Past and Present

Another of my posts from my weekend away below, but first a few of the things that I have been writing in my notebook.

The weather has been lovely these past few days, sunny and bright. Friday was quite warm as well, the nip in the wind seemed to have gone. It was warm enough that I opened the window in my office. I sat there and decided that the only way that I miss New Milton ( MultiMap map with New Milton ) since having come to York via Southampton is the summers, in particular the New Forest and the beach. As much as the Forest is gorgeous, Yorkshire has its charms as well, so that just leaves the English Channel.

I have now started drinking tea in the office. Which I suppose is quite uninteresting, but marks some changes. I have also recently acquired some Darjeeling, I had forgotten how lovely it is. The description of the champagne of tea is really justified. Barring the minor detail that I don't like champagne that much.

Whoops, I almost forgot. When I had my window open at work, a male house sparrow landed on the windowsill, hopped along and peeped through the open window. Unfortunately, he didn't want to come and do my work for me.

As we are on the subject of birds, old post time.

***

I visited my Grandmother on Saturday with my Mother and we walked from Brockenhurst to New Milton through the New Forest.

The Forest is lovely even in its flatness and lack of Yorkshire bleakness. There were no foals, but lots of bunnies and many birds. Birds spotted and heard included:

Peewits, Swallows, Martins, Thrushes, Blackbirds, Great and Blue Tits, Chaffinches, Stone Chats, Magpies, Crows, a Lark, suspected to be a Wood Lark rather than a sky Lark, Gulls, Robins, an unidentified wader, unidentified finches, Sparrows, Buzzards, Wood Pigeons and Doves.

On Sunday morning we walked down to Weston Shore through the woods and saw several more birds, several pretty flowers and Mr Fishy. Birds included a Plover, Oystercathchers, a Spotted Woodpecker and Chiff-Chaffs as well as others already mentioned. All of they in the middle of a big city with a major port. The modern city isn't just a wasteland of roads and buildings and noise and smells. Nature hangs on and keeps bits beautiful, you just have to know where to look amongst the ugliness of most of man's work.

***

Gallivanting again

I disappeared to my Mother's at the weekend, but fear not, I was writing blog entries in my little black notebook while away.

Before I forget, I should say how much fun I had this morning rearranging my bookshelf.

The first entry from the past then, written on the train to Southampton on Friday afternoon:

***

There was a woman with a tiny little baby (so sweet) and a lad, probably about three years old. The lad took a fancy to one of the baby's toys, which in part consisted of a cute little giraffe. The woman then told the boy that he shouldn't play with it, he is far too old for such things.

What sort of conditioning is that? Telling a child not to play with something because it doesn't fit a preconceived vision of the sort of things three year old boys should enjoy seems wrong.

I suspect if the little one is a girl, she will be expected to play with her little toy oven while changing her dolly's nappy. I shall have to see if the nipper is wearing pink or blue.

***

Note: the little baby was a boy and he was wearing blue.

For your next middle-class Mr Angry ramblings, tune in again later.

Petersen isn't, is he?

Everybody is *dead*, Dave. Not Chen? Gordon Bennett! Yes! Chen, everybody. Everybody's dead, Dave.

Fortunately, Kev Pietersen isn't dead, but according to this BBC cricket report he has picked up a small stress fracture just before the start of the season.

Silly boy. Training on holiday. Fancy wanting to push your body that hard all of the time. It would be like going to gym before a trampolining session. Stupid.

With luck, he will be back for Hampshire for the start of the county season. As it says in the report, Kev, Shane and Simon Katich need to fire for us before they toddle off to play for their countries. Oh well, we shall see.

Unfortunately, I found a dead chaffinch this morning which is most upsetting. They are lovely little birds and a beautiful colour. Another little soul to mourn.

Norfolk County Council have an interesting proposal to consider. Described in this BBC news report, there are proposals to make changes to acceptable language in religious Studies teaching. I shall leave the silly bits of political correctness for your own perusal.

The proposal that caught my eye was this:

The guidelines also suggest teachers avoid terms such as the "body of Christ" and the "blood of Jesus" because Christians are not actually eating flesh and blood.

Now, I seem to remember that one of the main dividing points during the split of Protestantism from the Catholic church was the question of transubstantiation.

This is of course the miracle that occurs during the Catholic mass in which the wine and wafer become the body and blood of Christ.

The spokeswoman on Today this morning said that the wine and wafer are merely a representation of Christ. This is entirely correct from the Protestant point of view.

So does this mean that those making the recommendations are saying that either teaching incorrect facts to children is acceptable, that the Catholic church doesn't actually believe in transubstantiation or that Catholics aren't Christians?

Not so sure why that irritated me so such.

Summer Knocking At The Door

But fortunately not the irritating brat from Neighbour's. Which I am glad to say that I haven't watched for many weeks.

It is a lovely bright sunny day and the weather forecast has suggested that temperatures will soon be on the rise again. Fortunately, this almost managed to coincide perfectly with the start of the domestic cricket season. The usual university warm-up matches have started with no apparent surprises. Ian Blackwell gave Somerset a good start clubbing 191 from 138 against Durham UCCE.

There is no match for Hampshire though. Hopefully, this season should be quite good for Hampshire with a strong squad, international matches coming to the Rose Bowl and a place in First Division of the County Championship. Honours may be wishful thinking, but I think we will do well. I was surprised to see that we have six players from Zimbabwe and South Africa though, presumably under Kolpak or, like Kev Pietersen, naturalised. We have Kev and Shane, wahoo.

Dublin was a great weekend and much fun. The squad did really well in the competition and I was proud of all of them with one exception. That exception clearly being me. My set routine was not as good as it could have been by a long way, although I was happy to have competed my first proper tuck back. My vol went horribly wrong. I was too stiff out of the back drop and flew backwards into the tuck. Well, onto the end deck rather than into the tuck. Oh well, it has driven me to bigger and better things.

I am determined to compete Advanced in Cambridge, and my first session doing straight backs hasn't dimmed either my enthusiasm or confidence in my ability to do so. Straight backs are so much fun. They are physically much more demanding than anything I have done before and I appreciate some of the difficulties felt by people learning them. So much fun though.

Talking of fun, I bought new boots in Dublin, Purple Dr. Martens. They are great. Clearly I had to buy new trousers and a shirt to go with them as nothing I had matched, but you can't complain. Until the credit card bill arrives.

I am off to enjoy the day (and Broadcasting House).

The Adventure Is Over

Dublin was, as ever, great fun and very worthwhile. I shall expound at greater length in a later post.

I have also diagnosed that the problems with the broadband were down to a faulty router, so a new one has been ordered and shall be here tomorrow. In the meantime, I am borrowing my housemate's ADSL modem. Mmm, internet again.

A and I went to the theatre last night to see Hobson's Choice, twas most amusing, and light hearted.

The main point of my post then. After discovering the happy news about baby Kakapos, the BBC told of a report describing the sorry state of primates, with near a quarter of the six hundred or so species nearing extinction. You should read the full BBC report but the part that caught my eye was this:

If you took all the remaining individuals from the 25 primate species on this list and gave them a seat in a football stadium, they'd all fit.

Of course, when you have got over the deep desire never to be stewarding that match, the enormity of it hits you. Twenty five species of our closest relatives cannot muster more than a few thousand individuals between them. Some of the most wonderful animals on the planet, Orang-utans, Gorillas and many more, might just disappear. Humans are worse than rats. At least rats can live side by side with other animals.

(Private joke: at least we have J to keep the Orangs going).

I wonder what football team the different primates support? Ideas on a postcard please.