Badger survey
A good day on Sunday. Firstly a badger sett survey in the Arborfield area. We didn’t find a sett but there are definitely badgers about, as evidenced by hairs found on wire fencing (our ace finder of such things always dives down when he sees a push-through) and what was almost certainly a territorial boundary marking group of latrines, or dung pits as we now more correctly call them, all of them pretty recently used. The survey, the second of two, was undertaken prompted by plans to build 4,500 new houses in the area. The Planning and Infrastructure Bill has made us cautious though: could we doing more harm than good by reporting sett locations to councils? Not necessarily, but there is the worry that developers could buy such information and, if Starmer gets his way, kill badgers and destroy setts with impunity.
We saw a number of these posters.
The website seems excellent. Hall Farm, I learn, was a medieval settlement but there is no reference to the area’s history in the proposal for the “garden village”.
The Cimarons
In the evening I went to see reggae band The Cimarons at the Jazz Café in Camden with my brother, a birthday present from me to him. I have always like the band but expectations were not terribly high as they tend towards the softer, lighter side of reggae. But they were terrific, opening with a powerful performance of Reggae Rock Rhapsody. The band was formed in 1967 featuring the great Winston Reedy as their singer, who later went on to forge a solo career. Two of the original band members remain on bass and guitar, with younger people playing keyboards (two of them, always a good sign), drums, guitar and on background vocals. The lead singer was an avuncular, kindly looking Rasta, both bulky and dignified and possessed of a beautiful voice. They performed many of their hits such as ‘Ship Ahoy’, ‘Mother Earth’ and ‘Paul Bogle’ and as stirring a rendition of ‘Talkin Blues’ as I have heard. No ‘He Who Hides (around the corner)’ sadly but a warm and enthusiastic crowd was the icing on the cake.
The days of “Testing, one, two, one two” seem to be long gone. The pre-gig check now consists of a guy walking up to each microphone and checking it wirelessly with a tablet in his hand. A Rasta outside was selling his own music on CD for £5. Yeshua the 1st, Essential Reggae Vibes. I had no cash but that wasn’t an issue (everyone has their little payment device now) and he had a nice face, so I was pleased to help him out. Tough way to make a living. But a decent album. I have only just about got a way to play CDs now – a player which plugs into my computer. I wonder if that affects his sales.
Parakeets
In the morning I watched from my brother’s garden as a small flock of Parakeets flew over. Their profile is unmistakeable. Apparently you can set your watch by them. They are problematic, competing with smaller native birds, but as my sister-in-law said, they are very entertaining.
Cranes
As I had driven into London looking at the many cranes on the skyline, three close together in a space where it didn’t seem there could possibly be room for yet another tower block, I suddenly wondered how cranes are actually constructed – wouldn’t you need … a crane? The answer turns out to be yes, a mobile crane. It’s worth checking out a video or two of the process.
Michael Palin in Venezuela
I’ve enjoyed Michael Palin’s new travel documentary from Venezuela, in three parts. As ever, he charms everyone wherever he goes. The main takeaway is that it’s a troubled but beautiful and friendly country. I had no idea it was named after Venice by Vespucci Amengo, Italian navigator and cartographer, at the end of the fifteenth century. On arrival the houses built on stilts around Maracaibo lake reminded him of his home, hence Little Venice, Veneziola, Venezuela in Spanish.
Palin and crew hoped to stay in one of the villages to witness a lightning storm, but had to leave in a hurry. A moth invasion was about to happen and these moths give off a powder which is highly irritating to eyes and skin. I can find nothing further about them online.
Saturday’s newspaper provided fertile ground for this blog.
Tolkien and cars and Heathcote Williams
A review of Tolkien’s The Bovadium Fragments, the first word of the title being a latinised version of Oxford. Tolkien arrived in Oxford in the same year that Morris Motors, with factories in Cowley, became the country’s biggest carmaker. The book is “a satire on modernity”, it’s author believing that “labour-saving devices ended up creating more work for the people who believe they benefit by them. More than that he believed machines would evolve over time just as animals do, We imagine them our servants, but spend our time and energy servicing the needs of industry. Ultimately we will become their slaves.” How very prescient and how horrified he would be by where we are now with cars far from the worst of our problems, Heathcote Williams’ extraordinary Autogeddon (1992) which I enthusiastically read many times as a student not withstanding. Autogeddon is written in vers libre:
If an alien was to hover a few hundred yards above the planet
It could be forgiven for thinking
That cars were the dominant life-form,
And that human beings were a kind of ambulatory fuel cell:
Injected when the car wished to move off,
And ejected when they were spent.
Williams, a keen naturalist and political activist, was also responsible for the book-length poems Falling for a Dolphin, Whale Notion and Sacred Elephant, all of which I read just as avidly. He has been a fierce critic of the royal family, Trump and Boris Johnson, so altogether a man after my own heart. I am ordering Royal Babylon: The Case Against the Monarchy and Boris Johnson: The Beast of Brexit – A Study in Depravity. Or the second at least – the first seems scarce and is either ludicrously expensive or would have to be shipped from America. I have now found an ebook version.
Good to reminded indirectly of Heathcote Williams by Tolkien. The Bovadium Fragments, Harper Collins, 2025, includes an overview of Oxford’s relationship with the car by by the charming Richard Ovenden, librarian at the Bodleian whom I happen to know. Kenneth Grahame’s Mr Toad’s car also springs to mind.
Concentration
There’s an alarming report saying that “Universities are teaching English literature students how to concentrate long enough to read lengthy novels.” How worrying and sad that we have dumbed down so far and that English Literature is becoming an increasingly unpopular degree choice.
Elephants
On the wildlife front, a vaccine has been developed to help Asian elephants to fight a deadly virus, “the biggest killer of juvenile Asian elephants living in captivity.” Two at Dublin Zoo last year, seven at Chester Zoo since 2018. It threatens wild elephants too but the captives have none of the immunity wild elephants can gain from their mothers and natural infections from other individuals. But as wild elephants become more isolated there is further cause for concern. But the solution for captive elephants seems obvious – don’t imprison them in the first place.
Eating Swans
Whilst Starmer wavers between describing Farage and his party as racist and then not, Farage has claimed that immigrants are taking swans from royal parks and eating them. This is completely unfounded. It reminded me that royal and other entitled banquets were, in the past, those which featured the eating of swans. I wrote of these gentle birds in Animal Trust:
We used to live at the other end of Berkshire, in Cookham, where swan upping is an annual ritual, immortalised by renowned local artist Stanley Spencer. These days swans are ringed rather than having their beaks nicked, but turning again to Bill Bailey [the comedian and ornithologist], we learn that no one in Britain saw a swan fly for some five hundred years. As a food source, their wings were routinely broken to stop them flying away. Two livery companies take part in swan upping on the Thames, marking their ownership, as well as a representative of the queen. All unmarked swans, not just on the Thames, remain her ‘property’, whether she exercises that right or not, and this from legislation going back to the fourteenth century. I am not sure they belong to anyone.
The Londonist makes the same points here: Eating Swans: Posh Londoners Used To Do It. Today’s Immigrants Are Not | Londonist
“Farage himself hasn’t provided one iota of evidence, instead arguing that people need to prove he’s wrong. The RSPCA, meanwhile, says a video doing the rounds purporting to show people eating swans dates back 15 years.
Farage’s claim is straight out of the Trumpian … playbook; designed to stir division and hatred against groups of people who’ve done nothing wrong. There’s an extra tang of Union Flag to this baseless claim, because these non-existent immigrants are targeting swans — you know, those noble beasts that occupy our beloved coats of arms and pub signs — in Royal parks — you know, the Royal Parks belonging to our dear Royal Family, where we all picnic on cucumber sandwiches while listening to Elgar … But did you know that the Vintners Company — whose members still play a major part in that ceremony — also used to roast and devour swans? At a banquet held at their livery hall each winter, the carcasses of two cygnets were paraded up to the dining table by a gowned and capped Swan Warden along with a brace of cooks … this particular swan-scoffing dinner was reported in the Daily Express in 1927. And in fact, these dinners were still being hosted at least until 1960 [my italics], when the London Evening News reported of another such feast courtesy of the Vintners Company — this one attended by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester no less, their swan paired with a deliciously full-bodied burgundy.
The consumption of swans has indeed been going on for many centuries, and it always seems to be the well-to-do, privileged classes on record as eating them.”
Sparrows
John-Lewis Stempel in the same paper’s ‘Nature Notebook’ mourns the red-listing of the House Sparrow. 22 million have disappeared from the UK since 1966 according to the RSPB: the decline of horse-drawn carriages, new-build houses, agricultural intensification, super secure farm granaries and pesticides have all contributed to their decline. Less available food, fewer places to nest.
Deer
From a crossword clue came complaints about accuracy. Unbeknownst to me it seems that Red and Sika Deer are stags and hinds, their young calves, whilst Roe, Muntjac, Fallow and Chinese Water Deer are bucks and does, their young fawns, except for Roe Deer which have kids. So the terms are not interchangeable as I would have assumed.
A Butterfly
I have written about the recently departed including both my parents and my first girlfriend presenting as animals in various ways shortly after their deaths. I won’t repeat myself but I know this to be the case much as I would have ridiculed the notion without personal experience. From the letters page we hear of someone whose husband had very recently died. She attended a residents’ meeting for the first time without him, with trepidation. A butterfly appeared and landed on her wedding ring – “it gave her a strength which has lasted.”
Zack Polanski
Zack Polanksi, the new leader of the Green Party has presided over his first party conference. Early days but I am liking the cut of his jib so far:
“You might as well stay on your feet, because I’m going to say, we’ll say it loud, we’ll say it clear: migrants and refugees are welcome here.”
How refreshing.
“We are under no illusion as to the threat we face in this country. A march in London addressed by a who’s who of the far right.
A party leading in the polls with plans to deport our friends, our neighbours, our family members.
And a Government, a Labour Government, who are the handmaidens of this dangerous, deceitful politics.
The proscription of Palestine Action must be withdrawn, and every parliamentarian, Labour, Tory, Reform, even Lib Dem, who failed to vote against it, needs to hang their heads in shame.
From terrorist proscription against protesters, to banning journalists from their conference, to diving into a rushed, evidence-free plan for Digital IDs that are likely to discriminate against minorities.
The alarm bells of authoritarianism are ringing loud and clear.
It is time to take back power and wealth from the ‘tiny few’.
This is a country that has so much going for it but we have been time and time again failed by a political class poisoned by extreme wealth.”
Sunset yesterday – beautiful light on the canal.
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