Support Your Local River – Wandle Clean-Up, Tomorrow.
For those of you in London and the south east;
map of the assembly point which is on the Wandle trail opposite the cul de sac on Waterside Way.
This cleanup brings us back to Plough Lane, SW17, to tackle another 50m of river downstream from where we got in at our December cleanup: the river at this point has so much rubbish in it that to break the back of the problem, we need to visit it more than once a year! more info at the Wandle Trust website
take your Mum.
The Bird Effect Diaries
12 March 2010 // The Bird Effect
The diary of the making of a film. and an on going fascination with birds and their accompanying cast of human characters. By Ceri Levy. Read previous entries, starting here.
Isles of Scilly – part 3, continued.
Sunday October 11th
We’re off to Aggie again to continue the job we had curtailed the day before. Great start to the day, as the one of the boatman who helps everyone onto the boat, is one of the bad dancers from the night before. “Last Night” runs through my head and I would love to sing it to him. He squints at me and I say, “Good night, wasn’t it!” He squints a little more, perhaps wondering what I remember that he doesn’t, breathes in deeply, and grunts in agreement. At least he doesn’t have to pilot the boat, thankfully for us.
St Agnes is a lot of people’s favourite island. I love this place as it has so much varied habitat and is bewitchingly beautiful. Birders and tourists alike are drawn to it. Also, a lot of rare birds do turn up here so it is always worth a bird trip.
On our walk round the island we bump into Jeremy Mynott, the author of Birdscapes, one of my previous books of the month on CBTR. Jeremy is a seasoned Scilly vet, and I love his attitude regarding birding here. From what I can gather as I talk to him, he is happy to be on these mesmerising isles, even with not so many birds about, as he enjoys Scilly for the place itself as much as anyone I know. I get the feeling that Jeremy has been around the bird block and is not easily fazed or upset by this lack of birds, although some feathered arrivals would be most welcome. This is in direct contrast to so many other birders I chat to who moan and curse the rotten good weather and lack of bird stimulation and who are unable to step back and enjoy the extraordinary beauty of their surroundings. I know that, happily, I will never get to this state of bird anxiety. (more…)
Pint by the River – Hog’s Back Brewery TEA 4.2%
11 March 2010 // Pint by the River
Last year, Jeff, Andrew and myself sat out on the back stoop of the Dove doing our usual thing – drinking a few pints of foaming nut brown ale while concocting plans of what we could or should attempt next. We’ve always liked talking about beer. Liked drinking it a bit more than that if truth be told. So we thought we’d start a CBTR beer section. An ongoing conversation about ale, if you will. Hopefully it’ll be sporadic yet seasonal, informative yet slightly sozzled. It’ll be a bit like that conversation we had that day in fact.
Hog’s Back Brewery TEA 4.2% by Ben McCormick
To paraphrase record-breaking and controversial cyclist Lance Armstrong, it’s not about the beer. Not always, anyway, and certainly not in this instance. Glowing like a welcome campfire in the cold, harsh forest of Southwark, The Lord Clyde is a pub of such undeniable charm and good nature that I’ve never seen fit to question its rather unimaginitive selection of beers. That there are always five on offer and all excellently kept seems more important and is highly appropriate for an inn that gets all the basics absolutely right.
Housed on one of the shortest streets in London, it’s the pub I always want to spend the longest time in. And with good reason. (more…)
The End is Nigh
The Dorset Stour, Throop. 7am, Friday the 5th of March. Pic by Steve Phillips.
On what was likely to be our last days fishing of the season Steve and I visited the Dorset Stour and fished beat two of Throop. Arriving on the afternoon of the 2nd we listened on as men dressed as trees (a copse of anglers?) told tales of woe; ” A difficult season, a terrible winter, what rain!, nothing out for days”. If you are a regular angler, you will know the story. When you are this close to March the 14th, the end is nigh and the panic has set in. And, no matter how cool Steve and I are trying to be, we desperately want to catch a fish. (more…)
Birdstuff
The response to David Sheppard’s article on the Music & Migration compilation has been phenomenal, resulting in an instant sell out of the CDs from our shop. The time that it took for us to re-stock may have resulted in a short delay in delivery so apologies to anyone who had a wait. We have a few copies left and once they are gone, that’s it. All gone.
To be honest, we have been overwhelmed at the popularity of all things ‘bird’ of late. I think it started back in August with Ceri Levy’s ‘Bird Effect Diaries’. The idea to keep these diaries on CBTR came about not because Andrew, Robin and I are keen birders – we’re not – but simply because we liked Ceri’s ideas and his enthusiasm and because he makes us laugh. I mean, this ‘Bird Effect’ film was originally going to be a gentle, but satirical, look at birding etc but two weeks in and it was “one of us, one of us”. Now, with a fresh pair of eyes and a real passion, he is coming up with ideas that, I think, are going to make a real difference in helping raise awareness of the great difficulties birds are facing in the world right now. He has certainly got me paying more attention, not just to what I see (and hear) around me but also to the bigger picture. (more…)
Country Bizarre Issue 7
9 March 2010 // Country Bizarre
Spring ‘72
Among the features in this issue; Keeping Bees….Stars in Spring…Organic Gardening….A Guide to Wild Eating….Hedgerows…..
Country Bizarre, Issue 7. Click HERE to view and download.
Click HERE for the Country Bizarre story.
About that Blog.
from Nick Small;
“I’m not really one for finding and reading Blogs, but I happened upon one last week, that of a Fenlander turned Laplander. Hell, here was a man launching himself into a life that most would find intolerable, but that I covet. The entries regarding the trip out to his cabin in temperatures around 30 degrees below, just to sleep and battle with the elements, are about as bonkers as it gets (native Samis would chortle). But to me, it’s the same instinct at work that takes a 10 year old off into the local woods with his mates and some fruit malt, to make a den and lie in the leaf litter pretending to be at one with nature. Fantastic stuff. Perhaps though, I’ll follow his progress, living the dream vicariously, before I go dragging the whole family out there permanently.”
The Bird Effect Diaries
5 March 2010 // The Bird Effect
The diary of the making of a film. and an on going fascination with birds and their accompanying cast of human characters. By Ceri Levy. Read previous entries, starting here.
Isles Of Scilly – Part 3.
Saturday October 10th
Off we go to Aggie for the Pipit. Sure enough, in the meantime, as predicted, someone on St Agnes has indeed declared the bird to be a Blyth’s Pipit. We get off the boat and race round to Beady Pool at the bottom of Wingletang Down, where the bird is happily wandering and feeding out in the open, allowing easy views for all and immediately there is a murmur that someone would have to be a fool to think it is a Blyth’s. Jim takes 305 photos of the bird and everyone readily agrees after a considerable study period that it is a Tawny Pipit after all. It’s still a pretty good bird to see and I’m happy seeing anything really.
Below is a photo of everyone watching the bird apart from one lone birder on the right of picture who decides to look the other way. He must have known something…
(more…)
A Redwing Winter
by Phil Thornton
They came one morning
A few days after the snow
And perched on next door’s tree
Whose branches hung over the fence
We didn’t recognise them
This alien flock with immigrant songs
As they flew from tree and tree
Yet all pointing in the same direction
As if awaiting a signal of some kind
A kind of thrush perhaps
Yet none we’d ever seen before
Fat as magpies yet splashed
With red and white on the wing
On the head, mottled breast
We got the books out, googled them
No luck but described them to Margaret
Who instantly named this mysterious breed
They stayed for a couple of days
Made their home in our gardens
A stopping point, a staging post
En route to some warmer destination
Blown off course or simply lost?
The snow fell heavily that winter
It took us and the redwings by surprise
How Far To The Horizon
by Ted Kessler.
Ted Kessler is a friend of ours but you wouldn’t call him a friend of the river. He’s a boy of the city. Well dressed, well groomed and well with it. He will never hold a fishing rod (but if he did, you can be assured it would be of the finest tonkin). He’s Nik Cohn, not split cane. But Ted has been with us from the start. Behind the scenes and at the bar, with well timed words of encouragement and always there to help when I’m out of my depth in the writing department.
This isn’t the first time Ted has graced our pages (you can read his previous HERE) but today is special. From today, we get him monthly (JB)
Towards the end of 2009, Jeff Barrett generously asked if I’d write a diary for CBTR in 2010. All right, I said, I’ll write one for you every month. And here we are, right on track, as February is sucked from under us by the swell of March…
OK. Let’s do it. Diary entry number one. Right here, on the internet. Is that a good idea? Or a bad one? And what would you like to know about in detail, dear diary? The awkward divorce? The girlfriend’s struggle to recover from meningitis? My routine at the gym? I think not. Let’s keep those items in-house for now.
But what’s left? What do I actually do that’s worth relating? The question hangs miserably in the air. In 2000, I was sent by my then employers, NME, to interview Paul Weller. Weller provided one quote that afternoon that haunts me with each passing day and that looms especially large whenever I attempt to fill in a blank brief such as this.
I asked Weller what he did with his life outside of his day-job, what was he into? He looked forlornly at his tea. “I’m still only into the same things that I was into when I was 15,” he said, shrugging. “Music. Clothes. Girls. And wanking, though I don’t get enough time for the wanking. Nothing else seems to matter apart from those things.”
And as I write this diary entry and reflect upon what’s interested me these past six or seven weeks, it is with some shame that I echo Weller’s comments. I’m now the same age that Weller was when he made those remarks, and what am I into? I’m into music, I’m into clothes. I have a girlfriend, and an ex-wife, which means I must be “into” girls too. From time to time, I go to the cinema. I invest money supporting a football team, but I’m not entirely sure whether the emotion enveloping me is hate or love. Beyond that, however, the mental landscape is barren apart from the occasional mirage of a book or a television series, perhaps a quarterly vacation, and newsprint. In truth, the subjects that occupy my mind are those that did so with the same demented intensity as when I was 15 years old: Music. Football. Clothes. Girls. (The order rotates depending on the emotional fixtures list). Totally retarded, yes, but I’m comfortable as such. I am what I am, after all, Olive. (more…)
Caught by the River