The thief of legs

Something terrible is happening in Torquay. There's a very impressive thief about. The first thing I saw was this:

How terrible, thought I. How could someone just go up to someone's house and steal their window? And I mean that literally as well as rhetorically. You'd have thought the occupant would have woken up. It isn't easy to remove windows, especially silently. Not only that but I expect it got quite drafty for the poor victim. But as if that weren't bad enough, look what happened next!

It's not bad enough that he's going around stealing people's windows, he's also stealing legs! Maybe he needed the sharpened window to cut them off. These poor gulls aren't going anywhere soon unless they can find friends to roll them, or unless they become birdsnakes.

That's right.

Birdsnakes.

Fear them.

(alternate school of thought: someone is going around just stealing windows, and in completely unrelated news birds have learned to swim safely on invisible floors of lava)

The Knot-Master

Last night, feeling a headache coming on, I drank two bottles of water immediately before going to bed. It seemed like a good idea at the time (somehow). Of course, I woke up in the middle of the night with a desperate need for a toilet. It began very well. I flung myself out of bed, did not trip over any of the many hazards that occupy my floor (cat, shoes, this odd little raised bit, a rug that's been trying to kill me for many years but I keep it because I love it anyway), grabbed a torch so as not to wake my severely insomniac family by flicking lights on, did not fall down the stairs and die, avoided the other cat, slipped into not a single puddle of invisible lava and reached the bathroom.

That's where it all started to go wrong.

You'd have thought I'd be home free by then, but no. No, no, no. See, my grandmother believes me to be two clothes sizes bigger than I am, and consequently I had had to knot the drawstring of the pyjama pants she had bought me. When I went to bed, the knot had looked like this:

When I reached the bathroom, the knot looked like this:

I apologise for the lack of actual photos but my presence of mind at the time was not magnificent. I'm not even sure how there was that much drawstring. I feel certain somebody did this to me in my sleep. At any rate, the point is that out of a sheer pressing necessity I managed to undo this tangled monstrosity in about 3.5 seconds, despite these factors:

• Darkness
• Urgency
• Hand injury
• Seriously, that was a big knot
• Like, this big.

Which makes me wonder, have I always had this ability? I do have a lot of patience, but that was not a time for patience. Normally when I wish to untie a knot like that it takes me a very long time. Has the ability to swiftly untie knots always been there, dormant within me? Or is this just a part of that long-acknowledged fact that we always get better at things when we really have to do them? I wonder if evolution plays any part in this at all. Is there something buried deep in our primal genes that allows us to gain fast, incredible talents in our moments of need? After all, you run a lot faster when you're being chased by a lion than you do if you're just at the gym, and I've seen people running after busses at bordering on light speed. It's impressive to watch. Maybe if we were all put into urgent situations we'd discover mighty hidden talents. Not that untying knots is likely to contribute hugely to society, and I can't think of an ethically plausable situation in which someone could discover that they play piano beautifully, but we all learn something about ourselves in a crisis.

Long time no lava

I went away for five days, then I'll be honest. I was just being lazy. That's seven days worth of posts that I've missed. So to make up for it, you get seven days worth of posts today. And, since I forgot my camera and I went to Cardiff and I hate using stock photos, I'll just be going through all my archives and pulling up a few pictures that I think are interesting. After careful deliberation, I decided that it would probably be better to make one enormous post instead of seven little posts. Aside from meaning that you would have to trawl through seven posts instead of just one, it also makes it look like I wrote more. I'm tempted to start geo-tagging these photos. If only I could figure out how…

Wednesday, April 4 2012

I saw these last summer in Newquay. There is one very important question: why on earth would a duck have a hairdo? I mean, look at them. They've got full white Afros going on. I mean, I know it's mating season for them but seriously. If ducks have hairdos what else do they have? Do they have salons? Do they get their toenails done? How? What other cosmetics would you be able to give to a duck? It seems like a limited market. So perhaps whoever owns the duck salon also caters to other parkland animals. Mice, for instance. Rats too, of course. Probably seagulls. actually, I imagine the seagulls would have been banned from being extremely annoying and upsetting the other customers. So there is a hierarchy here. And not all the ducks had these hairdos. So, there is class amongst ducks. The standard working class duck is different from the upper-class duck who has money and time to get his head on. Perhaps ducks pay taxes. Perhaps they have to get mortgages on their patches of reed. Maybe when you see one duck being followed by a dozen or so ducklings, it's actually a duck school. Maybe ducks have a whole society that we just don't know about. Maybe ducks are planning to take over the world. But in that case, what could possibly be stopping them? It's probably a lack of thumbs. There but for the grace of God go we. Let us give thanks for opposable thumbs.

Thursday, April 5 2012

I found this in the middle of the forest in Northern Yorkshire. Apologies for the shoddy picture quality. If you can't see it, every direction is labeled Nidd Gorge. It was a lovely picturesque place until we came across this sign. Actually, the sign was terrifying. It made us feel as though we'd been trapped. There was no escape. Every path from there until the end of our lives would lead to Nidd Gorge. It reminded me of the film, the never-ending story. It was a little awe-inspiring. We kept going for no real reason except that the sign had filled us with the morbid certainty that we would never, ever leave this forest alive. We were doomed to remain there for all eternity, wasting away and eventually becoming the ghouls and spirit locals told warning stories about. We would become the stuff of children's stories. We were doomed to pass into legend, alongside fairies and imps and brownies and pits of invisible lava.

That didn't actually happen, of course. In the end we found a way out of the forest and were not doomed. Not even a little bit. We also found this:

Whilst my companion assured me that it was meant to be a bat, I was not convinced. Personally I think it looks more like a dragon. I think the many centuries ago the locals made this etching to warn tourists, explorers and adventurers alike that here there be dragons.

Friday, April 6 2012

Is it just me, or is there something worrying about ducklings travelling on their own? It always looks like they're up to something. It's like watching small children moving in a completely organised fashion despite the complete lack of adults around. You wonder what they're up to. Duckling shouldn't be organised. They should be splashing around like children. Having said that, children shouldn't be splashing around without an adult watching them. Unless they're splashing in shallow custard. Some things are far too delicious to regulate. Having said that, I don't think custard splashes that well. Civilised birds are becoming a problem for me. I can't look at a bird with any kind of trust any more. And I used to trust birds so well.

Saturday, April 7 2012

So this one time, I'm walking along in the middle of town minding my own business when suddenly I look up and see an owl. This owl, specifically:

Surprising, I know. Owls, after all, are not urban birds, although I hear that there are now owls that have been trained to hunt pigeons and seagulls. But my question is this: are the owls are where the ducks' civilisation, and their intention of taking over the world? Because owls always look as though they know more than they're letting on. Come to think of that, if ducks and owls (two vastly different birds) both have intelligent civilisations of their own, do all birds? When owls hunt pigeons, is it simply predators attacking prey, or is there something deeper work? Are birds battling the dominance over the planet? Would they be able to overthrow us, humanity, if they could only put aside their differences and work together against their common adversary? Are the hours of humanity numbered? Or, if this war of the birds simply a show put on for our own benefit? Are they truly far, far cleverer than we give them credit for? Perhaps, even as I write, there is a counsel of the birds, a gathering at some unreachable location where they are designing how to make their stand and crush us once and for all. Perhaps they're making weapons. Perhaps they have lava cannons. Perhaps they have thumbs. Perhaps we should be praying. Actually, myself being a very practical person, I come up with a list of far more useful things we could be doing:

• Gathering airguns
• Putting nets over all our food resources
• Catching electric-type pokemon
• Training and arming of snakes, cats, dogs and mongooses to make a counter-attack.

Sunday, April 8 2012

The cafe has started serving these:

In case yoy can't tell, it's a berry tart. Is it just me, or does it look like all the big berries are ganging up on the blueberries? To me, the blueberries look threatened. Having said that, the raspberries look as though they are turning on the strawberries. Perhaps there is a fruit war going on here. Perhaps the other larger fruits are only biding their time, waiting for the small fruits to fight amongst themselves until they are completely unable to unite against the larger fruits. There again, there is also the possibility that the larger fruits are just watching patiently as the small fruits fight it out amongst themselves, sad that these fruits do not have the same level of emotional maturity as the larger ones. Or maybe they're just waiting to pick off the exhausted victor. Only time will tell. We must monitor the politics of fruit as closely as we can.

Monday, April 9 2012

well, now I'm running out of pictures that don't have any people in them. If you look closely this you can see that there is a very small weeping willow in the middle of a large cluster of much taller trees. The question I have is this: are they protecting it or intimidating it?

Moving away from the subject of world domination, I've always thought weeping willow could be quite fun to live in. Assuming it never rained, of course. They smell nice, they have a roof and walls (albeit not exactly airtight, watertight, temperature tight or burglar tight) and I imagine they're relatively cheap. About as much as a student could afford on the housing market, anyway. Plus especially in this location you wouldn't have to worry about neighbours. There aren't any other weeping willow around for people to live in. and it's by a stream. Fresh running water. Perfect. Actually, now that I look this I'm starting to wonder if I should live there. Maybe it would be better if I developed a housing estate of trees. I could let them out to people and squirrels alike. I would be rich.

Rich.

Tuesday, April 10 2012

And at last, we reach today. this photo was actually taken yesterday, but it was taken here where I am. It made me think. A perfectly healthy tree, bushy and green, right next to a dead twig of a tree.

It made me wonder which is the better way of living: to remain leafy the whole year through, but coarse and unpleasant, or to shed all your leaves every winter only to regain them, soft and pretty, the next spring? Which is the most adaptable?

I also think this is a tree's way of hibernating. So trees are bears. Beware... these trees could break into your tent and steal all your food if you camp out in the forest. Were-trees. This is going to give me nightmares for a very long time.


I won't commemorate being back on track until I'm back to regular posting. I think being here makes me feel lazier but fortunately (well, often inconviniently) I'm stuck with a constand need to finish what I've started.

Ah the possibilities

 I'm trying to make up for being lax for the last few days by being extremely active today. I'd take a few pictures of where I worked if they ever gave us a spare five minutes there. As it is I've got some more lovely outdoor pictures for you. it strikes me as a little odd that this is in the middle of my local park, on its own little piece of tarmac, as if it deserves to be remembered and revered.

I can't quite make up my mind whether these are some very well made old ruins, or something new that was designed to look a bit like it just fell over. Who decides what to build parks anyways? I mean, some parks have lovely things in them like things and slides in interesting fountains and sculptures. Others have random bits of rubble and bridges over nothing and fallen trees that look like giants. And invisible lava. And really wiggly paths. And gateways to Narnia. Also, this is the only rubble in the park. it's like, maybe two or 300 years ago somebody decided that a random field would be the perfect place to build a building, absolutely certain that it would stand the test of time. And then some settlers came along and were all like "this will be the perfect place to build a city!" And then they did, and the city survived and the building did not.

These next few pictures have a lot of potential. I could have awed you with my amazing photoshop skills, but I decided to leave this one to your own imagination. That's the point of sights like these. They're all potential and no preconceptions. Any story imaginable could begin in a place like this.

The first one could be:

• The site of a cult meeting
• The home of a bunch of teeny tiny people who live in the forest
• The lair of a fearsome monster
• The home of a community of adorable talking animals
• An invisible house
• An invisible cow
• An invisible Ferrari
• An invisible anything
• The only safe island in a lake of lava.
• A gathering of very intelligent trees
• The hiding place of an escaped convict

As for the second one, it could be any of the above but I can't help thinking it would also be a very handy place to hide a body. It would also be a brilliant place to lead your enemies. Those thorns are sharp.

Narnia and the short panther

Yes, I know what you're thinking. "What an undedicated blogger! She doesn't deserve to blog! She should have her blogging licence removed! She should be thrown into a pit of lava!"

First I backdate a blog, and then my most recent two blogs only have one photo each. Alright, and I didn't take any pictures today. However, I think this is more-or-less justified since I did drag two suitcases behind me for an awfully long way, despite injuries to both arms, then sorted and threw out about half of everything I own so I was a little too tired for a walk and my hands were very full every time I was outside. But who needs an outside when your cat knows the way into Narnia?

See, my cat has this thing she does.she disappears for hours then re-emerges somewhere you're absolutely certain you already looked. And it's always a cupboard or a box or something. And she's freakishly intelligent. There is of course only one possible explanation. She is Narnian. She can make gates as and when she chooses. See the photograph? Irrefutable proof.

(She requested that her face not be made available on the Internet. I suspect it's because her enemies in Narnia are out looking for her.)

Wow, I just realised that I didn't mention lava once in the previous post! I'm losing my touch!

The herd of Effs

(Backdated: 01/04/2012)

Undertook the long journey home, so though I did have time to take a picture yesterday didn't have time to write a post. On the way out of the supermarket I happened to notice these lovely little things:

I think they look an awful lot like the Facebook sign, only with their arms torn off. Or maybe their arms are sort of hunched to them, like meerkats looking for danger. So Facebook signs travel in packs, and they behave like meerkats. There are also quite big, and these ones look like a family unit. Mummy sign, daddy sign, baby sign. Apparently they also like to hang out in the Sainsbury's car park. So  they're urban creatures. I wonder whether they are meat eaters or vegetarians. Having said that, in this picture it looks like they're being hunted by a pack of cars, so probably herbivores. Sorry, only one picture for that day. As I said, I've been busy. Don't worry, I'm in a whole new town for a few weeks so things can only get better from here.

Giant bonsai (and other giants)

It was a shorter walk that usual today. Somebody stole the sun (I suspect the Doctor), and I wasn't feeling too great after five hours at the library. But I did realise I'd been walking past this every day for nearly a year and never noticed how much it looked like a giant bonsai tree:

 

 I know a bonsai isn't actually a particular plant, but there's something artful about this one and it looks like maybe a giant spent a few decades pruning it in a small tray to make it so square and pretty.

Speaking of giants...

 

This statue is about ten feet tall. I suspect it was a stone giantess who fell into a pit of invisible lava and then her bottom half melted but she saved her baby by holding him out of the water, but then he looked directly at the lighthouse monster and turnes to stone anyway, so that was a shame. But then some passing architect who appreciated the sacrifice decided to build a university around her so that everybody would know, except that he didn't give her a plaque or anything so only people with extreme insight (like me) will ever know the true story of the so-called 'statue'.

I'm finding it very difficult to go a whole post without mentioning lava.

Lists, lists everywhere

Regarding yesterday's post, I now know that an allergist is someone who specialises in the diagnosis and treatment of allergies. Darnit, I thought I was onto something.

I'm writing this paragraph before my walk, since I'm a morning person but, rather like a lizard, I'm waiting for what BBC weather promises will be the hottest part of the day before I go out and find a rock to sleep on. Today I'm setting myself a challenge. I shall try my hardest not to write about any of these things:

• Lava
• Miniature person colonies
• Wars
• Monsters
• Ninjas
• Swans

I'll be honest, I'm not sure what that leaves me with. We shall see!

Later that day...

This flower is pale. Why on earth is this flower pale?  Considering it is in a tiny cluster of flowers in the middle of a field, appears to be a daffodil and had many other flowers in the cluster that weren't pale, I can only think of these reasons:

• The flower is wearing heavy make-up
• The flower sunburns easily and so makes a habit of wearing p-60 suncream and is therefore doomed to remain white for all eternity
• The flower has a skin disorder that drains its pigment
• The flower is a ghost
• The Queen of Hearts changed her mind about red roses and decided to get white ones instead, but the poor cards who had to paint the roses white got carried away and painted all the flowers they could find.
• The flower has recently recovered from a severe illness or injury, and has not been outside in a very long time.

After the oddness of the pale flower I came across one of my favourite things:

 I love when paths wiggle for no apparent reason! Since I've been in a listing mood today, here are some of the reasons I think could explain why this path randomly wiggles here:

• The man who drew up the plans for the path misplaced his ruler
• The man who drew up the plans for the path sneezed
• The man who drew up the plans for the path enjoyed confusing people
• There are invisible trees that the path needs to navigate
• Something important is buried off to the side and the path wiggles a little to cover it up so that its secret may remain hidden in the earth for all eternity
• It had to swerve to avoid invisible springs of lava, since it is near the lava bridge.

Rats, I nearly managed to not mention lava for the whole post. Ah, well, no use trying to change yourself. Your energy is better spent being the very best at what you are! Unless you are an axe-wielding bank robber. Then you should probably do something about that.

Grass cities and lava lakes

Today, feeling revolutionary, I headed North to the hills instead of South to town and the harbour! I also got myself a blister. I did have more comfortable shoes in my bag but I was feeling stubborn so I just kept on going. Today's walk has a distinctly summery feel!

Remember building grass piles on the school field in the summer? I do. I also remember the amazement upon entering secondary school that nobody cared if you wanted to go onto the field any more! There wasn't any real purpose to grass piles, it was just something to do and the perfect activity for a very self-destructive hayfever victim / bug-bite allergist. Is 'allergist' a word?

It is now.

Such is my power. At any rate, this is like what happens when you've come back after the weekend and nobody built grass piles so the grass went all shrivelly. That's another new word, I think. At any rate, when I look at this image, I see this:

That's right, those little solid grass lumps are like thatch rooves, the grass is like walls and the whole thing is actually a little mud-hut village for tiny people! But then we have a problem. The whole field was covered in these things, so the question is, it it a sprawling mini-person mud-grass-hut metropolis or a vicious inter-tribal war going on right beneath our noses in our own parks? Truly this is something to consider. Especially since these little villages do tend to occur in clusters. Evidence!

I saw something else of interest:


Why build a bridge over plain old dirt? Well, remember that when we were little and we knew absolutely that in any place with enough climbing frames or stepping stones (I use both terms very loosely. My favourite climbing frame was my brother's bunk bed) there was one, and only one, irrefutible law:

The floor is lava.

It doesn't need to look like lava, sound like lava or burn like lava in order to be lava. Therefore, I draw the conclusion that the reason this bridge was built was that what appears at first sight to be a plain old patch of dirt is actually lava. Hot, deadly molten lava. Thank goodness for the thoughtful man who built that bridge so that we could safely continue to explore the park.

The signs have plans

Had a blood test then a really exhausting battle of wills this morning so I was feeling a bit too light-headed to cycle so I went for a walk! Along a new route. I saw a number of rather surreal things on my walk. Among them was this:

WHY THE HELL WAS THE NO ENTRY SIGN SMILING?* This is what I think: remember the lighthouse monster? If not, read it! Well, this smiling sign bears a similar red and white theme. Why? Because they are colleagues! They work together towards one common goal: the destruction of the city! The no entry sign was smiling because it was in the middle of some diabolical plan to grind the city to a halt, one road at a time, just waiting for the lighthouse monster to break free of its prison and then, with no transport in motion, the lighthouse monster would destroy the whole city!

Then I saw this:
There are a number of things wrong with that situation. I'll list them, because lists are right in my comfort zone:

• This is a rooster, not a hen. Roosters do not lay eggs.
• If roosters did lay eggs, they wouldn't be about 1/4 the size of the actual bird
• Nor would they be golden
• Why would a rooster be in a clothes shop window?
• Silly rooster. You shouldn't be in a window. You're not a fashionable garment. You're a rooster.
• Unless this is Lady Gaga's latest hat.
  

I also saw the slender man on a suitcase. Yeah, that was weird:


---
*I'd just like to take a moment to express my joy that this newish laptop actually has a light ON the caps lock button to let you know when it's active. It's genius.

The lighthouse monster

Yesterday's foray left me with a sunburn. Seriously, if I had my skin removed and replaced with clingfilm I'd be much better protected against burns, cuts etc. Having said that, it may cause other problems...

Anyway, on to today's walk! I went by the same route as yesterday but I noticed different things. This, for example:
To the untrained eye, a lighthouse in scaffolding. But I don't think so. I think of it more as a monster. That's no scaffold! It's the monster's cage, designed to trap it in so that it can't go on a rampage and start eating people, crushing buildings beneath its enormous lighthouse food, guiding ships onto the rocks to their doom, terrorising the city, then the whole coast, then the region, the country, until eventually it takes over the world!

Here's how I see it, with my epic photo editing skills:
It's a bit like Cloverfield, but with better effects. And instead of a deep-sea monster, a lighthouse! But now that the City Council has trapped this monster inside a cage, how do we deal with it? Is there any weapon that can take down such a beast?

That's what I think this is for:

I mean, they say it's an anchor but how many anchors do you see on a plinth on land, really? That's just silly. I think it's actually a weapon to take down the lighthouse monster. Look at the size, the weight, the armour-piercing hooks! I think it's just sitting there waiting for the right hero to come, strong enough to wield it, and defeat the red and white threat once and for all! Like the Sword in the Stone. I refer to the Master Sword in the Temple of Time, of course. Or Theseus' bow in ancient legend. Or those really wierd clothes you see in high fashion shops that suit maybe one person in the whole of the human population.

At any rate, avoid the lighthouse monster at all costs. It has long spindly arms and even caged it might be able to grab you.

The swan war

I took the bike for a ride, though it was more like taking it for walk since very few people in this city are capable of making any room at all. There were a good many atheletes around. You'd think they'd be pentatheletes, but I actually think they were in training for an assault on the swan army I saw at the harbour. Look at them all!
I think they in turn were developing an army to attack the human population. Due to their lack of thumbs it was always doomed to failure, but some of them are developing some rather cool karate moves. Like this one, which was practising its high kick:
So I decided to show my appreciation for their futile efforts by feeding them bread. I was amazed at how vicious they could be with each other when I was feeding them. First they'd be all peaceful and like "omnomnom" but then another one would be like "that's my bread, biatch!" and then they'd bite each other in the neck and at one point I was worried I was going to witness some swan murder, but I gave away all my bread without anybody killing anybody else, so then I went home.

I also saw a ninja but he wasn't very good: