’96 cans of beer, or 3 dead otters.’
This was Jana’s response when I asked how much the big cool-box held. But before you get on the blower to the RSPCA, let me add that part of her work supports a research programme about otters, which involves the collection and study of otter-corpses. Makes sense, of course, to cool them: minimise whiff, preserve the maximum amount of information… Still. I was kinda glad we were using a different cool-box for our trip. (Plus: (more…)
“10.30 Andy climbing wall.” Not an entry I ever expected to see in my diary.
For weeks now, being in the Cumbrian countryside has been like walking through a 70s Flake ad, only with no innuendo and barely enough chocolate. The meadows are extraordinary this year. I’ve never seen so many buttercups, such clover and poppies, never mind the numberless others I can’t name; and I can’t remember seeing a farmer, one man, mowing a meadow (sorry) for hay, so early. But on this hot Bank Holiday Monday the freshly-cut fields were corduroy-striped with 
You know that thing where you blithely promise something, knowing it is safely far enough in the future not to feel real, and may perhaps not even happen anyway? Well, here I am, having promised to help my goddaughter’s sister raise some money, and now finding myself with a definite date when I’m going to be doing so. Buying from her stall at the church fair? Yes, done that. Abseiling from the church tower… no. Not so much. And yet, it is happening. And it’s happening next month.
Like Bach, wild swimming and my sister’s home-made blue cheese and mushroom pizza, spring soon exhausts my superlatives, so I’ll simply go with Hopkins and say that ‘Nothing is so beautiful as spring’. On a day like this, who could possibly disagree?