our Production Manager) and one of the Camera Boys to the airport yesterday and dropped Spider Man at the railway station a short while ago. This evening The Director and his son Barney are down at the lake seeing who is the least competent at fishing.


Meanwhile I’m sewing a net curtain into a big shroud that will fit over a wooden frame the size of a shower cubicle. The whole thing will sit outside with Cabbage White butterfly pupae in it and some cabbage plants that I’ve been growing in pots (they are looking a bit stunted), we’re hoping the pupae will hatch, then lay their eggs on the cabbages (and we’ll try and film that).

French Farce

1st May
I’m not readjusting well to being back. Yesterday morning, I completely forgot that I was supposed to be collecting Spider Man* from the station, he called to see where I was just as I’d started washing my hair in the shower, so I had to do all that cartoony hopping around with an arm in one sleeve while trying to get my shoes and pants on at the same time and soaking myself with my own hair.

I was still trying to get an arm through the other sleeve and do my zip while backing the car out of the drive and I failed to put a mobile phone in my bag. Spider Man meanwhile had decided to get on another train, I arrived at a deserted station and then had to work out where to get a phone card and the matching call box to find out where he’d got to.

We have recently acquired an old blue Laguna that used to belong to the police (gendarmes), while I was running around after Spider Man it ran low on diesel so I stopped at an unmanned fuel station - I hadn’t refuelled this car before. I'd spent a full half hour hunting for a release button to open the petrol flap by the time a passing gendarme found me frothing at the mouth trying to forcibly prise the wretched thing off with my finger tips, he kept his distance and pointed out that I had to turn off the central locking to get at the petrol tank.

*Spider Man comes and stays for a few days now and then while he logs our material, he is French and unnaturally fond of spiders

Listing Dangerously

3rd April
The Operations Room is now entirely papered with annotated lists; lists of sequences in the can and those still to be filmed, lists of all the invertebrates that we want to film with notes regarding dates to expect certain behaviour, lists of people coming and going - and then there are the job lists, here’s our weekend job list:

Butterflies:
1) Take some of the Cabbage White pupae out of the fridge and lay them out on corrugated cardboard under a gauze tent in the guest bedroom.

2) Cut a bunch of similar looking forked twigs and set one each in a flowerpot filled with clay, Take the swallowtail pupae out of the fridge and attach one to each twig with a fine thread.

3) Make sets for filming the butterflies emerging

Hymenoptera:
1) film inside the bumble bee box

2) film the Wood Ants that were found a week ago

General:
• order cockroaches and crickets
• make a very good plan to contain the cockroaches
• collect pieces of glass ordered earlier in the week along with several tubes of aquarium glue
• make lots of glass boxes
• take Spider Man back to the station then go on to the airport to collect a Coleopterist and a Camera Boy
• go looking for beetles
• change bedding, get many trolley loads of food

We're gonna shoot our way through that list 'til there's nothing left of it!

Testosterone Surge

1st April
Barney, The Director’s son arrived at the weekend and is going to stay and work with us for a while, Spider Man has come back to continue logging and will stay over for the week, Félix is also here today setting up the tanks for the underwater creatures.

A couple of weeks ago I posted some notes about the existing housemates
it ony seems fair to do the same for the new boys:

Barney:
just got some very fancy sunglasses and won’t take them off – he probably sleeps wearing them, he never wears a jacket, in fact he generally dresses in a very impractical manner, he makes a great Pavlova - towering edifices that take an entire afternoon to construct.


Spider Man:
Rarely speaks, when he takes breaks from the computer he goes outside and swishes a big net around, then he examines what he’s caught and makes notes in the book he always carries with him, his favourite food is aubergine, he’s a bit rubbish at jam-making, he gave me a jar of his tomato jam – I wanted to taste it but I couldn’t find an implement strong enough to slice a piece out of the jar so, insane with curiosity, I had to just lick the surface of it.

Félix:
collects wild food, invited me for supper and served nettle soup (pretty good actually, sprinkled with ground sesame and salt), he lives with his mother, he runs a seed bank, one evening last week he turned up with a compartmentalised box hung on a strap round his neck from which he dispensed seeds for my vegetable garden. The tomato seeds are stuck on sheets of kitchen roll with the variety written on the paper.

Miss Whiplash isn’t coming until next week, by which time the odour of smelly socks might have become overwhelming and we’ll have to run off together and set up our own salon

Weekly Round Up

Friday 27th
We’ve had some trials this week; someone went out every morning to set up a timelapse sequence and every day the focus was out. Spider Man was due to turn up on Monday to start logging our footage, he phoned to say that he’d written off his car so we arranged that I’d pick him up at the train station and he’d stay over at our place for a couple of days. On the journey from the station I asked him what happened with his car, he told me that he’d been out on a moth hunt and fell asleep on his way home, he woke the next morning upside down in a field. I might have to rethink the name I've given him.

Mrs Druid has been around a lot over the last few days putting up an electric fence on our land in preparation for bringing her sheep in to graze, she is actually quite lecherous and keeps luring the Camera Boys away from filming to help her bang in her posts. I am now experiencing quite a lot of irritable feelings towards her so I’ve asked her to take the weekend off and we’ll help her bring her sheep in next week*.

It’s gone quiet for a moment, we’ve had lunch, I’ve just taken Spider/Moth/WhateverMan back to the station and one of the Camera Boys has gone back to the UK for a week, the rest of the afternoon is for tidying up. I’m a bit distracted though, The Director has arrived at a significant birthday and soon people are going to start turning up for the weekend celebrations.


* we’ve been bribed with the promise of half a lamb in return for the grazing, there is a lot of grassland here and we can’t afford a mower because we’ve still not got the money from the Big Controller that was due last year

Animal Update
Julie the bereaved cat: has transformed into quite a friendly thing, still very timid but she hangs around us while we’re outside and lets me stroke her sometimes.

Ants: none of them have survived last week's attack, the other relocations we tried in more controlled conditions were also unsuccessful.

Bumble Bees: have made their special wooden box comfy with mud and moss and are happily flying in and out of their new home - we will be filming them next week.

Scarecut Trio

30th January
I'm dealing with my hair horror by using hats and avoiding mirrors. I also only go out if I'm not likely to be seen by many people.

A couple of days ago I attended an anti-pesticide film showing at Jeanne's café - an event put on by Félix, a young man who engulfs his skinny body with big knobbly jumpers, an assortment of scarves and an oversized duffle coat, his face is almost entirely hidden by his dreadlocks and profuse beard.

Félix has a degree in ecology, I invited him for lunch with a view to him working on our project, he brought along his friend who is a spider specialist.

Spider Man is scrubbed very clean, wiry ginger hair scraped into a ponytail, his beige turtleneck tucked neatly into his smartly ironed, high-waisted jeans. Spider Man doesn’t do small talk and Félix is extremely shy. I spent the long silences wondering if we should capitalise on our hair and form a pop group, we could become famous as singers on a chat show. All we need is a catchy name ...