Elephants
Two more Thai elephant rescues to bring tears to your eyes. We first see all three elephants in chains, two of them repeatedly swaying their heads in stereotypical behaviour indicating depression and despair caused by their confinement and cruel mistreatment. That behaviour continues but dwindles during the long journeys to the wonderful Lek Chailert’s Elephant Nature Park but slowly becomes less pronounced. When they disembark from the lorries, their chains are removed and they meet other elephants, they are transformed. They know.
Rescued Elephants Apple and Mae Noi Arrive at Elephant Nature Park – ElephantNews
Rescued Elephant Thung Thong’s Distress Melts Away on Reunion with Old Friend – ElephantNews
Fox hunting
Shocking footage reveals illegal hound hunts in rural England – Channel 4 News
Following on from my speculation the day before yesterday, imagining a world without bird shooting and fox hunting and how insane it would seem if someone suggested introducing them now, this came up on the national news two nights ago. The commentary is brilliantly condemnatory. Anti-hunt groups have released even more video evidence of hunts flagrantly pursing and killing foxes. Over and over again. It can no longer be ignored. I think it’s always important to remember that these are just the ones we get to know about. On film, mostly thanks to drone technology, we see absolutely criminal behaviour, to paraphrase the police superintendent who also says that the matter has become a priority now, from the Middleton, Eggesford, Coniston, Duke of Beaufort, Mendip Farmers and, allegedly, the Heythrop hunts (we see two men kicking chicken corpses into a pit, presumably to attract foxes, on land owned by the Heythrop). The Duke of Beaufort hunt really excels itself – caught on camera three times, two of those in a single day. They are described as serial killers.
One of the usual excuses trotted out is that there are “just a few bad apples”, exactly the phrase used by the other protagonist in the discussion described in my previous post. The brilliant response, which I wish I had thought of, is that it’s more like bad orchards.
In another addendum to the day before yesterday’s post, a review by Rob Hume in Birdwatch of a book about saving the Capercaillie includes the succinct, stark summary: “At a time when nature is officially [my italics] seen as a block to development … “
Trees
A customer recently ordered one of our first edition copies of The Tree, oblong folio, text by John Fowles and photographs (of trees) by Frank Horvat, 1979. See image at the head of this post. I had thought to keep our other copy myself but having spent some time with it this morning I am not sure I will. The photographs are lovely but the blurb elevates Horvat to the heights of Henri Cartier-Bresson which seems a stretch. I am not a huge fan of Fowles anyway but this text is not for me at all. It seems rather pretentious and his relationship with nature includes shooting and fishing. Neither text nor images truly grab me.
Mandelson
Peter Mandelson has been caught literally with his pants down. Of course he can’t remember anything about it any more than he can the three gifts from Epstein totalling $75,000 (plus another $10,000 sent to his husband). It was only the other day that he claimed that he was accommodated separately on the island from the girls because he was gay. The woman in the picture (face redacted) seems to be young and wearing a nightgown. I met Mandelson once at a dinner party. We had no idea he was going to be there but it was he who opened the door to us. Weirdly, he said, “I’m not here just to open the door.” He was kindly treated and grateful for it since yet another scandal about him had recently emerged. He was charming but then I suppose these people are when they want to be. He seems to be drawn to wealth like a moth to a flame, it is almost as though he cannot help himself. Epstein was evilly brilliant – he drew people into his web then had them hooked, to mix metaphors, by their own incriminating behaviour. I suppose there is now an outside chance that he and Andrew Mountbatten Windsor might be arrested and even imprisoned. But they think they are above the law and they have previously shown that they can be. Our late queen was not entirely marvellous as so many say – to repeat myself, she didn’t mind splashing £12 million of our money as a hush payment to Virginia Guiffre.
A very special keyring
My lodger at the time was very puzzled when he found this keyring and wondered who might have left them behind. In fact they were from my travels in Malaysia and were one of many gifts from my dear, late friend and host Willmie. They symbolised my having the freedom of his house in Kuala Lumpur and the other part is is a miniature of an Indonesian Dayak shield (he also gave me a larger version) for protection.
This by the way is the Hunt Saboteurs running fox key fob, one of which is always on my main set of keys.
There’s also a woolly sheep from my daughter, also from her a circle lettered “I like animals more than people”, two pictures of Burning Spear and one of Hamish the sheep with, on the other side, a picture of the actress Rosie Marcel, topless, seductively holding my first book to cover herself to promote it soon after publication.
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