SLOW DOWN! MOORHEN CHICKS IN ROAD! These crudely written words, accompanied by a rudimentary drawing of one large and two smaller balls with legs, appeared early this summer on a wooden placard in the verge beside the village pond. Unfortunately its presence only served to highlight the recent decline of the once proud pond, now all but disappeared under the weight of aquatic vegetation that was slowly suffocating the moorhens’ habitat, which presumably explained their presence on the road.
And so it was only natural that a rallying call should go out via the village newsletter. On the allotted day, armed with strimmer and gardening shears, I headed for the pond and rounded the corner to find a dozen people up to their thighs in water, ripping up weed with relish. Some were village stalwarts, others I didn’t recognise but they had marshalled themselves into a formidable force. As the morning wore on more helpers arrived, ranging in age from seven to seventy, and leapt into the quagmire in footwear ranging from thigh length waders to a fetching pair of blue Crocs, little protection against the stinking mud that had now been churned up. Every now and then we would take a break, retiring to the bus shelter across the lane which was now serving as a drinks station, buoyed by the thought of the communal barbeque that had been promised for the afternoon.
It soon became apparent that manual labour alone was not going to get the pond cleared in time and so a flurry of mobile phone calls summonsed the big guns. First to arrive was the local farmer with a mobile pump, sucking up the sludge and then squirting it down a storm drain near the bus shelter. Stirring up the effluent thus had the effect of increasing the putrifying smell and creating a black slick across the road. Another turned up with a large trailer on the back of a Land Rover, into which the harvested weed was piled into a steaming heap. Despite this it was still difficult to see the extent of the pond, small pockets of water being all that was visible between the bull rushes. It was then that we heard the distant rumble of the cavalry, or rather Charlie Matlock’s ancient grey digger. Farming types round here tend to be old school: if there’s no need to say anything don’t; with little more than an eyelid flutter of recognition Charlie was over the bank and axle deep in water, causing the rest of us to scatter for cover as he wielded the machine’s bucket with impunity. Within half an hour the job was finished, the pond denuded, the only sign of Charlie’s erstwhile presence being the two deeply rutted tyre tracks in the bank from where he had made his exit.
Having cleared the pond of weed it has now become clear that the water is so laden with sediment that it will continue to appear as a black sludge unless something else is done. So naturally the fire brigade was called. This is not as irresponsible as it may at first appear, given that the village is located just a few miles from the Fire Service College, one of the world’s leading training centres; should they be enthused we could have the pond sucked dry in a nano second, allowing any remaining sediment to be removed and the pond to refill with clean water over the winter.
Of the moorhens there has been no sight; if they were lucky enough to escape being sucked or scooped up they have clearly decided that the Stygian puddle the villagers created bears no resemblance to their former habitat, and have chosen to make their home elsewhere.
Next week the SWAT squad turn their attention to the church. The vicar, famous not just for his powerful deliveries from the pulpit but also for a leg spinner that stumped the great Geoffrey Boycott in a charity cricket match many years ago, has agreed to let the team ‘tidy up’ the graveyard. Worryingly the call to arms mentions, with some relish, that this includes ripping up the lavender path that leads to the vestry and replacing it with box.
I only hope for the sake of the parishioners that Charlie’s digger doesn’t fit through the lych-gate.
Wednesday, 4 March 2009
Canceled! This hastily scrawled misspelt message appeared on a board outside the entrance to the Moreton Agricultural Show early on the opening day, but despite the organisers’ best efforts, not before some exhibitors had started out. By mid morning the town centre was corralled by 4x4’s, animal transporters and horse boxes, all trying to park in spaces designed for a family saloon. Our teenage daughter was beside herself, no longer able to ‘hang out’ - meaning she could no longer stand a few feet away from her friends frantically texting ‘Like, where are you?’ Sorry that should read ‘Like, wo u?’
But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, this being the latest of many events to be abandoned to the weather this summer: fetes, cricket matches, even the Fairford Air Show have all been washed away. And whose fault is this? It seems it’s the very creatures due to be paraded around the central arena at the Moreton Show - cattle. Despite having lived harmoniously with man for hundreds of years these hapless beasts have suddenly incurred the wrath of the Green Police for doing nothing other than expressing their pleasure at having a good meal.
Things have become so bad that last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has just announced the best way to help save the planet is to become a vegan. In a single stroke this will reduce the emission of global greenhouse gasses by a fifth, allowing Ryanair to continue to fly to obscure European destinations for under a fiver and Yummy Mummies to carry on doing the school run in their Chelsea tractors for years to come.
Unfortunately, when it comes to cattle I have to admit that my interest is more steak than animal, and I’m woefully uninformed about the beast that provides my meal. I know they tend to face north, they fall over at night, they are unbelievably inquisitive and yes, they produce methane by the bucket load. But that’s it. Regarding their directional orientation this is not something I have had the time or inclination to observe first hand, but as is the way with things of such import a team of researchers have wangled a government grant to spy on the creatures from near space. Having studied satellite images to determine the input end of these grass processors does indeed face north, they have then concluded the animals must possess an internal compass which picks up the earth’s magnetic field and forces them into line.
The next two observations are personal. As a country boy living opposite a farm the closest I got to misspending my youth was creeping up on somnambulistic cows in the middle of the night and pushing them over. During the day, I would impress my friends by lying in the middle of a field of animals and staying there until I was completely surrounded. The trick was to remain dead still and keep your eyes shut, wait until they started jostling for position and one or two of the more adventurous licked your face, then suddenly sit bolt upright and go BOO! The ensuing mayhem this created always raised a laugh and it became my party piece even into early adult life. That is, until I read that someone had been trampled to death trying the same trick.
That cows produce methane is a universally observed truth, known undoubtedly from the earliest days when Adam set sail with two of them in a confined space. That they have now been fingered as a major contributor to greenhouse gasses, and the net effect this has had on the climate, seems a tad unfair.
But all this may be about to change, in light of events taking place this week in Geneva. On the surface of it nothing ever changes in this beautiful lakeside city, but 600 feet underground, out of sight of prying eyes a chap from Wales called Evans has just switched on a machine that might make us yearn for the days when Switzerland was preoccupied with filling her fields with cows to provide milk for chocolate.
In a vast tunnel seventeen miles long scientists will smash protons into each other at the speed of light to recreate what the universe was like in the moments after the Big Bang. But they’ll also investigate global warming, in particular a theory held by some that the rate of cloud formation in the atmosphere is linked to the level of cosmic rays, which in turn will show there are other factors besides greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change. And that’s got to be good news for cows.
But there is a downside, and quite a big one at that. It s detractors believe that causing the very building blocks of the universe to have a sort of car crash at the speed of light will in turn generate mini black holes deep within the earth’s crust. These holes will suck in all surrounding light and material wherever they form and should you or I be unfortunate enough to be near one when it happens, we will disappear into a Stygian blackness of suspended animation, from which we may never emerge.
But on the bright side, we are told, a beam of light could burst to the surface unannounced, freeing itself from the black hole at any time. (Should such a thing happen in the middle of a field of cows the resultant increase in methane levels this would cause is incalculable). But then as quickly as it appeared the beam could disappear back into the hole, taking its surroundings with it, only to reappear somewhere else, say, on the other side of the world, cows and all.
So there are the options: remove all traces of bovine existence from the planet and possibly reduce the emission of global warming by 20%, or set out to prove that greenhouse gasses are just a politician’s plaything and cause Earth to disappear in the process. There is a third option:just leave things alone and see what happens, after all there is well documented evidence of the planet exhibiting periods of abnormal temperature shifts in the past.
Whilst the debate rages I’m off to the butchers; we’re running low on meat.
But it shouldn’t have come as a surprise, this being the latest of many events to be abandoned to the weather this summer: fetes, cricket matches, even the Fairford Air Show have all been washed away. And whose fault is this? It seems it’s the very creatures due to be paraded around the central arena at the Moreton Show - cattle. Despite having lived harmoniously with man for hundreds of years these hapless beasts have suddenly incurred the wrath of the Green Police for doing nothing other than expressing their pleasure at having a good meal.
Things have become so bad that last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, Dr Rajendra Pachauri, has just announced the best way to help save the planet is to become a vegan. In a single stroke this will reduce the emission of global greenhouse gasses by a fifth, allowing Ryanair to continue to fly to obscure European destinations for under a fiver and Yummy Mummies to carry on doing the school run in their Chelsea tractors for years to come.
Unfortunately, when it comes to cattle I have to admit that my interest is more steak than animal, and I’m woefully uninformed about the beast that provides my meal. I know they tend to face north, they fall over at night, they are unbelievably inquisitive and yes, they produce methane by the bucket load. But that’s it. Regarding their directional orientation this is not something I have had the time or inclination to observe first hand, but as is the way with things of such import a team of researchers have wangled a government grant to spy on the creatures from near space. Having studied satellite images to determine the input end of these grass processors does indeed face north, they have then concluded the animals must possess an internal compass which picks up the earth’s magnetic field and forces them into line.
The next two observations are personal. As a country boy living opposite a farm the closest I got to misspending my youth was creeping up on somnambulistic cows in the middle of the night and pushing them over. During the day, I would impress my friends by lying in the middle of a field of animals and staying there until I was completely surrounded. The trick was to remain dead still and keep your eyes shut, wait until they started jostling for position and one or two of the more adventurous licked your face, then suddenly sit bolt upright and go BOO! The ensuing mayhem this created always raised a laugh and it became my party piece even into early adult life. That is, until I read that someone had been trampled to death trying the same trick.
That cows produce methane is a universally observed truth, known undoubtedly from the earliest days when Adam set sail with two of them in a confined space. That they have now been fingered as a major contributor to greenhouse gasses, and the net effect this has had on the climate, seems a tad unfair.
But all this may be about to change, in light of events taking place this week in Geneva. On the surface of it nothing ever changes in this beautiful lakeside city, but 600 feet underground, out of sight of prying eyes a chap from Wales called Evans has just switched on a machine that might make us yearn for the days when Switzerland was preoccupied with filling her fields with cows to provide milk for chocolate.
In a vast tunnel seventeen miles long scientists will smash protons into each other at the speed of light to recreate what the universe was like in the moments after the Big Bang. But they’ll also investigate global warming, in particular a theory held by some that the rate of cloud formation in the atmosphere is linked to the level of cosmic rays, which in turn will show there are other factors besides greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change. And that’s got to be good news for cows.
But there is a downside, and quite a big one at that. It s detractors believe that causing the very building blocks of the universe to have a sort of car crash at the speed of light will in turn generate mini black holes deep within the earth’s crust. These holes will suck in all surrounding light and material wherever they form and should you or I be unfortunate enough to be near one when it happens, we will disappear into a Stygian blackness of suspended animation, from which we may never emerge.
But on the bright side, we are told, a beam of light could burst to the surface unannounced, freeing itself from the black hole at any time. (Should such a thing happen in the middle of a field of cows the resultant increase in methane levels this would cause is incalculable). But then as quickly as it appeared the beam could disappear back into the hole, taking its surroundings with it, only to reappear somewhere else, say, on the other side of the world, cows and all.
So there are the options: remove all traces of bovine existence from the planet and possibly reduce the emission of global warming by 20%, or set out to prove that greenhouse gasses are just a politician’s plaything and cause Earth to disappear in the process. There is a third option:just leave things alone and see what happens, after all there is well documented evidence of the planet exhibiting periods of abnormal temperature shifts in the past.
Whilst the debate rages I’m off to the butchers; we’re running low on meat.
The Broadband Revolution
After many years campaigning, a decent broadband service has finally reached the last of the houses in the village. Ours. I couldn’t wait: for more years than I care to remember I’ve watched the phone bill balloon alarmingly as my computer tried to connect with the internet down a phone line previously serving an octogenarian lady who shared her house with two horses, with little need for contact with the outside world. BT had been up and down the pole outside the house more times than a monkey on speed: testing the line (faulty), adding gain (no difference) and covering the pole with yellow triangles condemning it to firewood, yet still it took several minutes to access any site that had graphics more advanced than a straight line. Eventually they concluded the reason for our non-connection was that the broadband was trying to come down an old copper wire installed by the GPO, already clogged with broadband data serving our more fortunate neighbours. Now at last the day had arrived: the line had been upgraded and my new equipment installed. I was ready to surf the net like a beach bum in Hawaii.
It had been four long years since the first signatures were collected at the August Fruit and Flower Festival in Farmer Harrison’s cow shed which had been hastily cleaned in preparation for the event; so hastily in fact that the day was distinctly more fauna than flora. Our young son was discovering the joys of horticulture and throughout the summer months had carefully nurtured a sunflower from seed in a plastic drinking cup. The resulting plant, rather anaemic but still over two feet tall, was in danger of toppling over the side of its absurdly small container when I finally succumbed to his pleas to enter it in the Festival. Competition was fierce and normally no quarter would be given to a seven year old boy and a weedy sunflower, but a quiet word with the organiser and a misleading suggestion that they could use our paddock for next year’s village fete got him a wildcard.
On the morning of the ‘festival’ - an event that historically attracted at best double digit figures - a fight developed between Henry and his younger sister over who would carry the sunflower on their lap in the car. In the ensuing tussle a couple of petals parted company before eventually brute strength prevailed and Henry settled triumphantly into the front passenger seat. I could only watch in horror as Millie, in a fit of pique and screaming like a Banshee, slammed the door shut trapping the stem just below the flower. Henry however didn’t seem to notice, at least until we arrived at our destination and as he pushed opened the door the partially severed head flopped down into his face. He was still very much a novice gardener and a bit of outright lying eventually persuaded him that some Sellotape from the glove compartment, wrapped around the stem, would rectify the problem.
And so Henry’s Sunflower, as described by the hand written card beneath it, came to be displayed on a large trestle table, carefully hidden behind a wonderful Rhizomatous Begonia and a bush of French Lavender. As we waited for the judging to finish, we wandered round the byre looking at the other exhibits: an odd assortment of cottage garden perennials and house plants, fat and succulent vegetables, and a table laden with amateur art, mainly oils of sunsets over lavender fields, still life and a rather risque nude, rumoured to be of a local, now faded television actress, painted by herself. For his efforts Henry received a hand written blue sticker: 3rd Prize, Best Sunflower. This was somewhat disingenuous of the organisers as it prompted all sorts of questions about what category the plant had been placed in, and if it was in sunflowers, with his the only apparent representative of the genus, why was he third?
A lecture about it not being the winning but the taking part clinched it and we wandered outside to see what else there was on offer. Around the courtyard straw bales had been piled up to form tables on which were arranged collections of old books, what looked like the contents of someone’s attic, some home-made cakes and, next to the tea urn, a man with a clip board. He made no attempt to advertise his presence either by way of a sign or by canvassing, and it was only by assuming that he was connected to the tea urn and asking for a drink that we learnt about the arrival of Broadband. It seemed that BT had set targets that had to be met before the service could be considered; in the case of our village some two hundred names which, given that it is mainly comprised of retirees and the figure quoted represents pretty much the entire population, looked like a cruel joke. Worse still the man with the clipboard, who claimed to represent the local business community, had only three names on his sheet. More out of sympathy than any belief that it would ever happen we spent the next ten minutes adding ourselves, the children (with my wife’s maiden name), my long-departed grandmother and friends we knew in London, all in different handwriting styles, and in the case of Granny, in a different coloured ink from a pen I found in my top pocket.
There must have been a rush of visitors to view Henry’s Sunflower after we left, or Clipboard Man had discovered a secret part of the village still unknown to us but whatever, two years later his dream had become the village’s reality. Except for us; we would have to wait the same time again. So it was with a sense of mounting expectation that last week I wired up the equipment, copied the software, followed the instructions and pressed the go button. Nothing happened. Well that’s not strictly true. The new software overwrote my existing connection details and turned my computer back into a word processor. A call to the Helpline revealed that the exchange wasn’t ready, but tomorrow should do it. And sure enough it did. I think perhaps my expectations were too high, believing that the pages of a website would arrive like the images on TV, but there is a marked improvement, and I can now use the phone at the same time as surfing.
Which is good news because I can’t get out the door. The arrival of my new connection has meant the death knell for the poor telegraph post across the road, which I had become rather fond of with its little yellow triangles everywhere; worse still it has necessitated a trench which seems to reach its messiest and deepest point outside our gate. For the time being we cannot get out but I am comforted by the knowledge that I can now order a pizza in super-speed time. Even if they don’t deliver to the Cotswolds.
It had been four long years since the first signatures were collected at the August Fruit and Flower Festival in Farmer Harrison’s cow shed which had been hastily cleaned in preparation for the event; so hastily in fact that the day was distinctly more fauna than flora. Our young son was discovering the joys of horticulture and throughout the summer months had carefully nurtured a sunflower from seed in a plastic drinking cup. The resulting plant, rather anaemic but still over two feet tall, was in danger of toppling over the side of its absurdly small container when I finally succumbed to his pleas to enter it in the Festival. Competition was fierce and normally no quarter would be given to a seven year old boy and a weedy sunflower, but a quiet word with the organiser and a misleading suggestion that they could use our paddock for next year’s village fete got him a wildcard.
On the morning of the ‘festival’ - an event that historically attracted at best double digit figures - a fight developed between Henry and his younger sister over who would carry the sunflower on their lap in the car. In the ensuing tussle a couple of petals parted company before eventually brute strength prevailed and Henry settled triumphantly into the front passenger seat. I could only watch in horror as Millie, in a fit of pique and screaming like a Banshee, slammed the door shut trapping the stem just below the flower. Henry however didn’t seem to notice, at least until we arrived at our destination and as he pushed opened the door the partially severed head flopped down into his face. He was still very much a novice gardener and a bit of outright lying eventually persuaded him that some Sellotape from the glove compartment, wrapped around the stem, would rectify the problem.
And so Henry’s Sunflower, as described by the hand written card beneath it, came to be displayed on a large trestle table, carefully hidden behind a wonderful Rhizomatous Begonia and a bush of French Lavender. As we waited for the judging to finish, we wandered round the byre looking at the other exhibits: an odd assortment of cottage garden perennials and house plants, fat and succulent vegetables, and a table laden with amateur art, mainly oils of sunsets over lavender fields, still life and a rather risque nude, rumoured to be of a local, now faded television actress, painted by herself. For his efforts Henry received a hand written blue sticker: 3rd Prize, Best Sunflower. This was somewhat disingenuous of the organisers as it prompted all sorts of questions about what category the plant had been placed in, and if it was in sunflowers, with his the only apparent representative of the genus, why was he third?
A lecture about it not being the winning but the taking part clinched it and we wandered outside to see what else there was on offer. Around the courtyard straw bales had been piled up to form tables on which were arranged collections of old books, what looked like the contents of someone’s attic, some home-made cakes and, next to the tea urn, a man with a clip board. He made no attempt to advertise his presence either by way of a sign or by canvassing, and it was only by assuming that he was connected to the tea urn and asking for a drink that we learnt about the arrival of Broadband. It seemed that BT had set targets that had to be met before the service could be considered; in the case of our village some two hundred names which, given that it is mainly comprised of retirees and the figure quoted represents pretty much the entire population, looked like a cruel joke. Worse still the man with the clipboard, who claimed to represent the local business community, had only three names on his sheet. More out of sympathy than any belief that it would ever happen we spent the next ten minutes adding ourselves, the children (with my wife’s maiden name), my long-departed grandmother and friends we knew in London, all in different handwriting styles, and in the case of Granny, in a different coloured ink from a pen I found in my top pocket.
There must have been a rush of visitors to view Henry’s Sunflower after we left, or Clipboard Man had discovered a secret part of the village still unknown to us but whatever, two years later his dream had become the village’s reality. Except for us; we would have to wait the same time again. So it was with a sense of mounting expectation that last week I wired up the equipment, copied the software, followed the instructions and pressed the go button. Nothing happened. Well that’s not strictly true. The new software overwrote my existing connection details and turned my computer back into a word processor. A call to the Helpline revealed that the exchange wasn’t ready, but tomorrow should do it. And sure enough it did. I think perhaps my expectations were too high, believing that the pages of a website would arrive like the images on TV, but there is a marked improvement, and I can now use the phone at the same time as surfing.
Which is good news because I can’t get out the door. The arrival of my new connection has meant the death knell for the poor telegraph post across the road, which I had become rather fond of with its little yellow triangles everywhere; worse still it has necessitated a trench which seems to reach its messiest and deepest point outside our gate. For the time being we cannot get out but I am comforted by the knowledge that I can now order a pizza in super-speed time. Even if they don’t deliver to the Cotswolds.
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