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.