Natural highs and lows

Recently, whilst browsing through a box file of family history notes, I came across something which I thought had been lost forever, either to a house clearance, various down-sizings or maybe just one move too many. The fact that I had, over the years, occasionally asked family members about it, clearly showed I had absolutely no idea whatsoever as to its location. Please do not worry, it is not some precious heirloom, well, not to the world at large, just to me. So, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you an old school project from when NaHaL wasn't so naturally high (tall). A snapshot of the wild (I hope) flora around me in the north east of England when I was a child. Back then, home was an old station house alongside a disused railway, the passengers and freight a distant memory, the infrastructure dismantled and even the track bed recycled for its stone. This left behind a barren substrate of polluted material courtesy of more than a hundred years of coal and diesel-powered locomotiv...

Whilst contemplating the reason for the recent lack of blog posting (a bloggage blockage, I suppose), the obvious conclusion was that a lack of wildlife watching (and therefore source material) was a major contributor to the problem. The causes of this were manifold: Weather - lots of it and all quite unpleasant; Work - when able (see below); Wellbeing - we picked up a cold bug at the end of November and it is taking some shifting; Wherewithal - our stamina has been hit for six. Let me clarify that statement about the lack of wildlife watching... there's been a lack of actively going outside with the intention of watching wildlife. Meanwhile, indoors, there's been much perusal of live webcams from at least four continents. I'm not complaining, mind, as I think we would have gone mad without the distraction from the previously-mentioned Four Double-ues of the Apocalypse.  Thankfully, there have been fleeting moments of Nature's magic to lift the spirits and gladden the h...

Our recent trip to Aberdeen for the Niteworks gig meant a couple of nights away from home. Outward bound, we sailed on the ferry from Shetland which called in at Kirkwall en route to Aberdeen. Leaving the ship the next morning, it wasn't until we were having breakfast in a cafe with a view of the harbour, that I noticed the huge mural on a building by the docks. This is " I am the keeper of magic " by Jasmin Siddiqui, a 12 floor tall mural adorning the Union Point building featuring a girl cradling a unicorn.  At this juncture, I recalled that the unicorn is Scotland's national animal, and wondered if this type of art was a branch of pointillism? After a leisurely breakfast and some clothes shopping, we checked into our hotel early to deposit our rucksacks into a room, before heading out to explore a bit of the city. Our previous visit to Aberdeen had been three years ago, and although back then our room looked out over Union Terrace Gardens, they were in the middle o...