Month: February 2021

Sprung? TWTW # 115

On By TontowilliamsIn books, Garden / Allotment, The Week That Was, Wildlife/Nature, work

Hello again.

My overriding memory of this week would be that the days are noticeably longer. Our morning dog walks now start in the light and it’s still just light past six o’clock in the evening. Meteorological Spring starts on Monday, although there are a few more weeks until astronomical spring, but it does feel like we putting a pretty dismal winter behind us.

When I was doing some tidying in our front garden this week I saw a lone bumblebee on the euphorbia so it looks like she might think Spring is on the way too.

Reading. I ended last year reading a lot of Simenon, Peters and Dexter. I continued with the Dexter into the new year, but until this week hadn’t read any Peters or Simenon. I changed that up this week by reading Ellis Peters’ The Hermit of Eyton Forest and Georges Simenon’s A Crime in Holland. I also received my copy of Chris Riddell’s Five Years – A Sketchbook of Political Drawings, Volume One. He’s been making one drawing each day since the general election in 2019 and they pretty much sum up the idiocy of governments around the world, but mostly ours. To say he has a rich choice of source material is kind of stating the obvious.

A bookmark I was gifted by the artist Jackie Morris also arrived this week. It was painted from a set of antique watercolours that are over 200 years old.

Working. I had another booking for an allotment talk confirmed this week (for the end of March), and also an enquiry as to whether I would sit on a conference panel to discuss climate risk – I’ve asked for more details on the latter because it’s very close and I don’t know how much prep I’ll need to do if I accept.

Allotment. I tried to do some digging on the plot this week, but it was like trying to break up cement. The ground is still very waterlogged. The forecast for this week is mostly dry, so I’m hoping that will be enough to dry it out enough to let me dig it without risking an injury. The allotment shop delivered all our potato orders this week. We had an arranged day / time when our orders would be delivered to our sheds and we had to go down and pick them up, thus avoiding having to actually go inside the shop, which remains closed. It was click and collect without any clicking or direct human interaction.

I got to see Mum this week for a “window” visit. The rules on care home visits will be changing soon but for the time being this is all that is allowed, and we’ve been trying to manage the need to limit leaving home with visits and so this is the first time in two months that I’ve actually seen her (we speak on the phone, but it’s not the same). Her Alzheimer’s disease means you never quite know what it’s going to be like. Last time we saw one another she didn’t know who I was, this time she did recognise me and we chatted for about 20 mins, it’s very difficult to make yourself understood and to hear what Mum is saying on this window visits but hopefully the next time we might be able to have a bit more interaction.

Warning NSFW content:

We’re about to enter the Prime Minister’s “road map” out of lockdown. Quite frankly I’m expecting the numbers to go up even before I actually qualify to be able to leave the house without restrictions. It does feel a lot like we’ve been here before.

That’s it from me for this week. Stay safe and take care.

Weather Window TWTW # 114

On By TontowilliamsIn Birds, books, Garden / Allotment, The Week That Was, work

Another week has come and gone, filled with books, pancakes and a little bit of drawing.

We indulged in pancakes on Tuesday, it’s about the only time we eat pancakes so it’s a nice treat. I still prefer a simple lemon juice and sugar topping after nearly 50 years that hasn’t changed.

A year ago I used the Lent period to give up social media. I’m not going to do that this year as I think I have a healthier relationship with it now, and probably won’t be giving up anything else for that period this year either.

Reading. I’ve been reading a lot this week. I mentioned Joseph Anton by Salman Rushdie last week. It’s a long book – 600+ pages – so it’s taken me quite a while to work through. Also Ann bought me a copy of Kurt Jackson‘s Sketchbooks for a Valentine’s present and that interrupted my reading of Joseph Anton because I picked that up straight away to look at. I also read the latest Jackson Lamb book by Mick Herron, Slough House. I was a little bit underwhelmed by the latter, I didn’t think that it was one of his best. I haven’t settled into anything else yet, and I still keep dipping back into Sketchbooks.

I’ve had some Audible credits building up in my account. Without travelling, my opportunities to listen to audiobooks has been drastically reduced so I haven’t always been using up my monthly credit but I did use one of them on the Complete Shakespeare, given that it’s nearly 100 hours of audio I don’t suppose I’ll be getting through it anytime soon.

Best AI Transcription Bloopers

The Opportunity of Laggards

Working. I’ve completed and submitted the proposal that I was asked for last week. No feedback yet, but it’s early days and I’ll follow up once they’ve had a chance to look at it. When I’d completed the proposal I picked up my own sketch page for a bit and drew the picture of the blue tit above. I don’t draw very often, but I’ve been doing more during the last couple of lockdowns to occupy my mind and spare time.

Allotment. The weather aligned this week to bring a dry, warmish (i.e. not frozen) spell of weather and I was able to get down onto the plot. I managed to clear the long grasses from around the base of the fruit trees and just enjoy being on the allotment for a period of time. I didn’t stay long as my plot neighbour arrived with a new shed. Our shed’s are next to one another and to give enough space for social distancing etc it was easier for me to give him the space to do what he needed to do and come back another time.

I have a “window” visit with my Mum in the week ahead. It will probably only be ten minutes or so and it’s not the same thing as being actually able to sit at either end of the same table as we did back in the summer but it’s a step up from a phone call (the irony is we still actually talk on the phone as otherwise we can’t hear what we’re saying because of the window).

That’s it for now. I hope you have a good week – take care and stay safe.

Making a Spectacle and Frozen Butts TWTW # 113

On By TontowilliamsIn Birds, books, Garden / Allotment, The Week That Was, Wildlife/Nature, work

Happy St. Valentine’s Day everyone.

Welcome back, if this weeks post looks a little off kilter it’s because I broke my glasses at the beginning of the week and I’m typing this wearing my “spare” pair.

I did manage to repair my original pair and then subsequently broke them again a day or so later, so have had to reglue them for a second time. I’m leaving them a little longer to make sure that the glue has really hardened before trying to wear them again.

I really should go to the opticians and get a replacement but as it’s been just over two years since my last eye test and I can tell that my eyesight has deteriorated I really ought to have a fresh one. At the moment however I don’t feel comfortable getting that done. Maybe in a few more weeks time, I’ll feel a little more comfortable about it but for the meantime I think I’ll just be muddling through.

We’ve been visited by long-tailed tits everyday this week. They call by in the mornings when I’m working in my office and make full use of the trees just outside my window. It’s one of life’s more pleasant distractions in these times.

After saying last week that we hadn’t had any snow we had the meerest dusting on Tuesday morning, but it was gone by the afternoon. It has been very cold though, our water butt froze as did the ground on the allotment. Frozen solid there hasn’t been much that I’ve been able to do down there this week. Additionally the broad beans are looking very sorry for themselves. I hope that they might recover but it might have been just that little bit too cold for them.

Reading. I’ve mostly been reading Len Deighton’s Berlin Game this week, which I enjoyed. It’s the first part of a series of three trilogies – is there a name for a trilogy of trilogies? After that I’ve picked up Salman Rushdie’s memoir Joseph Anton, after reading a recommendation in my friend David’s article here. I wasn’t aware that he’d written this account of his time under police protection after a Fatwa was issued against him by Ayatollah Khomeini for writing The Satanic Verses. I’m only about a quarter of the way through but am finding it strangely gripping. It’s a little strange to be reading it now, after having some clear memories of it at the time.

Interesting to read Austin Kleon’s thoughts on blogging as a forgiving medium.

Work. It’s been a week of Zoom and Teams again this week with discussions with a client over some work that they’ve asked for a proposal for. I’m a little cautious about this as this client has asked for proposals before and then not taken the work forward, but there seems to be a need for them to have this work done, so it might go somewhere.

I also gave an evening Allotment talk this week to a group in Derbyshire. Giving these talks over Zoom isn’t the same as being in the village hall and being able to see the whites of the eyes of the audience, but it does give me a chance to talk to groups that I would otherwise not present to because of the cost of travel / accommodation.

I make a point with these talks of always asking for feedback and on this occasion someone wanted more recipes in my talk, I’m not sure that would have been particularly interesting to listen to me read a list of ingredients, but I will give it some thought.

Well I guess that’s about all I have this week. Lockdown certainly curtails what I’ve been up to, and these posts seem to become shorter each week. Anyway stay safe and take care.

The Birds Are Unrepresentative TWTW # 112

On By TontowilliamsIn Birds, books, Film, The Week That Was, Wildlife/Nature

It’s been wet this week, really wet, full wet weather gear wet. Where other parts of the country have been having snow, we’ve just had rain. I’m not sure which I’d prefer, but at the moment a bit of a dry spell would be nice!

Last weekend was the Big Garden Birdwatch. As citizen science goes it’s a pretty big project and other the years I think I’ve contributed most years. I keep a running total for our garden anyway and over the last few weeks the birds have been pretty abundant with a couple of species present that aren’t around often. However I swear that the birds no what’s happening and stay away for the crucial hour when the count is taking place. It happens every year and the results are normally pretty low and boring and in my opinion not representative of our garden, but the standardisation of counting is important so once again our numbers were low. Of course the moment the hour was up I looked out again and there were more birds to be seen than had been present the whole of the preceding hour.

If you missed it I ran a giveaway earlier in the week for Matt Gaw’s book Under The Stars if you’re interested in being in with a chance to win a copy there’s still time. Follow the link above to enter.

Reading. I got back into the last two Inspector Morse books by Colin Dexter; reading Death is Now My Neighbour and then planning to leave a gap before reading the final one, The Remorseful Day, but realising that I couldn’t settle into something else I picked it up. It was a fitting end to the series and I felt a little bit lost after finishing it knowing that there wasn’t another one to follow. I’ll likely go back and read some of the earlier ones again, but in the meantime I’ve been reading Garden of Angels by David Hewson, which is possibly one of his best books and set in Second World War Venice and the modern day. Recommended.

Watching. I’ve finally been able to watch Greyhound which is the Tom Hanks dramatisation of C S Foresters book, The Good Shepherd. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a good movie, but the book is better. I recommend both though. I watched it alone as Ann wasn’t interested but we’ve both been watching Long Way Up, Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor’s trip on prototype electric Harley Davidson’s from the tip of South America up through to Los Angeles. I admire them for doing this with both gear and infrastructure that isn’t quite there yet for this type of journey but then that’s probably the best reason to do it.

Listening. I caught a rerun of Stephen King on Desert Island Discs this week. I missed it first time around and it’s a good highlight reel of his career (up to about 2006 when it was recorded), and his choice of music is pretty good. You can listen here, but I don’t know if that link will work outside the UK, without a VPN.

Work. I’ve been sorting out some work related meetings for the coming week, as well as finalising my presentation for my allotment talk on the 12th.

That’s all I have for this week. Take care and stay safe!

Originally tweeted by CartoonRalph (@CartoonRalph) on 05/02/2021.

A Year Under the Stars (Book Giveaway)

On By TontowilliamsIn books1 Comment

A little over a year ago I reviewed Matt Gaw’s Under the Stars. It was one of those books that had more of an effect on me than perhaps I’d imagined at the time. With the pandemic; travel and just being outdoors much more restricted I took much more of an interest in the night sky.

I was spending evenings, nights and the early hours of mornings looking for all manner of stars, moons, planets, meteors and the comet Neowise. I wasn’t using anything sophisticated, just a pair of binoculars and a camera. I was also more aware of the nocturnal activity of the wildlife in my area, particularly the fox population and a couple of local tawny owls.

If you haven’t read this fantastic book, I’d recommend it. It might possibly have a similar effect on you.

It’s coming out in paperback today (Feb 4th 2021), and the publishers have kindly offered my followers an opportunity to win a copy.

If you’re interested here’s what you need to do:

Leave a comment on this post saying that you’d like to be entered. That’s it. You’ll need to leave your email address in the relevant box (don’t leave this in your comment), so that I can contact the winner. These will only be used for the purposes of this competition. NOTE: if this is your first time commenting or you haven’t commented in a while your comment will need to be approved by me first.

This particular draw is UK ONLY (sorry to those readers overseas) and is taking across my blog, instagram and twitter accounts. You can enter up to three times (i.e. once here, and on Instagram and twitter, but multiple entries on the same account will not be accepted and may disqualify you). On February 11th 2021, I’ll randomly draw one winner from all entries across all platforms. I’ll contact the winner and ask them for their details so that the publisher can send you a copy of Under the Stars directly. If the winner doesn’t respond within 5 days, an alternative winner will be drawn.

This truly is a wonderful book, but don’t just take my word for it:

“Matt Gaw shows once again that he is one of the most inspiring of our young nature writers, with a highly original journey into darkness and night.” Stephen Moss

“A beautiful and luminous love letter to the night sky” Julian Hoffman

“Gaw finds wonder in the dark … powerful and valiant” BBC Countryfile

“Enchanting, fascinating and written with real soul and sensitivity.  Under the Stars lifts the mind and the imagination” Rob Cowen

“Lyrical, warm, and suffused with the magic of the night, Under the Stars does what all the best books do – it changes the way we look at the world” Patrick Barkham

“Passionately argued and perfectly crafted … a timely and inspiring manifesto” The Countryman

“Gaw’s writing is always poised and beautiful, switching lightly between the concise, persuasive and dramatic and the elegiac, descriptive and lyrical” Kate Blincoe, Resurgence & Ecologist Magazine

“A nocturnal adventure … lyrical and lovely” The Simple Things

“Under the Stars falls within the genre of the new nature writing and imparts an ¬important political message while capturing in melodic prose the beauty and mystery of the night sky that can still be discovered today, if only we are prepared to look” New Statesman

“Poetically written but scientifically grounded study of darkness and its effect on humans and wildlife” Nature Magazine