Jeff,
Just thought I’d let you know I managed to get a day on Dartmoor in the snow. Me and Wack went up to Princetown yesterday and found some snow up at Great Mis tor, though it petered out the further west you went. Bitterly cold up there but bright and quite beautiful. I’ve attached a couple of photos but they were only taken on my phone so there’s no depth of field. The air was clear and you could see some distance but the light had a hue at the edges that happens when the wind comes from the east. All the pollutants from the Eastern European factories I’m afraid. You could see all the Heathrow planes on their way down to Cornwall before turning right over the Atlantic for America. When I was young down in Newquay we used to hear the sonic booms as Concorde powered up once, no longer over land. (I didn’t actually see the plane for another 20 years and then only at a flypast). You can see the trail of a plane going out over Staple tor on one photo and one coming back on another.
see you soon, Alex

Summer in Yorkshire arrived for four days last Easter and then disappeared behind a curtain of rain. All my plans for being outdoors were jettisoned in favour of staying at my desk writing a new book, punctuated only by daily trudges through mud and mulch. I treat these walks as one-man marches conducted to an internal military beat. Sometimes they last for three miles, sometimes six. But I walk everyday. It is the best preparation for writing. It staves off anxiety. Keeps you trim. Makes you engage with the non-digital world. Once a week or so I fall over and in the last twelve months I’ve torn through two pairs of (over-priced / over-rated, brand name) wellies and a new pair of Dr Martens.

But come last June when the evenings were long and even the clouds had wandered elsewhere I accidentally stumbled across a new pursuit: deer spotting. There is no doubt an art to deer-stalking, in which the hunter pursues his quarry over entire days and many miles. But I prefer to deer spot, which is far easier. All you need to know is approximately where deer dwell and once in their vicinity, how to stay downwind. And how to move quietly. The rest is down to luck.

Deer are charismatic, enigmatic. They are the great secret of the British woodlands. Their Sphinx-like faces and ability to disappear at the snap of a twig makes them particularly beguiling. A look from a deer can make you feel privileged, as if you’re privy to a shared moments of recognition that locks you in to something Primordial. When a deer stares you down it is letting you know that you are just a visitor. When it turns a haughty tail it is to remind that you that you are slow , clumsy, heavy-footed, unsubtle, stupid, odourous, obvious, greedy and never to be trusted.

We were lucky. Last June, a fortnight either side of the solstice, when the nights were still and dry and the deer were feeling relaxed enough to come down from the densely wooded valley flanks, me and my girlfriend would head out to the same select areas each night. An open, treeless pasture of farmland where the deer liked to graze without fear of ambush was the best starting point, followed by a higher field not yet mown for its first harvest and above that, the lower reaches of the woods where we knew the deer ascended in the winter months, and where they slept in the summer. The crepuscular post-9pm hour is the best time to track deer, when the fading light plays tricks and all the nocturnal creatures are tentatively peeking from their holes and dens, sets, nests and eyries. Here the edges of earth are softened. Senses are heightened. You think you are doing the watching but really is you that is being watched.

We saw the deer most nights. Three of them. Roe. One was a short-horned buck, another a doe, and with them a strong-looking fawn. They were creatures of habit, and so were we. We learned to turn ourselves into statues whenever they raised a head from the grass. We spotted footprints and tunnel-like hollows disappearing into bracken and bushes. We learned when to keep our distance and just observe.

Sometimes, three or four times a year, the crack of gunshot echoes down the valley. The word is a farmer has a license to shoot deer on his land. He hires someone in from Bradford to do it. It is the worst sound in the world. Other people have spoken of poachers appearing in the dead of night to kill deer and sell their meat on into the food chain. At markets or to restaurants. Venison remains a high-end product.

But despite these threats, some deer still survive. We’ve moved since last summer – only a mile down the road, but it has forced me to shift woodland allegiances. I now wander an even less inhabited place, an overgrown ex quarry that is now fenced off and shut out to the world. Rumours and half-truths about the place abound. The locals do not go there. Signs warn of danger. There is evidence of landslides and antique fly-tipping.

And deer. Three of them. They are healthy, haughty and strong. They rule these woods and are surprised to see a human appear in the depth of winter to scramble up rock falls and surf mud banks when the foot-deep carpet of decaying leaves shift to send him sliding down thirty foot banks.

Here, in this new terrain, there are no open spaces, only hemmed in trees, hollows of old dynamite-blasted earth, steep rock faces and rusted twists of fallen wire fences. At best I get a glimpse of that familiar white rump disappearing as if a magician has just waved a wand. All that’s missing is the puff of smoke. To see them here in January, when the dawns are frosty, the days short and the day-light sent from a pink sun is tightly rationed, feels extra special. A brief glimpse – a suggestion of deer – is enough. Just to know they are out they, wandering the slopes somewhere up the hill behind my house, flourishing despite of rather than because of man, makes me respect them all the more.

Ben Myers, Man of Letters

Words & picture by Charles Rangeley Wilson.

Christmas Eve brought Moby Dick to the coast of North Norfolk: a fifty-five foot sperm whale washed onto the beach within yards of a public car park and access path in Old Hunstanton. The decomposing corpse of Moby – Ahab may have been inside it – soon became a ghoulish tourist attraction. The resort’s cafe’s and restaurants had never known it so busy in mid-winter. The owner of the car park is said to have done rather nicely, and even a Chinese Restaurant miles away on the road north to … “the only east coast resort that faces west” … reported a brisk trade in crispy duck thanks to the presence of a dead whale. It seems that even in the digital age we need our sea monsters.

But what do you do when you go to see a dead whale? Mostly stand in front of it to get your picture taken it seems: men by the jaw (rendered toothless by some local youth who put the whale ivory on ebay and got collared by Old Bill for his efforts), women by the rather large whale penis. “Go on, get closer,” urged boyfriend after boyfriend. Mostly then, north Norfolk was grateful for the delivery, but it couldn’t last. The rotting whale was a health hazard and warnings soon came thick and fast about touching it, going near it without safety equipment, windsurfing or even thinking about eating shellfish. Contractors came and took it away in pieces, hauled into a dumper truck by a long reach digger. Sadly, this bull sperm whale was in no state to ram its assailants. There was no sinking of the Essex in Old Hunstanton. Instead one only wondered if the biomass of the north sea hadn’t been robbed of a few tons of useful protein.

Charles is a guest at the Antidote Alive! event taking place tomorrow night at The Stag public house, Hampstead, London. Advance tickets are on sale HERE priced £5.00 (£7 on the door).

Listen on the iPlayer.

by Danny Adcock.

As I crest the dunes a flock of fieldfares take flight, and lifting from the spiked sea-buckthorn bushes circle back behind me over the golf course. The distant tide is visible, but only just. There’s a stillness to the morning that stretches out across the landscape. The sky and horizon blend in a monochrome grey wash.

These sand dunes mark the point where the cultivation of the land ceases, and the cold harshness of the North Sea begins. At this time of year it can be a very harsh environment: the carcass of a young seal lies empty-eyed amongst the driftwood. When the north wind blows it not only brings piercing temperatures, but many species of rare migrant birds. The Norfolk Ornithologist’s Association has a reserve here, and it is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest as is much of this coastline. This is Holme-Next-The-Sea, at the end of the historic Peddars Way, on the curve of Norfolk coast where the Wash becomes the North Sea. Holme is a small village; at its heart a fifteenth century church, and seventeenth century pub. It has been a destination for travellers far longer than ale has been served behind the bar of The White Horse: the Peddars Way follows the line of a Roman road dating to A.D. 61. It was built following the defeat of Boudicca and intended as an aid to keeping the locals in check. Who’s to say, though, that the Romans didn’t just follow the course of an older track? Ancient Britons were far from being the barbarians that the Roman chroniclers made us out to be, and before the Romans, two thousand years before the Romans, there was something at Holme which Bronze Age people might have travelled a very long way to see.

Leaving the dunes behind and all signs of civilisation are obscured. The golf course that lies between the village and the sea vanishes below the marram grass. It is very apt that all trace of modernity has vanished for before me stretches out an ancient landscape; a landscape that has the footprint of our ancestors etched deep into it. As I leave the high tide mark behind me I’m walking further and further from the present, and into the past.

The sand at the top of the beach gives way to mud and then becomes sand once more. Then, disconcertingly, the sand bank gives way to more compacted sand and there’s a gully running parallel to the shore. When the tide reappears it will fill this gully with water four or five feet deep. The R.N.L.I. has a hovercraft at Old Hunstanton to rescue unwary souls who stray on the sands, and get cut off by the tide.

Shelving gently downwards again, the sand is sculpted and corrugated by the tide. The quietness surrounding me is punctuated by the objections to my presence of the various species of wader which make a living here. Interrupted from their breakfast their frustration is understandable: they have a few hours to feed before the returning sea pushes them off the best feeding grounds.

Further from the shore, I’m approaching a collection of large black masses emerging from the sand. Where they are closer to the land they seem to ease gently from the thousands of years of sediment laid down by countless billions of waves. The further from the beach the harsher their edges become until some are two, or even three, feet high. They stretch along the beach into the distance. Some are higher than others, some are linked together, some stand alone. The beach is pock-marked with them, creating pools that capture the tide, and channels that allow it to escape. The seaward edges are etched sharply upwards, and undercut by the waves’ twice daily compulsion.

A few years ago these peat beds, for that is what they are, were the site of an amazing discovery. From beneath them an extraordinary Bronze Age wooden circle appeared. Not as spectacular as Stonehenge perhaps, but in its own way just as enigmatic, Seahenge, as it became known, emerged into the twentieth century almost unseen. Gradually, with the relentlessness of the tide and the weather, it grew to captivate, to move, and to polarise opinion not only locally, but nationwide. Consisting of fifty-five mud and time-blackened oak stumps arranged circularly around a large upturned root, also of oak, the structure created much controversy between those who wanted to remove and preserve it, and those who wanted it left in-situ. Leaving it would have resulted in its destruction; the exposure to the air, and thousands of organisms that live in this environment, as well as the waves and the weather, meant it was disappearing as soon as it appeared.

Dendrochronological analysis revealed it to be four thousand years old. The technique is so accurate it is able to tell us that, in fact, it was Spring or Summer of the year 2049 B.C. when the one-hundred-and-sixty-seven-year-old oak that formed the centrepiece was felled. Archaeologists worked out a single axe was used to fell this tree, but that up to fifty were used to fell the other trees.

It would have been a very different landscape then: the shoreline was several miles further out, and Seahenge would have stood between the sea and the land. Its purpose remains unclear, but it presumably would have had some sort of ritualistic purpose. The site was discovered to be much larger than originally thought; remains of causeways and further circular structures were revealing themselves, but English Heritage, who did excavate and remove all fifty six timbers of the original circle, decided to leave these to the elements.

Though no trace of Seahenge remains on Holme beach now – it is on display in King’s Lynn museum – the landscape still holds an atmosphere of fascination for me; as I walk across the peat I am walking in the very footsteps of ancient man. The peat still gives up glimpses of the past: timbers are visible all around me. Not being an archaeologist I don’t know whether they are the shards of relatively modern boats, driftwood, or the remains of something far older: a tangible, touchable link to our past.

One in particular catches my attention. Covered in bark as black as ink, it juts about three feet from the peat at a slight angle, and is remarkably similar to the timbers on display in King’s Lynn museum. How deep it is embedded I don’t know, but it is immovable. Was it placed purposely in that position? Is it just a bit of old tree that the tide brought in, and somehow became lodged in the sand and mud at a strange angle? Here and there even tree roots are visible as a remarkable testament to how capable the peat is of preserving these splinters from the past. Fingering the bark I wonder whether ancient fingers didn’t touch this very spot, and whether a family or community stood here to mourn a loved one, or celebrate a harvest.

Mussels lie in huge numbers on the peat beds. The builders of Seahenge would probably have gathered them like I do; a free and delicious source of food. How many generations of these shellfish lie between me and them is quite unfathomable, but though four thousand years is a very long time, we still hold links with our past that prove us to be remarkably similar, in some aspects, to the builders of Seahenge.

The tide is beginning to surge up the beach with surprising speed, and is already engulfing the peat beds that lie furthest from the shore. A flock of snow buntings flit along the tide line as I head back. When I reach the car park a group of twitchers are about to set off the way I have come: four thousand years back in time. I wonder if any of them are aware of the ancientness of the landscape they are about to enter?

I Listen to the Wind That Obliterates My Traces – Music in Vernacular Photographs 1880-1955.
Reviewed by Ian Preece:

I can definitely remember the point, some time in my late twenties/early thirties, when looking back at old family photos suddenly became really sad. 1970s holidays; rainy days in Lincolnshire; caravans and bungalows on the east coast; a day-long game of beach cricket; the wind so strong your nana is sitting in a deckchair wearing a headscarf – even if sunshine is forecast for tomorrow . . . life is all ahead, as opposed to heading downhill . . . These days I even find myself welling up over other people’s old photographs, never more so than when I came across I Listen to the Wind That Obliterates My Traces – Music in Vernacular Photographs 1880-1955 , a terrific collection of mildewed and torn black & white and sepia photographs, bookended by two cds of crackly 78s. The shellac and the photos have both been picked up at yard sales over the years and put together by Steve Roden, a visual and sound artist from Los Angeles, and it’s all published by the ever-reliable Dust to Digital label.

It’s an undeniably melancholic package. The records tend to lonesome hill-billy blues and laments, mournful tales of loss and yearning, of roving gamblers, unfaithful good for nuthin drunks, lost wives and travelling salesmen. There’s the occasional redemptive moment, or peace and freedom finally achieved after a life of toil, beyond the shining river, ‘when they’ve rung the golden bells for you and me’ as sang Alfred G. Karnes in 1928. The same year Frank Ferrara’s Hawaiians were Pinin Hawaii for you (a track which has somehow cemented itself in my head) and three years later the equally mannered Roy Smeck Trio were Reaching for the Moon. When not pining for distant lands or lamenting the loss of a loved one, there was simple downhome bullying and small-town intimidation to deal with. My family are getting a little tired of hearing Gid Tanner and his Skillet Lickers’ (with Riley Puckett) tragic refrain: ‘Every time I come to town you boys go to kickin my dog aroun’ . . . but, well, without wishing to sound like Steve Buscemi in Ghost World, there’s seems something very contemporaneous about the mob picking on a poor guy’s dog. . .

In between the folk skits and tales of woe, Roden has interspersed some fantastic interludes from sound effects of albums of the 1930s: a flock of Canadian geese burst from the speakers; there’s a storm, and what sounds like rainfall but with ‘thunder not from life’, and some lovely clips of walking on snow and ice and ‘thin underbrush’, and wind blowing across a prarie in 1936 . . .Personally, I’m a sucker for muffled vinyl hiss and crackle, and there’s plenty here, as the cds seem to be direct transfers of the old 78s.

The records were probably in a similar state to the photographs. And the photographs are truly something else. Creased, blotchy, mildewed, underdeveloped or overexposed, you can almost smell the mustiness in some of them; some others are simply beautifully reproduced as clear as the day they were taken. Mostly posed for the camera and featuring folks with their instruments, poised for a hoedown, or simply seated on the porch or in the long grass (interspersed with the odd wrecked piano in a field) there’s an overwhelming sense of a simpler, purer way of being that knocks you sideways.

As Steve Roden writes in his introduction to I Listen to the Wind . . . who has not ‘at one time or another sat in the throes of loneliness, melancholy or suffering and held a communion of sorts with a record or two . . . as a group of favourite sounds enter us they move quickly to our souls and our insides are mended a little . . . even if it is only for an evening.’

Listen to Ian’s ‘Third light Home’ radio show HERE

I Listen to the Wind that Obliterates My Traces is published by Dust to Digital

by Becky Stewart.

This year I got my first taste of a truly traditional Thanet Christmas – A Hoodening! An ancient pagan custom marking the winter solstice that dates back many centuries and whose definitive meaning is so lost in time no one will ever know it’s true origin. Many theories abound. Even at the turn of the 19th Century this was a dying custom but luckily, local historian Percy Maylam recorded an in depth study of it in his book The Kent Hooden Horse which has recently been republished after 100 years of it being out of print.

My personal obsession with ‘animal disguise rituals’ started with an accidental late night viewing of The Wicker Man when I was about 10 years old. Apart from the obvious abomination in basketry, the hobby horse – chasing poor Edward Woodward through the twisty lanes snapping its jaws, terrified me. I’m not sure why ‘disguised’ as an animal – especially one so roughly hewn and unrealistic – is quite so alarming. But I do know I’m not the only one that finds them downright sinister.

There are many ancient British customs involving a human dressed as a horse, the most famous being the Padstow Obby Oss but the ‘Hooden Horse’ is of a particular design and was confined to East Kent only. The head is carved from wood and is adorned with bells and rosettes to signify he is ‘the best horse’. The mouth is opened and closed with a string making a loud crack as the hobnails that comprise its teeth are snapped together. The head is on a wooden pole, which is held on to and moved around by the occupant to surprisingly unnerving effect. The covering is made of an old hop sack.

I’d never heard of this custom till moving to the area and then it was only by online browsing of books on local history that I came across it. I was most excited to see that one group do still perform every year around Christmas with their horse ‘Dobbin’, thought to be over 200 years old. Apart from a sabbatical from the 1930s to the mid 60s, he’s been gainfully employed the whole time. Terrorising the local community – mostly in Thanet pubs, farms and ‘big houses’ – around Christmas time. He can be seen in the pictures included in Maylam’s book in his middle years. There are apparently a lot of these ‘poor old horses’ as they’re sometimes known still around but mostly residing in museums and even then rarely on display.

And so to The East Kent Hoodeners who are a group from St Nicholas at Wade, a tiny farming village in Thanet. Including Dobbin, the cast has 6 characters – Waggoner Bill who wears a top hat, carries a whip and keeps the others in line, Mollie – A middle aged woman played by a man who carries a broom, Sam the farm labourer, lazy mean and smelly, Boy – young and reckless, tries to ride the horse sometimes with little success and the Musician,
George. He plays the fiddle for the musical finale and wears a bizarre suit made of old floral curtains. All costumes are authentic as worn in Victorian times as early photos indicate. The play, is told in rhyming verse and though basically the same recurring themes of death and resurrection (within the context of a group of 19th Century farm workers), are played out each year, a new play is written to include topical jokes from the past years events, both local and national. This along with absurd cross dressing, heaps of innuendo and so on. Very funny and very British. Typical panto fayre done in a somewhat under rehearsed fashion which all adds to the charm. Especially after a few ales! Even jokes about Benton and Polarbeargate made it in there this year.

Back in the day these roles were played by real farm workers. With little to do in the winter months, entertaining the locals with their performances was a great way to raise money for themselves. Sometimes the horse did get a bit out of line though. I believe this tradition is still banned in Broadstairs where in early Victorian times one young woman actually died of fright when ‘surprised’ by the Horse. Another naughty horse ventured into a kitchen there and snatched a bag of spice from a woman’s hand! The current troupe is an amiable and far more well behaved bunch and they raise money for a chosen charity each year.

Slightly disturbing but all the more fun for it, this is one custom that I hope never disappears completely. Ideally I’d like to see more of these horses come out of retirement and roam the mean streets of Thanet once again. It’s a fascinating tradition and something East Kent should be proud of yet sadly – does nothing to promote. However, right now there is a small exhibition of East Kent customs in the Margate Museum, which includes Hoodening and Wassailing and is on till February. (Run by volunteers so only open on Saturdays). Dobbin and the boys will be back to entertain anyone prepared to offer them free beer come December.

For more information, historical facts and photos, please check out Ben Jones’ (aka George the Musician) wonderful website.

The BFI DVD, Here’s A Health To The Barley Mow: A Century of Folk Customs & Ancient Rural Games
, is on sale in our shop, priced £15.99

A tribute from Emma Montagu.

I’ve always loved Windmills. I remember the Thornton windmill, near Blackpool, from when I was 3 or 4. It sat back from the high street unloved, dirty and forgotten about. Fenced off. When we went back last year it had been ‘restored’ by building a shopping centre round it and scrubbing all the charm away from it.

I’m a terrible romantic and I think they appeal to my imagination of what the country was like before the industrial revolution. You know, when skill and craft actually meant something. Or maybe it’s from watching too many episodes of Trumpton and Windy Miller. I don’t know.

I first came across George Green when I was a maths undergraduate. He was an 18th century miller from Nottingham and in his spare time did mathematics. He gave his name to something called a Green’s function. They seemed very odd and esoteric and I could never quite get the hang of them. Later on when I did my PhD I studied them further and as I started to understand them I started to appreciate the beauty of them. I also read about the life of George Green and very quickly he became my hero and to this day remains my hero.

He did his maths by sitting on the top floor of his windmill in quite moments. I have this romantic picture of him in his windmill late at night in the midst of a storm. The windmill and sails have been shut-up tight to protect them from the storm and he’s sitting on the grain strewn floor writing out his calculation by candlelight.

It is a mystery how he learnt all this. There was no one in Nottingham who knew any real maths, let alone maths at the high level George was doing it. It would take years and years of careful self-study to reach the level of mathematical knowledge required to do the cutting-edge work that George did. He was a member of ‘Nottingham Subscription Library’ – an institution that still exists – so maybe the books came from there. We don’t know.

In 1828 he printed a pamphlet containing what is now regarded as one of the fundamental results in physics. It was mostly bought by his friends in Nottingham out of kindness. It’s unlikely anyone understood it.

One of the areas he looked at was waves in canals. So how does that tie in with Quantum Physics? Well the physics is different but the underlying maths is the same. Instead of looking at water waves in a canal you consider the ‘wavefunction’ of sub-atomic particles.

I’ll let you into a little secret you don’t actually need to know any physics to do quantum physics. Indeed the pioneers of quantum physics in the 1900′s didn’t actually know how to physically interpret the wavefunction. It was 20 years before anyone realised that the wavefunction represents the probability of finding the particle at a given place at a given time.

Going back to the canal: suppose you consider a canal boat and you want to find out the wake it produces in the canal. You could just observe a canal boat and see what happens. But suppose you can’t or you don’t want to. Maybe you’re trying to design a new type of canal boat or a new type of canal. Or suppose you’re not actually looking at waves in canals but wavefunctions of sub-atomic particles. In either case you need an abstract model of the physics involved.

Metaphorically you can think of the abstract model as being like a “black box”. You guess at what the wave produced by the canal boat looks like and you feed this guess into the “black box”. If you guessed right a little flag pops up. Unfortunately, the chances are you guessed wrong. You could just keep going by trial and error hoping to find the right answer.

What George Green did wave to have a brilliant flash of insight and realise that all the waves have a certain underlying structure. The number of possible waves you have to look at is then dramatically reduced. What’s more he also devised a systematic way of calculating which one of the remaining possible wave is the right one. This might not sound that impressive until you remember that one way or another all known matter in the universe is made up of wave-like entities.

For all this work George Green only started to get any recognition towards the very end of his life. He died in 1841 and it was a further 10 years before the magnitude of his discoveries was recognised. The only obituary he received was a brief mention in a Nottingham newspaper.

A plaque is dedicated to him in Westminster abbey in the nave between the graves of Issac Newton and Lord Kelvin. His windmill still stands and was restored in 1986.

From Kenython to Kathmandu:

I wake to dawn over the Admiral Emirates. A fat orange sun hangs over a sea of sand that’s been tortured; it’s been piled up and dug away, scraped and shaped and squared off. Roads and canals slice through it and fences try to divide it. In every direction diggers and cranes scatter the sand-scape relentlessly trying to tame it, but failing. Sand is everywhere, including the runway.

6:30am and the heat hits me in the face as I step off the plane. Sand and dust obscure the horizon, blending land with sky. Abu Dhabi is a strange sandy place, it dulls everything, including the ugly new buildings. The desert is reclaiming this place. The place looks temporary.

4 drawn-out hours nursing red raw sunken eyes and contemplating the pros and cons of drinking a coffee, before squeezing into another small plane and trying to decide which curry I want for breakfast.

The plane finally descends into Kathmandu valley, leaving the sunlit clarity of the cloud-top views, and the brief glimpses of North Indian canals; and points towards the towering monsoon clouds gathering up front. They darken in colour as we approach, and the turbulence increases, until we finally disappear into the thick dirty haze; streaking the windows with dusty rain.

The plane drops out into a surreal looking place. The foothills of the Himalayas are back-lit from the sinking sun and covered in deep green vegetation. Tiny one story tin shacks dot the landscape all of equal size and shape; and every now and then bizarre looking buildings protrude from the tree tops. Tall blocky concrete structures that look as though they were once part of a huge terrace that disappeared, dwarf the smaller tin shacks.

The forest comes to an abrupt halt and is replaced by paddy fields, grown right up and around the weird concrete buildings, which begin to cluster as Kathmandu approaches (but in no apparent order or symmetry). As we decrease in altitude the sinking sun illuminates the buildings from the side, enhancing the contrast of their random designs and multi-coloured paint-jobs. They look like Lego.

Getting a Visa takes ages in the small overstaffed empty airport. So sweaty. I realize I’ve landed in a developing country as soon as I enter the toilets – flies, over-flowing urinals, no taps and an over-powering stench of old urine.

All the other passengers are Nepalese migrant workers returning from Abu Dhabi.

I’m picked up at the airport by a WWF driver holding a piece of paper with my name on it and a picture of a panda, plus a beggar (I take to be a member of staff) determined on shaking my hand and extracting some rupees.

The drive to Bijan Gurung’s is an assault on my sleep deprived brain; but seriously entertaining. 4-5-6-7 lane traffic tackle a barely 2 lane strip of tarmac that overflows on either side with people. It takes a while to realize that the drivers are mainly trying to keep to the left. Suicidal cyclists, mopeds, bikes, walkers, cattle, goats, beggars, carts, kids walking back from school, old men and women, impotent traffic police,and monkeys fill the tarmac, while everyone leans on their horns and does what they want.

The air is thick enough to see and taste – burning my lungs and stinging my eyes. Every building seems to be simultaneously being built and taken down, whilst managing to look derelict despite the huge numbers of people that spill out onto the street from every door and window.

People are everywhere.

Pockets of forest explode between the buildings. Huge birds of prey circle the rubbish tips, whilst cows chomp their way through it.

Everyone is selling something.

It’s the beginning of Tij – a three day ‘womens festival’. Women are dressed in red sari’s everywhere, it’s the build-up to a day of feasting, dancing and singing, followed by a day of fasting and washing themselves of their sins (having a good time and leaving their husbands at home). “It’s because it’s the third day of a new moon” my silent driver briefly informs me.

Roasting, boiling, frying, eating, calving, chipping, painting, building, demolishing, singing, dancing, sitting, contemplating, staring, frowning, smiling people everywhere. The smell of frying onions and spices, battles with the smog.

I see one other white westerner on the whole trip; a scared looking backpacker wedged at the back of a seriously over stuffed blue bus.

Chickens are everywhere. Old women with impressively wrinkled faces sweep the streets with clumps of dry grass. So sweaty.

Bijan is a smiling friendly person from Pokhara who (slightly apologetically) shows me where I’m going to be staying for the next three months.

A faded pink 3m x 3m room with strips of old carpet on the floor, stained with suspicious brown watermarks. In one corner there’s a thin single mattress and in the other is a huge metal wardrobe/safe thing that smells of moth balls. There’s also a tiny computer desk and chair, and some nice polyester curtains covered in poppies.

The windows are open (the first time for over a year apparently), but I’m told I should shut them as quickly as possible so no one steals anything. The windows are covered by metal bars and wire mosquito netting.

The kitchen is tiny, but the fridge is huge – sat right in the middle taking up most of the space. The surfaces and floor are covered in various plastic and terracotta bowls and containers with nothing in them. A small table holds a bowl with four packets of instant noodles and a packed of McVities, whilst the fridge holds half a block of old processed Swiss cheese and a bottle of soy sauce. Bijan has studied in Geneva and Tokyo.

There’s a camping stove linked to a huge gas bottle, and on top sits a potato stuck with a few old birthday candles and a stick of incense. The windows are covered by layers of faded curtains and worn-out towels, giving it a gloomy cave-like feel.
Between my room and the kitchen is the bathroom. To get in you have to squeeze past another gas bottle, which provides hot water for the shower in the winter (end of Dec beginning of Jan only).

If you wanted you could sit on the toilet, have a wash and use the sink at the same time, whilst smiling at the faces watching you through the gauze covered window.

Bijan’s room is the same as mine, but with a double bed in it, and opposite is the sitting room containing a huge monster of a TV, an old duvet and, a ridiculous tangle of wires (one of which has internet coming out of it). There’s also a large water-cooler style water bottle with a jug next to it for drinking.

Should do the job.

Bijan takes me for dinner. A night time walk through dark winding backstreets passing packs of stray dogs, groups of people listening to radio and open-fronted cave-like shops, whilst avoiding the motorbikes, cars, taxis, dog shit and open drains/sewers that appear out of the blackness.

Daal bhaat and roti.

Tomorrow there’s a strike (bandh) – not good – and my camera has fogged up in the humidity. I’m also meeting the famous Tariq Aziz.

I hang my mosquito net up and give sleeping ago in the sweaty humidity of my first night in Nepal. Crickets, car horns, and barking dogs; I haven’t slept for 49 hours.

Seth’s blog.

Sound recordist Tom Lawrence captures the underwater sounds of Pollardstown Fen in Ireland. Writer and narrator Paul Evans joins Tom for a journey into the Fen to hear these sounds for himself. The programme was produced by Sarah Blunt for the BBC Natural History department.

First broadcast today on BBC Radio 4 and now on the iPlayer.

Press Release:
For over a year, sound recordist Tom Lawrence has been capturing the sounds of Pollardstown Fen in Ireland. These are no ordinary sounds, but the sounds of a hidden world; an underwater world, where an orchestra of creatures create an extraordinary and vibrant music. Above the water’s surface, grasshoppers and crickets stridulate; that is, they rub one part of their body across another to produce ‘those fiddling tunes so evocative of summer’. Below the surface, something similar happens as water beetles, water scorpions, great diving beetles, water boatmen and lesser water boatmen and hundreds of other species produce sounds day and night at over 2Khz, reaching 99 decibels in some cases – the equivalent of sitting in the front row of an orchestra “Tapping, knocking, hammering, drumming, clicking, creaking, cracking, croaking, buzzing, fuzzing, bleeping, winding, reeling, revving, puttering, pattering, humming, pulsing, squealing, shrieking…. the insects reveal themselves”. Writer and narrator Paul Evans meets Tom Lawrence and takes a journey into the Fen to hear these sounds for himself. Tom leads the way. His friend, Jim Schofield joins them, bringing with him a boat (an inflatable boat that they first have to pump up), and then the three men ‘wobble’ along reed-lined drains into the Fen. It’s a journey of revelations; not only does Paul encounter the underwater orchestra, but also Old Ireland and with it a magical adventure; They find a snake, haul up a bag of treasure, climb the steps of a Famine Tower, experience vertigo as they stand with their heads in the clouds high above the quarried land, watch Peregrines swipe through the air like sharp knives, and learn the story of a hanged man, his lost love and a vixen who wanders amongst the reeds, her piercing cry echoing through the darkness.