Month: August 2026
-
Pippa’s Ugly Car Park, Bearskin Caps and a Stag Beetle
A.A. Gill, old age, the Space Race I am reading A. A. Gill’s A.A. Gill Is Further Away helping with enquiries, and I will come back to it here, meanwhile the scintillating prose, the breadth of knowledge and subject matter enthral me. I find myself ensnared and arrested by brilliant observations of the mundane, for…
-
Water, Big Pharma, and Airplane and Grouse Shooting industry scandals; British Wildlife Magazine
Water I feel have written more than sufficient about our pollution for profit water companies and Thames Water in particular, but it beggars belief that even now there is a fresh scandal. Thames Water’s £1m payout to finance chief is ‘unacceptable’, says government department | Thames Water | The Guardian Thames Water and others are…
-
Farming, factory farming, salmon farming and British Wildlife magazine
I thought the local Swifts might have left by now but I was transfixed by about thirty of them high in the sky yesterday evening when I stepped outside. The Jackdaws are very much back although in smaller numbers, so are half a dozen Blue Tits (where have they been meanwhile?) and I can still…
-
99%, the eclipse, a beautiful moth and BTO news
This beauty is I now know a Hummingbird Hawk-moth in the summerhouse this morning, so named for the ability to hover like a Hummingbird over flowers to get nectar. They are extremely loud. I confess to using AI to sharpen the image – my photos of moths always look fuzzy which I thought was down…
-
Dogs, Badgers, Starfish, Parrots and the RSPB
I have updated the most recent of my posts complaining about how some people allow their dogs to behave in pubs to include a list of some of the pathogens which can easily be transferred to humans. It is pretty shocking – there are far more than I realised and the effects can be very…
-
Chichester
I had been looking forward to my visit on Tuesday and it was a good day although a planned visit to RSPB Medmerry was thwarted by a sudden change in the weather. Chichester is a lovely place but like so many others is blighted by the number of boarded up shops, testament to the inevitable…
-
The Guga hunt, the mutilation of a tree, farmyards and rights of way, A.A. Gill on parenthood, a crossword, that tv show, a bracelet and Dr Dolittle
Guga hunt Firstly some seriously good news, the Guga hunt licence for next year has not been granted. As a spokesperson for Protect the Wild says: “A major victory for compassion, for science and for common sense.” BBC Evening News Covers Guga Hunt Victory! This will be the first time in perhaps 400 years that…
-
Thistles, a lily, ceramics, a candle, A.A. Gill on sport, and some tv
I’ve posted a photo of these Globe Thistles before but they keep catching my eye in the garden. The bees and butterflies love them and the umbellifers. The other variety of Globe Thistle below is just starting to show its lovely bluish purple hue. There is a rose bush in the garden but the truth…