Month: May 2026
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Sewage, drones, a Buzzard and that footpath inquiry
Above, Red Valerian, Centranthus ruber, at home – a very tough plant that can grow pretty much anywhere – even from walls and paving cracks – and which is a magnet for pollinators. It doesn’t look very red to me. Sewage An update on the sewage protest which I attended at the weekend, Sewage protest,…
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Lost Paths, part II
The Lost Paths, a History of How We Walk from Here to There, by Jack Cornish, Penguin Books, 2025 (first published 2024). I am delighted to see now that the fox on the front cover appears on the spine of the book as well. The buttercup and clarkia (I think) photos from the garden are…
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Sewage protest, Thomas Hardy’s sundial
A little bit of admin. I have been becoming increasingly frustrated with WordPress hanging and being unable to save my posts which have invoved a lot of rewriting. The online AI help remains worse than useless and itself simply crashes but it did recommend switching to Chrome, which I have now done, since MS Edge…
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A footpath: how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
The first Oxeye Daisy has flowered in the garden today with others seeming impatient to do the same. An annual joy. A footpath … or not? Footpaths and right of way certainly seem to be a theme at the moment (see Lost Paths, part I – Animal Wild). As has been prominently reported in the…
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Animal Wrongs, Surds and Sophie Orde-MccGwire
Yet again the fern above has arisen like a phoenix as it does every year, seemingly lusher and more brightly green than ever. “Animal Wrongs” refers back to the book which kick-started my collection of books and other material relating to animal rights and I gave an account of buying it in Animal Trust: “My…
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Dorset
My favourite English county, Northumberland running a close second. Friends had invited me to stay for the weekend at their gorgeous house in Swanage, a place full of happy student memories for me. It is right on the point, the sea just a few feet away. I remembered that the nearby Wellington Clock Tower (1854)…
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Lost Paths, part I
The Lost Paths, a History of How We Walk from Here to There, by Jack Cornish, Penguin Books, 2025 (first published 2024). I am loving this book. It didn’t take long to win me over, no longer in fact than the realisation that the author is director of England (and formerly head of paths) at…
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Birds, Greenpeace, Norfolk Wildlife Trust and Snoopy
Before moving on to more pleasant matters, a quick follow-up on yesterday’s post about the Green Party, Zack Polanski and the right-wing media’s traducing of him. I have since come across two more disgraceful interviews, one by Mandelson’s friend Trevor Phillips and one by Laura Kuenssberg. Far worse than either is the cartoon which appeared…
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The Green Party
I have generally and perhaps timidly tended to avoid some of the most controversial issues of our times and indeed politics generally in this blog, making exceptions for Trump and Starmer and his nature hating government and their lies. Now with the elections two days away I am screwing my courage to the sticking plate,…
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Nihil desperandum
I have been reminded yet again this week that a path guided by animal advocacy and compassion can be hard, alienating and sometimes lonely. I have caused nothing but trouble for myself and angered others by speaking out on the recent deliberate creation of inbred puppies locally. In the very first paragraph of my first…
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Secret Africa and wildlife and other animal news
A delightful surprise visitor to the garden yesterday, a female Beautiful Demoiselle. She had moved on by the time I came back with my camera but this is a male I photographed in April 2024. A second wolf pack has been euthanised whilst we wait for the enquiry into the killing of the pack in…