Easter symbols
As we celebrate the festival of Easter (or the Pagan New Year) and the symbol of our Lord and Saviour who died so that we may have a good excuse to eat chocolate eggs I notice that the chocolate Jesus sculpture I mentioned last week didn't get exhibited when the gallery cravenly gave into the rabid cries of the Catholic church in America that it was insulting to them. Obviously the broke, tortured and mutilated Jesus they show in every one of their churches nailed to a cross is so much more tasteful. Assuming of course he was the Messiah and not just a very naughty boy.
And on the whole cross thing anyway, I am reminded of the wise words of another prophet who walked among humanity for a short time before being taken away, Saint Bill of Hicks, who observed sagely that should Jesus prove to the the son of God and actually come back as promised, you think he ever, ever wants to see another cross? "Christians wearing a crucifix is kinda like remembering JFK by wearing a rifle pendant..."
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Kill yourself - the game!
I got this link for an online game via Chris at the Canadian Comics212 blog (good spot for material on comics and animation) - it's a quick game where you are in a Dilbert-type universe, being a terminally bored cubicle worker who can't take it anymore. The aim is to kill yourself using a variety of office equipment or by insulting co-workers; each item only takes so much from your health, so you need to be creative and move around. Fun little distraction and the inverse of most games where you normally try to keep your character alive. I wonder how long before some church busybody declaims this for 'glorifying' suicide' and encouraging mortal sin? I managed to top my player with 55 seconds to spare on my third bash.
I got this link for an online game via Chris at the Canadian Comics212 blog (good spot for material on comics and animation) - it's a quick game where you are in a Dilbert-type universe, being a terminally bored cubicle worker who can't take it anymore. The aim is to kill yourself using a variety of office equipment or by insulting co-workers; each item only takes so much from your health, so you need to be creative and move around. Fun little distraction and the inverse of most games where you normally try to keep your character alive. I wonder how long before some church busybody declaims this for 'glorifying' suicide' and encouraging mortal sin? I managed to top my player with 55 seconds to spare on my third bash.
Saturday, April 7, 2007
Happy fourth birthday, Woolamaloo!
Yes, friends, today marks the fourth anniversary of the Woolamaloo Gazette, the blog they couldn't hang, a blog with a mouth too big to shut (a mouth so big it still spews out words even when having its own foot in said mouth, which happens on occassion). Well, the fourth anniversary of this incarnation, for although the 7th of April 2003 saw the commencement of the Woolamaloo blog, the Gazette goes back to the early 90s, the name a homage to the University of Woolamaloo from Monty Python (also a track by Jean Michel Jarre and a real place in Australia). I've always been outspoken and an opinionated bugger (commenting on my firing a couple of years back Neil Gaiman commented he thought I was opinionated, but in the good way, which I took as a huge compliment and a real morale boost when I really needed it), right back to school where I spent years on the Academy's debating team (nope, didn't win them all, but I won a lot more than I lost) and when I was introduced to email in the 90s at college the opinionated bugger met Communications Technology and saw that It Was Good.
In '91 only a few faculties had email and the web didn't exist - it was the internet, mostly text, lots of discussion forums which I signed up for, mostly chatting to folks in other universities round the globe, debating, discussing, chatting, swapping jokes. Very soon I was sending out emails of spoof newspaper articles to friends, lampooning public figures, trends and satirising the hell out of stories in the news that were bugging me. To my surprise people liked them; in fact some folks who weren't receiving them asked to be added to the list, others already on the list were forwarding it to their friends - my first taste of the interconnected nature of the net came when a friend told me she had forwarded it to her friend, who forwarded it to her husband in the US Air Force (there is nowhere the subversive Woolamaloo cannot go!) who forwarded it to a bunch of friends on more bases round the world.
By the 2000s I was still doing the Woolamaloo emails, but my good mate Ariel, then a fellow bookseller (I think we first got in touch when he was editing the Guide to SF for a certain book supermarket who we don't mention here these days, but this was back when it was still a real bookstore and professional booksellers like us were encouraged to work on literature guides like this). Ariel kept saying I should do them in blog form, especially since the blog would allow me to do other things too as the fancy struck me. Some other friends were blogging by then, so with Ariel's help (thanks, mate) we set up the new blog and a new era in cheeky and opinionated nonsense began in April 2003 with me having a go at the war in Iraq and pastiching the SARs outbreak that was the End Of The World plague in vogue at that time (later I would post that for a laugh I would stand next to Asian tourists in the shop and pretend to sneeze while SARs was going about, just to watch their startled reaction. At my firing they even brought that up and asked, do you think that is funny, what would a customer reading that think? Yes, I did think it was mildly amusing, it was what we advanced beings with A Sense Of Humour call A Joke. They didn't, but since they ended up being publically humiliated for what they did I'd say I came out on top there).
I found I loved the blog form - I did indeed still post pastiches of news stories (or sometimes just a rant I needed to get out), but other things leaked in - unsurprisingly discussing books and authors and movies (at this point I was submitting a ton of reviews to the Alien Online, edited by Ariel), but I was adding in poetry, photographs, life in Edinburgh and, well, just everything really - life, love, cats, chocolate and whisky; the fun stuff and the stuff that hurt like hell. And work. Work got mentioned a few times (relatively few compared to the amount of other stuff and far outweighed by the amount pushing books and authors and reading events) and the worse the job became as the company turned into a Professional Retailer rather than a Bookseller (and struggled with sales and profits and higher staff turnover at the same time - connected?) and they seemed unwilling to listen to the opinions of experienced staff the blog became a place to let off a little steam. Several years later they suddenly pretended to be grossly offended at this and fired me (it would later turn out that senior management had known about it long before this and weren't bothered - in fact they asked me to help set up a brand new branch from scratch. Later they would suddenly 'discover' it - well, I suspect a certain vindictive person did - and it was used against me.)
Of course, by firing me they removed any obligation I had to be relatively quiet on the subject; Cory Doctorow and the Boing Boing guys picked up on it and splattered it all over the web, as did the online journals while Ariel and my fellow reviewers on the Alien Online organised support - the mainstream media picked it up from there and within a couple of days the Guardian and Scotsman had me posing for photographs for an article (right outside the old bookstore, much to the amusement of some of the staff who hadn't been told much of what had happened) and a rapid snowball effect took place that utterly surprised me - four radio spots in one day at one point, asked to do interviews for radio shows in Ireland and New York, enquiries from journalists in France, Norway, Italy, Germany, clippings of the story being sent by folks from as far afield as Chile and Australia, it was simply amazing. I think the fact that a bookstore, which has always professed to stand for freedom of speech (without which there is no booktrade) would try to gag a staff member this way really infuriated a lot of folks. I still get approached by media types from time to time even now.
The amount of emails I had from people all over was a huge morale boost when I was seriously down and a reminder, again, of how connected web users are on a global scale (and again, thanks to everyone who took time to write to me offering support and also emailing their disgust to the Bookstore Which Shall Not Be Named, I really can't tell you just how much the support of so many folks, mostly total stranger, meant to me when I really needed it). That was something my former employers didn't realise, they thought they were the Big Company and they could do what they wanted to One Little Guy; boy did that blow up in their faces (and deservedly so). Amazingly some companies continue to repeat this mistake, still not cottoned on to the interconnected nature of the web.
Another front was opened up when some of the many writers I had worked with over the years also came to my defence, publically damning the former employers for their actions and pointing out just how much work I had done to promote books over the years. Highly embarrassing to be the biggest bookstore in the nation and find some of the bestselling authors in the country decrying you in public (Richard Morgan's incredibly eloquent open letter, Ken MacLeod and Iain Banks and others writing letters to the press, Charlie Stross standing up for me on his blog and more). I've spent years promoting good writers and books and I can't tell you how good it felt to realise that a lot of those authors remembered that support and were willing to step forward to help me when I needed it; so much support from friends and strangers had the oddest effect, it made you feel ten feet tall and at the same time so damned humble that people would do this for you.
It had a happy ending though - the appeal hearing, ironically held in the new branch I had helped to create (as I gleefully pointed out), turned out in my favour. They still didn't like me mentioning work on the blog but agreed they had rather over-reacted. By this time FPI had read about all of this and I'd been approached by them because they wanted someone to work on their online business who would also be into the books and graphic novels they were selling, rather than just treating it as a job. And in the supreme irony I pitched the idea of a blog for the company to compliment the major webstore and they liked it; now the FPI blog has grown far bigger, gets hits from round the world and I still get to promote good books, graphic novels and authors (thanks, Kenny!) from interviewing big names to helping push the new small press guys (who in turn mention us and so that interconnected thing all still goes round and we all win from it). And I'm still blogging on the Woolamaloo as well; blogging for personal reasons and blogging at work too (god, but that still makes me giggle after all that happened, that part of my job is running a blog) and no intention of stopping (I should probably say thanks to Former Employers because their short-sighted attack turned a little-heard of site into one read by far, far more folks, so well done! I award you the Shot Yourself In The Foot Award!). Another nice spin off is my union, the RBA, a smaller union, got some good publicity (well deserved) from this and picked up a raft of new members on the back of it (actually they told me they go someone in touch the very night I posted links to them on the blog).
I intend to go on being a cheeky and irreverent bugger and the Woolamaloo is an intrinsic part of that; a friend who is heavily into Second Life was asking why I didn't join him there. I pointed out that the blog (and Flog and Flickr) were already a second life for me and I can't imagine not doing it. So yes, I fully intend to go on lampooning hypocritical public figures, pastiching events, talking about good books, quoting poetry when I feel like it and, well, basically talking about whatever the hell I want to, when I want to, because it is my (and every other person's) right to damned well do just that and winning that case makes me feel like doing it all the more. So happy anniversary to my sometimes troubled child, the Woolamaloo Gazette, the blog they couldn't hang.
Yes, friends, today marks the fourth anniversary of the Woolamaloo Gazette, the blog they couldn't hang, a blog with a mouth too big to shut (a mouth so big it still spews out words even when having its own foot in said mouth, which happens on occassion). Well, the fourth anniversary of this incarnation, for although the 7th of April 2003 saw the commencement of the Woolamaloo blog, the Gazette goes back to the early 90s, the name a homage to the University of Woolamaloo from Monty Python (also a track by Jean Michel Jarre and a real place in Australia). I've always been outspoken and an opinionated bugger (commenting on my firing a couple of years back Neil Gaiman commented he thought I was opinionated, but in the good way, which I took as a huge compliment and a real morale boost when I really needed it), right back to school where I spent years on the Academy's debating team (nope, didn't win them all, but I won a lot more than I lost) and when I was introduced to email in the 90s at college the opinionated bugger met Communications Technology and saw that It Was Good.
In '91 only a few faculties had email and the web didn't exist - it was the internet, mostly text, lots of discussion forums which I signed up for, mostly chatting to folks in other universities round the globe, debating, discussing, chatting, swapping jokes. Very soon I was sending out emails of spoof newspaper articles to friends, lampooning public figures, trends and satirising the hell out of stories in the news that were bugging me. To my surprise people liked them; in fact some folks who weren't receiving them asked to be added to the list, others already on the list were forwarding it to their friends - my first taste of the interconnected nature of the net came when a friend told me she had forwarded it to her friend, who forwarded it to her husband in the US Air Force (there is nowhere the subversive Woolamaloo cannot go!) who forwarded it to a bunch of friends on more bases round the world.
By the 2000s I was still doing the Woolamaloo emails, but my good mate Ariel, then a fellow bookseller (I think we first got in touch when he was editing the Guide to SF for a certain book supermarket who we don't mention here these days, but this was back when it was still a real bookstore and professional booksellers like us were encouraged to work on literature guides like this). Ariel kept saying I should do them in blog form, especially since the blog would allow me to do other things too as the fancy struck me. Some other friends were blogging by then, so with Ariel's help (thanks, mate) we set up the new blog and a new era in cheeky and opinionated nonsense began in April 2003 with me having a go at the war in Iraq and pastiching the SARs outbreak that was the End Of The World plague in vogue at that time (later I would post that for a laugh I would stand next to Asian tourists in the shop and pretend to sneeze while SARs was going about, just to watch their startled reaction. At my firing they even brought that up and asked, do you think that is funny, what would a customer reading that think? Yes, I did think it was mildly amusing, it was what we advanced beings with A Sense Of Humour call A Joke. They didn't, but since they ended up being publically humiliated for what they did I'd say I came out on top there).
I found I loved the blog form - I did indeed still post pastiches of news stories (or sometimes just a rant I needed to get out), but other things leaked in - unsurprisingly discussing books and authors and movies (at this point I was submitting a ton of reviews to the Alien Online, edited by Ariel), but I was adding in poetry, photographs, life in Edinburgh and, well, just everything really - life, love, cats, chocolate and whisky; the fun stuff and the stuff that hurt like hell. And work. Work got mentioned a few times (relatively few compared to the amount of other stuff and far outweighed by the amount pushing books and authors and reading events) and the worse the job became as the company turned into a Professional Retailer rather than a Bookseller (and struggled with sales and profits and higher staff turnover at the same time - connected?) and they seemed unwilling to listen to the opinions of experienced staff the blog became a place to let off a little steam. Several years later they suddenly pretended to be grossly offended at this and fired me (it would later turn out that senior management had known about it long before this and weren't bothered - in fact they asked me to help set up a brand new branch from scratch. Later they would suddenly 'discover' it - well, I suspect a certain vindictive person did - and it was used against me.)
Of course, by firing me they removed any obligation I had to be relatively quiet on the subject; Cory Doctorow and the Boing Boing guys picked up on it and splattered it all over the web, as did the online journals while Ariel and my fellow reviewers on the Alien Online organised support - the mainstream media picked it up from there and within a couple of days the Guardian and Scotsman had me posing for photographs for an article (right outside the old bookstore, much to the amusement of some of the staff who hadn't been told much of what had happened) and a rapid snowball effect took place that utterly surprised me - four radio spots in one day at one point, asked to do interviews for radio shows in Ireland and New York, enquiries from journalists in France, Norway, Italy, Germany, clippings of the story being sent by folks from as far afield as Chile and Australia, it was simply amazing. I think the fact that a bookstore, which has always professed to stand for freedom of speech (without which there is no booktrade) would try to gag a staff member this way really infuriated a lot of folks. I still get approached by media types from time to time even now.
The amount of emails I had from people all over was a huge morale boost when I was seriously down and a reminder, again, of how connected web users are on a global scale (and again, thanks to everyone who took time to write to me offering support and also emailing their disgust to the Bookstore Which Shall Not Be Named, I really can't tell you just how much the support of so many folks, mostly total stranger, meant to me when I really needed it). That was something my former employers didn't realise, they thought they were the Big Company and they could do what they wanted to One Little Guy; boy did that blow up in their faces (and deservedly so). Amazingly some companies continue to repeat this mistake, still not cottoned on to the interconnected nature of the web.
Another front was opened up when some of the many writers I had worked with over the years also came to my defence, publically damning the former employers for their actions and pointing out just how much work I had done to promote books over the years. Highly embarrassing to be the biggest bookstore in the nation and find some of the bestselling authors in the country decrying you in public (Richard Morgan's incredibly eloquent open letter, Ken MacLeod and Iain Banks and others writing letters to the press, Charlie Stross standing up for me on his blog and more). I've spent years promoting good writers and books and I can't tell you how good it felt to realise that a lot of those authors remembered that support and were willing to step forward to help me when I needed it; so much support from friends and strangers had the oddest effect, it made you feel ten feet tall and at the same time so damned humble that people would do this for you.
It had a happy ending though - the appeal hearing, ironically held in the new branch I had helped to create (as I gleefully pointed out), turned out in my favour. They still didn't like me mentioning work on the blog but agreed they had rather over-reacted. By this time FPI had read about all of this and I'd been approached by them because they wanted someone to work on their online business who would also be into the books and graphic novels they were selling, rather than just treating it as a job. And in the supreme irony I pitched the idea of a blog for the company to compliment the major webstore and they liked it; now the FPI blog has grown far bigger, gets hits from round the world and I still get to promote good books, graphic novels and authors (thanks, Kenny!) from interviewing big names to helping push the new small press guys (who in turn mention us and so that interconnected thing all still goes round and we all win from it). And I'm still blogging on the Woolamaloo as well; blogging for personal reasons and blogging at work too (god, but that still makes me giggle after all that happened, that part of my job is running a blog) and no intention of stopping (I should probably say thanks to Former Employers because their short-sighted attack turned a little-heard of site into one read by far, far more folks, so well done! I award you the Shot Yourself In The Foot Award!). Another nice spin off is my union, the RBA, a smaller union, got some good publicity (well deserved) from this and picked up a raft of new members on the back of it (actually they told me they go someone in touch the very night I posted links to them on the blog).
I intend to go on being a cheeky and irreverent bugger and the Woolamaloo is an intrinsic part of that; a friend who is heavily into Second Life was asking why I didn't join him there. I pointed out that the blog (and Flog and Flickr) were already a second life for me and I can't imagine not doing it. So yes, I fully intend to go on lampooning hypocritical public figures, pastiching events, talking about good books, quoting poetry when I feel like it and, well, basically talking about whatever the hell I want to, when I want to, because it is my (and every other person's) right to damned well do just that and winning that case makes me feel like doing it all the more. So happy anniversary to my sometimes troubled child, the Woolamaloo Gazette, the blog they couldn't hang.
Of silence and music
Channel hopping while munching lunch I accidentally came across a programme on Ruth Montgomery, a young musician preparing for solo performances with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. The solo spot is a tremendously stressful role for any musician - indeed being the person standing out there in front of everyone else on a stage for any kind of performance is pretty stressful. I've done that a few times myself and it really does put the frighteners on you; first time I had to do it was a largely last minute addition to the school opera when I was about 16. Walk out from behind that curtain, light in your face, dark auditorium, the feel of two or three hundred people looking expectantly at you; mouth goes dry, confidence bids you adios and genuine shivers go down your spine. Then you do what you rehearsed to do and if it works the stress and fear vanishes to be replaced with elation. That doesn't make it any easier the next time you have to do it though, you still go through the stress and fear and cotton mouth thing everytime, but that early experience paid dividends much later when I would have to walk in front of a few hundred folks and introduce a major author.
So yes, I can empathise how stressed she would be, at least to a certain extent. Ruth has another level of worry to add to what would be a worrying time already for any musician about to do their solo spot - Ruth is deaf. She has problems with an early rehearsal because the piano is in the wrong place so she can't get close enough to the violins to feel them and can't see the conductor's movements clearly enough, something they simply hadn't considered when setting up the stage. On hand was one of my favourite musicians and a personal heroine, Evelyn Glennie, one of the most famous soloists in classical music and again, a performer who is completely deaf. Watching both of them was a reminder, if any really be needed, that the real artist creates from within; deafness doesn't stop feeling and it doesn't silence that inner voice, a part that speaks without words in an inner dialogue with the artist, a dialogue they then translate into music, words, dance, paintings that other can share with. It's not the physical abilities, its that inner dialogue and the feelings it creates; if you don't have that then how can you communicate it to anyone else, regardless of whether you are a musician, a poet, a dancer?
And in one lovely little scene, as Evelyn is rehearsing her own spot you could see a wee deaf girl, just about 6 or 7, totally enraptured, her hands moving to copy Evelyn's (anyone who has been to one of Eveyln's performances will know she is pretty dynamic on stage, she doesn't just play, she moves to the music she is making). It was just the most gorgeous scene, this little deaf lassie copying the deaf musician; it wasn't just cute it was the realisation that this might be opening a door to a world this child had never really encountered before. And isn't that one of the effects any artist longs to make on someone?
Channel hopping while munching lunch I accidentally came across a programme on Ruth Montgomery, a young musician preparing for solo performances with the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic. The solo spot is a tremendously stressful role for any musician - indeed being the person standing out there in front of everyone else on a stage for any kind of performance is pretty stressful. I've done that a few times myself and it really does put the frighteners on you; first time I had to do it was a largely last minute addition to the school opera when I was about 16. Walk out from behind that curtain, light in your face, dark auditorium, the feel of two or three hundred people looking expectantly at you; mouth goes dry, confidence bids you adios and genuine shivers go down your spine. Then you do what you rehearsed to do and if it works the stress and fear vanishes to be replaced with elation. That doesn't make it any easier the next time you have to do it though, you still go through the stress and fear and cotton mouth thing everytime, but that early experience paid dividends much later when I would have to walk in front of a few hundred folks and introduce a major author.
So yes, I can empathise how stressed she would be, at least to a certain extent. Ruth has another level of worry to add to what would be a worrying time already for any musician about to do their solo spot - Ruth is deaf. She has problems with an early rehearsal because the piano is in the wrong place so she can't get close enough to the violins to feel them and can't see the conductor's movements clearly enough, something they simply hadn't considered when setting up the stage. On hand was one of my favourite musicians and a personal heroine, Evelyn Glennie, one of the most famous soloists in classical music and again, a performer who is completely deaf. Watching both of them was a reminder, if any really be needed, that the real artist creates from within; deafness doesn't stop feeling and it doesn't silence that inner voice, a part that speaks without words in an inner dialogue with the artist, a dialogue they then translate into music, words, dance, paintings that other can share with. It's not the physical abilities, its that inner dialogue and the feelings it creates; if you don't have that then how can you communicate it to anyone else, regardless of whether you are a musician, a poet, a dancer?
And in one lovely little scene, as Evelyn is rehearsing her own spot you could see a wee deaf girl, just about 6 or 7, totally enraptured, her hands moving to copy Evelyn's (anyone who has been to one of Eveyln's performances will know she is pretty dynamic on stage, she doesn't just play, she moves to the music she is making). It was just the most gorgeous scene, this little deaf lassie copying the deaf musician; it wasn't just cute it was the realisation that this might be opening a door to a world this child had never really encountered before. And isn't that one of the effects any artist longs to make on someone?
Wednesday, April 4, 2007
Floating heads
The 'floating heads' sculptures hanging in one of the wings of the newly refurbished Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum in Glasgow. Gordon and I spent hours going round here recently; it re-opened last summer after a huge refurbishment and is, I am happy to say, even more popular than ever before. Edinburgh has the vast bulk of the national galleries and museums, but Glasgow, in true Glaswegian style, simply created large museums and galleries for themselves, all designed from their inception to be accessible to all the people of the city regardless of wealth or status.
We both grew up in Glasgow so we were in and out of this emporium of delights dozens of times as kids - the upper floors hold galleries, the lower ones the museum, so you can see everything from a Matisse to a mummy to a suit of armour to artefacts from Saint Kilda to dinosaurs and even, in one wing, an actual Spitfire fighter plane hanging from the ornate ceiling like the world's biggest kid's model on a string. We both found that same child-like fascination was still engendered by this magical place and spent hours going round it; still one of my favourite places in the whole world and so, so happy to find a place that enchanted, amazed and educated me as a child still did the same now.
The 'floating heads' sculptures hanging in one of the wings of the newly refurbished Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum in Glasgow. Gordon and I spent hours going round here recently; it re-opened last summer after a huge refurbishment and is, I am happy to say, even more popular than ever before. Edinburgh has the vast bulk of the national galleries and museums, but Glasgow, in true Glaswegian style, simply created large museums and galleries for themselves, all designed from their inception to be accessible to all the people of the city regardless of wealth or status.
We both grew up in Glasgow so we were in and out of this emporium of delights dozens of times as kids - the upper floors hold galleries, the lower ones the museum, so you can see everything from a Matisse to a mummy to a suit of armour to artefacts from Saint Kilda to dinosaurs and even, in one wing, an actual Spitfire fighter plane hanging from the ornate ceiling like the world's biggest kid's model on a string. We both found that same child-like fascination was still engendered by this magical place and spent hours going round it; still one of my favourite places in the whole world and so, so happy to find a place that enchanted, amazed and educated me as a child still did the same now.
Messing about on the water
Sunny (but cool) spring-like day down at North Berwick, Scotland, not far from Edinburgh, watching as some sailors bring in a small yacht and take it out the water.
Sunny (but cool) spring-like day down at North Berwick, Scotland, not far from Edinburgh, watching as some sailors bring in a small yacht and take it out the water.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Birds
Gorgeous, clear blue skies and spring sunshine today to mark the start of April, although being Scotland the temperatures were cruelly more winter-like in stark contrast to the sunshine. Gordon was taking Bruce the greyhound off to the beach for a good chance to run around like a loon and sniff as many other doggy bottoms as he could (the beach is essentially a dog social club) so I tagged along. Part way down we saw a bird of prey - neither of us is very good a ornithological matters and so we had no idea if it was a kestrel or whatever, but we could tell is was clearly a bird of prey. It was a stunning silhouette soaring effortlessly over a field, elegant dark shape against a luminous blue sky, only the occasional beat of those powerful wings, the rest of the time it simply glided with a grace no human aircraft can ever match, confident, powerful, assured, monarch of its realm of air. Simply stunning. I wonder what our earthbound world below looked like to its razor sharp eyesight?
Just a little later we came round a bend on a country road and a grouse ran right across the road in front of us, paused for a moment at the edge of the road, looked at us, then vanished through a fence. Most of the time the birds I see, living in the city, are pigeons (pooing everywhere) and those raucous seagulls, making a dreadful racket and raiding the bins (although to be fair they look amazing when they seem to hover almost motionless in a stiff sea breeze). I do sometimes see some bats flying around Mel's garden (which I love) as dusk falls, although they, of course, aren't birds (bit they are so darned cool - Mel hates them, I love them). So to see one unusual (for us) bird was one thing, but to see two was a real treat. And whatever that bird of prey was that soared over us, passing like a lord of the air, ignoring the assembled crows picking at freshly ploughed fields with a regal disdain, it was an amazing sight. Just for a few seconds the world stops and you see something amazing.
Gorgeous, clear blue skies and spring sunshine today to mark the start of April, although being Scotland the temperatures were cruelly more winter-like in stark contrast to the sunshine. Gordon was taking Bruce the greyhound off to the beach for a good chance to run around like a loon and sniff as many other doggy bottoms as he could (the beach is essentially a dog social club) so I tagged along. Part way down we saw a bird of prey - neither of us is very good a ornithological matters and so we had no idea if it was a kestrel or whatever, but we could tell is was clearly a bird of prey. It was a stunning silhouette soaring effortlessly over a field, elegant dark shape against a luminous blue sky, only the occasional beat of those powerful wings, the rest of the time it simply glided with a grace no human aircraft can ever match, confident, powerful, assured, monarch of its realm of air. Simply stunning. I wonder what our earthbound world below looked like to its razor sharp eyesight?
Just a little later we came round a bend on a country road and a grouse ran right across the road in front of us, paused for a moment at the edge of the road, looked at us, then vanished through a fence. Most of the time the birds I see, living in the city, are pigeons (pooing everywhere) and those raucous seagulls, making a dreadful racket and raiding the bins (although to be fair they look amazing when they seem to hover almost motionless in a stiff sea breeze). I do sometimes see some bats flying around Mel's garden (which I love) as dusk falls, although they, of course, aren't birds (bit they are so darned cool - Mel hates them, I love them). So to see one unusual (for us) bird was one thing, but to see two was a real treat. And whatever that bird of prey was that soared over us, passing like a lord of the air, ignoring the assembled crows picking at freshly ploughed fields with a regal disdain, it was an amazing sight. Just for a few seconds the world stops and you see something amazing.
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