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.