Flying Hither and Thither

 

For once, it wasn’t my own travel that inspired this, though there’s a bit of that later on. I’ve previously mentioned the strange disaster that has struck my pond, in which all my fish either died simultaneously of some mysterious disease, or, much more likely to judge by the gory evidence left around were eaten by a predator of some sort, almost certainly an otter.  A few days ago, nevertheless I had a couple of visitors who gave me quite a shock when I heard their quacks. It was a a pair of mallard ducks, very possibly the same pair who attempted to move in last year and did at least effect an entry.

Since then the pond has been netted (against otters !) and this obviously completely discombobulated the female mallard.

She sat on a rock wistfully surveying her possible home in the most disconsolate way, while her mate with an obviously more realistic frame of mind sat on a nearby tree, clearly anxious, to judge by the quacks, to be off to the next possible site. Why my little pond should be so attractive when there is a canal running through the village and two quite big lakes in All Cannings a couple of miles away, I can’t imagine. But so it is. And you don't expect mallards to be in trees either.

There’s obviously something else that's strange going on as well. For soon after I noticed (the remains of ?) a small bird nest, complete with egg on the outside sill of our kitchen window. What it was doing there again a complete mystery. There is a bat-box tucked up underneath the thatch that blue-tits sometimes have a go at, but it only has a narrow slit in it – too narrow I would have thought for this to have fallen through, although it remains the most likely explanation.

Other visitors are much less welcome. I had proof positive that the bluebell destroyer was indeed a Muntjac deer, as one ran past me hen I was out in the wooded area, going like the clappers, but, curiously running in circles, hopefully in a panic that might dissuade it from coming back. Regardless I am now erecting defences to my Broad Beans against the wretched thing.

I had a lecture at the Museum in Devizes, listening to it rather than giving it, that is. It was on graffiti in the now abandoned Church in the old village of Imber in the middle of Salisbury plain which was closed down ion the war to allow more extensive wartime training. Graffiti are scratch marks in the stonework, which are sometimes quite extensive, but which all too often are now only very faintly visible to the naked eye. They become dramatically more visible when you deploy the right techniques and technology  which of course they did. I say 'they' because actually this was largely a group meeting of graffiti hunters. The lecturer obviously knew half the audience and freely admitted that this was a lecture by a nerd to a lot of other nerds, but it was fascinating all them same both for the event and its contents.  And certainly made a change from my other preoccupations.

Otherwise things have been quite quiet, apart from the very unsettled weather, but I have been beavering away finally getting the Annex finished – that flood put my plans back by at least two weeks, and I still haven’t quite finished it, preparing for the oncoming hordes for Easter and generally preparing for what looks like a very busy May and June when I will also by flying about hither and thither, quacking faintly !

Salvage: the name of the game

 

Because the diet isn’t going very well, I have thought to help it along by strolling about the garden a bit more than I usually do, so this morning off I went, quite early before breakfast. The waters have receded and its all much dryer now, but in one of the stretches of soft mud I spotted what looked like little hoof marks. Muntjac deer ! And yes indeed, so it was. My much anticipated and expanding bluebell patch had been devastated by the little beasts, so I can’t expect much joy there this spring. But all the same, because they now don’t show up very well, and the sad remnants could easily get mown over by mistake, I have now fenced them off with sticks and string.

          The same sort of salvaging operation is going on with the recently flooded granny annex. It’s now been more or less dried out, new carpets and lino/vinyl put down and the paintwork restored where necessary. The furniture is all back inside but needs some repair and attention before being put into its rightful place. This all takes time at the expense of other things of course. 

        One of the sad casualties was the flooding of a big trunk that held a lot of Cherry’s scrapbooks. She used to be an assiduous collector of mementos of our doings for the better part of 50 years. All manner of things were collected, theatre programmes, postcards, naval visit memorabilia, photos galore, records of the kids, houses we visited, trips we took , menus, admission tickets,family events – hatches, matches and despatches as they say. Most were dated and commented on in her own inimitable style and hand-writing etc etc. Unfortunately around 20 of them were completely soaked inside the trunk. I never realised how difficult it is to dry such things out. They have been perched on and around my hot-water boiler and wood-burner for weeks now, but, though dry at long last, have been ruined by both the wetting and the recovery process. All I can do is rescue and record what I can, but it can’t be much as so much of their contents have irremediably stuck together. Nor can I deny that the process has not added to the elegant ambience of my living room. However there are at least another 80 scrapbooks  (!)  that either escaped major damage or weren’t over in the annexe to start with. So all is not lost - and there's my diaries too !

While on this depressing note, Nathan and I have been gloomily inspecting the pond, and we’re now pretty sure that all the fish have gone, Hitler, Poirot, the bottom prowlers and all the rest of them, some of which have been there for years and years. A first thought was that it could have been one of those mysterious air-borne fish diseases that sometimes in some weird way kill the fish, but these usually apply only to particular species, not all types. A couple of months ago, I found two half eaten corpses on the pond shore-line so to speak. It couldn’t have been herons as the whole pond is very securely netted. A farmyard cat perhaps, but that didn’t seem at all likely. We concluded that it must have been an otter from the canal half a mile away making a series of night-time visits and cleaning the pond out completely, even the little babies. But we still can’t work out how it got under the netting. A response plan is on-going.

Changing gear of course, but responses was also the theme of a talk I did for the restoration of the Church clock at Maiden Bradley, although in this case it was in regard to the desperate situation in the Gaza/Red Sea and Ukraine wars. This was a requested follow-up to a talk I also gave there a year ago just on the Ukraine war. Frankly I was surprised at the level of interest, especially at the cost of £ 12.50 a head and how very bleak, depressing and well-reported the subject. Obviously the focus was on what caused these conflicts, why are they turning out the way they are and what if anything can/should we the West do about it. I showed the punters a series of pictures and maps for just over half an hour and it was question and answer thereafter. We started at 1930 and ended at 2200, with a raffle at the end of course, this being a fund-raising event. £700 for the Church clock plus an indeterminate amount raked off by gimlet eyed the Village hall committee – not bad at all, and in a strange way quite stimulating although the subject itself was grim.

So, perhaps there is a brighter side to things. One of them for me was attending my elder son’s 13^th birthday. He was a Leap year baby so you can ‘do the math’ as the Americans say. It was a very happy occasion with the entire dynasty assembled at the Cross-in-Hand, Sussex, venue. I totally enjoyed the whole weekend, as did we all, though in my case it didn’t do the diet much good.

Which gets me back to the garden walk, Fortunately Muntjac  don’t seem to like daffodils or tulips which all seem fine except for being a little windblown. And there was even a new, surprise little ? narcissus ?, in the dried out stream bed that used to be a path through the woodland area.

Maybe there’s hope yet. Alternatively the moral is that I should instead make my daily constitutional down to the canal, either to locate and speak sternly to the otter, or to take note of the fact that at last we’ve seen the sun and Spring is coming.