Drug Drama

Our plane back from Turkey landed at midnight, it was after 3am by the time the taxi dropped us home and we sleep-walked the last few yards to our front gate so we only partially registered the sea of scattered rocks in the road outside our house.  

Waking in daylight, the view outside our bedroom was alarming. We live on a steep hill at a crossroads, the house opposite is considerably higher than us and a tall Scots Pine dominates the space in their little front garden. This massive tree is surrounded and supported by a chunky stone wall and is a much-loved feature of the neighbourhood. The downhill part of the supporting wall was now collapsed, stones, shrubs and earth spread over the road and pavement beneath, the tree looking very precarious.

Our next-door neighbour had seen the whole episode, he'd been at his upper window the day before when a car rocketed over from the road opposite, smashing into the wall with a force that rocked our houses. Two men in pink balaclavas were trying to get out of the front of the car and yelling to each other about 'getting the f***ing food'. The cars air bags had inflated which added comedy to the scene. People were coming out of their houses trying to offer help and the drama was further enhanced when a large gangster-looking chap strolled down the road from the direction the car had come, the balaclava boys clocked him and ran off in opposite directions. The big guy went to the car, took out bags of what must be assumed were the 'f***ing food' and headed back in the direction he came. 

My neighbour tells me that 'Food' is code for drugs - his interpretation of the scene is that the balaclava boys had stolen a car to pull a heist on our friendly neighboorhood drug baron and it had hadn't really worked out for them. It didn't work out for the poor guy whose car was stolen either, nor the tree, nor the people in the house with the tree.

PS: The  BBC tv comedy/drama series called Outlaws was filmed in our neighbourhood, we were quite grumpy about the disruption at the time but loved the series and seeing our house in the ariel shots.

Seems it's on Amazon now - here's a trailer

My Garden of a Thousand Bees

I am married to a bee-fetishist*, he is also an insect-botherer and a garden-stealer . During the last eighteen months (the Lockdown project) he has been indulging all of these passions by stealing my garden to make a film about all the bees and other insects that live there. PBS are streaming the movie which is titled 'My Garden of a Thousand Bees' 

 obviously it should've been 'Lulu's Garden of a Thousand Bees' but apart from that error I have to admit the film is perfectly decent and, judging by the comments on PBS's site, so do quite a lot of other people.

This blog started with an account of filming insects in France, anyone new here and wanting more hymenoptric content could check out some early posts

I just revisited this post  and only now realise that the garden theft started in earnest 11 years ago

This post  about a disastrous attempt to film a bee hive   is from 2009

 

*he refuses to take my surname so we have to call him Martin Dohrn, he's worried that if he becomes Martin Labonne people will think that he's related to Duran Duran

 

 

image credit: Jack - Thank you Jack

September

 

is my birthday month:  

On the evening of 31st August I stepped on a  Pacific Oyster while paddling in the sea, slicing an eye-watering amount from the underneath of my foot - the first half of the month involved a lot of hopping

back on both feet by mid-month and off on the Grand Scottish Birthday Swimming Tour: 

swim 1

my little sister lives next to the Kingdom of Fife which has a beautiful coastline. We drove out to a windswept and out-of-season-empty village with a fantastical tidal swimming pool created by the natural rock formations on the shoreline. Wanting to jump in but spooked by the lack of people we spotted a silver Airstream caravan/coffee bus with two young women inside, we went over and asked

do people swim there?

Ooch aye, it's usually rammed, they all go in with balloons on their backs* it's a wee bit cosier in there than out in the sea

 *fluorescent towfloats used by sea swimmers 

swim 2

west highlands, visiting a friend. She took me to Loch Maree, reknowned for being 'spooky' with a haunted burial island in the middle of it and for having 'black water'. At the edge of the loch the water is copper-coloured and the mossy pebbles below glow like gold.

swim 3

skinny dipping on the westernmost edge of mainland UK - Sanna Bay - a series of soft white sand bays and sand dunes, the water crystal clear

swims 4, 5, 6 ...

The Ardnamurchan Peninsula: rain showers and rainbows coming fast and furious. I'm staying in a converted barn called 'The Folly'. 

By walking a mile uphill along a tarmac road. I come to a farm gate, with astonishing views of mountains, the outline of Mull and all the weather coming and going across the vast sky. Far below is a sandy bay, reached via a zigzag path through bright green fields. Sheep stop and stare as I squelch past them. There are Bronze age burial sites and standing stones in the fields. When I finally arrive at the shore a congregation of cattle hurry over, jostling to point and laugh as I wade into yet more water.

 

Mrs Blackbird has recquisitioned

a small glass tank in the garden. The Man had filled it with tadpoles  and was about to film them but when his back was turned the blackbird flew down, jumped in and splashed around, then she noticed the tadpoles and scoffed them.*

The tank has stayed there and she comes every day for an afternoon bath, the tadpoles have not been replaced but the Man buys fancy blueberries which he cuts in half and leaves them in a saucer by the tank so she can snack and swim.

*Coronovirus Lockdown has meant that all travelling filming work has been  cancelled, all the kit has come to live in our house, where it sprawls  over kitchen, dining room and garden and threatens to take over upstairs

Stripping the beds today

and full of the joy of being in possession of a new washing machine, I did the job really thoroughly and took the under-underslips off the pillows. Shaking out the last one produced a fat queen wasp, she bounced off the bed and crawled sleepily across the floor

I'm nuturing a growing obsession

with bacteria - the more I read about them the more I love mine. Ten days ago the dentist made me drink a suicide cocktail of antibiotics and I've spent the intervening days growing a replacement microbe population.

In scientific experiments, lack of gut bacteria makes mice unhappy and listless - they won't bother swimming to safety and that definitely happened to me - I too forgot how to swim to safety without my biome.

This enthusiasm for all things bacterial might not be making me the best company at parties - best avoid me until I'm past the honeymoon phase of this particular relationship.

In Other News

Summer popped briefly in to the UK last month - then we had a referendum - Summer buggered off leaving Squally Showers to punish us for being pillocks.

Our political landscape has become a surreal farce with various overgrown schoolboys running away to hide behind their mother's aprons while peeping out to point and laugh at the Punch and Judy show going on in the Labour party. Our next Prime Minister will be one awful woman or another awful woman, which might be better than a series of awful men - but not much.

A Happy Thing

Mrs Bird still  pops in to nitpick about the state of our kitchen

Owchy time

the IN/OUT of Europe referendum has stirred up an underbelly stew of misery - we're still reeling from that debacle.

also my wrist has been malfunctioning - today I went for a cortisone injection at the hospital which was really really hurty. On my way home from the hospital there was a limping man who was hurting a lot more than me and really needed the hospital so I turned around and we walked back there together with him using me as a walking stick and it must have looked like a very funny three-legged race because the path was all pot-holed and we stumbled like a pair of drunkards.

Tomorrow I am having more dental work done but afterwards I shall go back to London and look after my favourite cats while my bruises go yellow and purple.

In other news

The Birds have tolerated us poking about in their garden for long enough and have started visiting us for a good nosey around. Mrs Bird, appalled at the standards of housekeeping among humans, comes in every day to try and tidy us up. Mr Bird sometimes comes with her but he usually gets tangled in glassware or computer cables and makes things worse so she usually leaves him behind to look after the children. This is today's visit

Today we are mostly crying

Violin practice in All Hallows Church, Easton

The rain has been heavy since last night.

This morning I found tiny eggs on the ground and a torn nest hanging under the hedge. Two squashed shells each containing a perfect baby robin lay next to a single unbroken egg on the wet black soil.
Pink and each one the size of my index fingernail.

Then I went to a church to listen to a choir singing songs so beautiful that I cried all over again.

After the choir, a music teacher used the residual audience as a rehearsal opportunity with her young pupil - more tears.

I seem unable to turn the taps off - I'm currently taking a break from boohooing at the telly.

The conversation has turned marineward ...

... at night parrotfish make themselves a mucous bubble to sleep in

this stops predators being able to smell them

it also stops lice settling on them when they're not looking

the hedge was wild and woolly

the baby birds are fledged

I clipped away at the vegetation to remake my invisible nudie spot at the back of the garden, uncovering this nest

designer's notes: sheep fleece woven among twigs accessorised with blue plastic string. Under layer made from the ginger fur that remains after a tomcat fight

It smells animal-ish

Anticipation

The Man should be starting to make his way back from India any minute now. I've had the odd call saying how hot it is, then I got an email from him a week ago, it was very short

Last night, our ranger, Morad had to do some other work, and we had Ibrahim instead, who hardly spoke but guided us to a scene with striped hyenas and jackals.

Striped hyenas must be one of the most beautiful and elegant animals in existence. Long stripy coat as if groomed on an hourly basis, strange ghost-like gait which enables it to float across the grass.

It is Alphonso mango season in India they are my favourite thing but mangoes have been banned from coming to England because the government is worried they will take all the jobs... that or the fruit flies.

Visitors

In front of my house is an area of concrete that, up until this year, has been barren. I've been setting up containers for planting, arranging my irrigation system and sowing things.

I spent most of today making a wooden planter to sit on the boundary wall, there are lots of weird joints and additions where I've patched up mis-saws and mis-screwings but it isnow  full of soil and seeds. I ache all over - in a good way. I'm hoping I planted stuff that makes binding roots.


Yesterday my friend returned from her travels and came to see me.  I left the front door open and went to the gate to meet her, we got waylaid by my seedlings. While this distraction was going on - Big Pigeon slipped in behind our backs.

We finally went into the house, shut the front door and went downstairs. We headed into the back garden and heard an enormous thumpsmash sound. We looked up and saw the bird inside the house, hitting the upstairs window for a second time.

I ran up to let it out. Closing doors behind me as I went expecting a panic. But Big Pigeon was just standing patiently by the window waiting for me to open it.

Wrong house - he said as he flew out

Visited Space Lady ..

.. this morning she is on the sofa under a duvet exactly as I left her two weeks ago but smellier. The space that was cleared in front of the sofa is now full of new-looking but slightly damaged books - she gestures triumphantly

Christmas presents!

I turn my head to catch a few titles; Canal-Building in the Midlands, Walking Your Dog... Looming above them are three unattractively presented volumes of fairy tales 

That's a bit late, who sent these to you?

No silly I've just bought them - for next  Christmas



The lump of overcooked rice lies untouched by marauding wildlife apart from the large snake of cat poo that has been laid near it.

The smell of burning is lingering persistently I'm chasing it off with an oven stuffed with beetroot and sweet potato packed with bay leaves and my biggest pot is filled with enough chicken in rosemary to feed me for the rest of the year.

Correspondence II

Today's Future as read by Miranda July  

I see lots of Bs in your life. Could be people whose name begin with B, or Boston, or a bee. Or maybe you need to let it BE.

good luck,
Miranda

So here I am in Bristol planning a trip to Brighton and reviewing the last correspondence I had with a long lost friend called Bob who used to teach maths and was really good at fixing stuff.

in 2008 Bob found me through email and asked me to fill him in with my news 

I said
Blahblahblah

I'm living in France...

Blahblahblah

… you still got that goatee? wearing the leathers? still the coolest maths teacher?

He said

Blahblahblah

… clean shaven no leather trousers although ive still got them as i was thinking of chucking them yesterday- and couldnt ...glad to be out of the teaching actually although it had its great moments - wasnt really the kids more the wanker staff who were more childish than the kids...that life is gone...coming to France

I said 

Blahblahblah come and visit…

My place in France (doesn't that sound great?) is an hour's drive south  of Toulouse.… looks very grand as you drive up to it … and even when you first go inside you might think it's  impressive it takes a while for the shortcomings to become apparent mainly the running damp, and some people don't like mice also we don't have doorknobs and it's always 5 degrees colder inside than out

Here's a link to one of my posts about mice 

Wild Life

I work by a window that overlooks the garden. Today it appears to be full of bits of plastic, I go out and inspect the remains of a fox party - a bag of bright blue hairy old bread brought in for a pillow fight. Notice that alliums I planted last year are coming up and some of them are going to be gigantic but there is a bald patch where I planted the bulbs which promised to grow into vivid blue pompoms - I’m blaming the squirrel.

Back in the house watched Maurice-the-needy-cat slinking around the bready plastic mess. Wish I had water pistol.

Road Trip. 2: In Which I Purchase A Spiny Balloonfish

Headed into the depths of Yorkshire and found a suitably scary-looking inn to stay for night. The sort of place full of people who all go silent when I walk through the door.

Barman says that in this part of the world one drinks Baileys with Brandy, wanting to fit in, tried a few of these ... rather good actually ... don't remember much of the rest of the evening.

Needed a Hair of the Dog to get going the following morning.


Continued drive towards Scotland, stopped in small town to investigate curio shop with large, dried Spiny Balloonfish. Request to purchase item. Take surprisingly long time to wrangle what is effectively a brittle, fragile, balloon stuck with sharp spines out of shop and into car. Next stop I see that the beast has thoroughly embedded itself in my upholstery.

Naughty Foxes

Having poured my efforts into sorting out the new offices, my home got totally neglected. Over Christmas I managed to attend to the insides of home, but its outsides are now a bit of a wasteland.

I didn't think this mattered much, I thought the plants would welcome a break from my pruning and grooming.

Wildlife has always passed through our garden; someone has been leaving it's fur-filled marker poo by the bins and I've often disturbed a mangey old fox who likes to sleep his hangover off in the daffodil patch, he clearly brings his chums over for mad parties now and again, they leave trails of licked-out-chicken-fried-box debris in their wake but now things have escalated:

This afternoon I came home early, put some coffee on and went out to see if spring was starting, instead of lovely crocuses I saw burnt out fireworks stuck in the flowerbed and our back gate is broken.

Have foxes developed opposable thumbs or do I now have a pest problem?

My World of Wildlife

Every afternoon the boys drive off into the National Park to film proper he-man animals: crocodiles, elephants and leopards. I stay behind at the Lodge, process footage and have a different sort of wildlife experience. The Lodge is in a sandy woody area, guests stay in cabins among the trees. I have set up a work station on a couple of tables in my room and the geckos have taken up residence above me, their tails poke out from the rafters, I like them but wish they wouldn't deposit such unusually large amounts of lizard poo among my hard drives, adding fresh ones every time I go off for a coffee.

When I do go out for a coffee, giant squirrels suddenly appear on branches, close to my face, cocking their big-eyed faces and holding out little paws, (for what? Spare change?), palm squirrels copulate on the table where I am eating my dinner and cows belch and fart explosively outside my window.

In the evenings at six, about two dozen wild pigs come round for drinks, they snorkel noisily around the cabins waving their snouty lips up at the air-conditioning pipes to catch the icy drips. Tonight I watched a big old boar with his head stuck down a drain, front legs knelt down, hind legs on tiptoe, straining his bottom and huge swollen testicles up in the air in an attempt to reach something delicious, he sensed me watching him, jerked his head out of the drain and glared at me, the perfect image of Ken Dodd, it was just an instant, then he tossed his tatty mane and trotted off to join the outlet-lickers.

Mice and men

14th August
Spotted Bruno hanging a bag of lettuce on my gate this morning, he was too unsteady on his bike to make a get away before I caught him up to thank him, he behaved like a schoolboy found smoking behind the bike sheds.

France Telecom now say that the road outside the house will have to be dug up. we are apparently scheduled for the operation next week.

There is clear evidence of wildlife activity in the Lovely House; scrabbling sounds, footprints in the frying pan and someone is eating the soap. I've been leaving humane traps and catching a field mouse most days. I take it to the furthest limits of our land to let go but it has occurred to me that it's the same mouse coming back so I have decided to mark it by clipping off a bit of it's fur. Today's effort was a big failure, I put on rubber gloves and removed the mouse from the trap, I tried to hold it still so I could snip it's fur but it wriggled free and ran off leaving half it's tail in my hand - it was horrific. I'm worried that it's bleeding away somewhere and will die a long smelly death under the floorboards.