Wild Geese

Twenty years ago Little Egrets lived in places like the South of France not in the bucolic greenery of central southern England, but now two live in Hungerford, this one flying over Freeman's Marsh in the late October sunshine today.
Nor would I expect to see a Greylag Goose here; I always associate them with wild empty saltmarshes and the call of the curlew, but thirty plus were honking their way northwards over the River Dun this morning in a great diagonal line to who knows where.
And Stonechats - I thought they lived on Cornish clifftops, but now we have at least three clacking away on the same marsh, two males and a female.
Needless to say West Berkshire Council have given permission for a marina and hotel to be built on this Site of Special Scientific Interest, and the owners are busy advertising for investors. It beggars belief.

Rat

I had to kill a rat today. At first I thought it was an oversized dormouse shivering on the concrete by the washing machine, scrunched in and fluffed up. But it was a young rat. It had eaten poison. I picked it up by the tail and its legs cycled as if it was running slowly in a nightmare. I smashed it's head against the corner of a brick wall, but it's eye was still open looking at me. I smashed it again and it died hanging in the foetal position, paws pulled in, eyes closed. And it wet itself. It was a girl.

Kite

Watched a red kite sail on big lazy wings along the ridge of our 17th century cottage, searching for carrion like its medieval ancestors . Only a TV aerial spoiled the picture.

London Fashion Week

The highlight of the day was the Preen show, not so much because of the clothes which were very nice, but because the amazing venue at Lords Cricket Ground was so brightly lit that writers were complaining of headaches. But the models seemed to be floating in space, and the photographers had room to work, and we went away happy.
Those who think that catwalk photography is all glamour and fun and frippery, should know that a certain well respected British national newspaper uses one of its war photographers to cover the London, Milan and Paris collections.

Richard III - An Arab Tragedy

Photographed the dress rehearsal for 'Richard III - An Arab Tragedy' by the Sulayman Al-Bassam Theatre Company at the RSC's Swan Theatre. Just brilliant to watch Shakespeare's relevance to modern day Middle East - West politics, and mostly in Arabic too! Sulaman Al-Bassam was directing with a stinking cold, poor man. The photograph shows Richard III in his "My kingdom for a horse" moment played by Fazek Kazak.
(Richard was the ruthless one who's thought to have killed the princes in the tower to secure the crown and was ousted and killed in battle two years later by Henry Tudor)

Snow

Global warming went on hold in England today for 24hours and for once it snowed, and it was just a treat to look at. Thing was, I drove 180 problem-free miles to Stratford-upon-Avon and back. My writer couldn't make it from London because the trains were disrupted by weather. Airports were closed for part of the day, schools closed, and people stayed at home. I sometimes feel guilty about using a car so much, no matter how low its emissions, and repeatedly hear politicians spouting off on the subject of overcowded roads, but it's usually me that turns up on time, not the public transport users, bless their cotton socks.

Shipwrecked Napoli

Visited the beach at Branscombe yesterday, where some of the looting from the MSC Napoli was pretty disgusting: all of a South African family's possessions taken from one container, for example, but most was just very sad. Two men were dragging a small engine block two or three miles uphill to where their white van was parked - just how much would its scrap value be? Oak barrels had to make the same journey along winding lanes - just how much is an improvised rain-butt worth?

The pull must be that it is free. No matter how pointless the object or how great the effort, the triumph is in getting something for nothing.

One surprise was how far out the Napoli was grounded after seeing all the telephoto images in the papers. The other was how few police were on the beach: they were all too busy directing traffic in the clogged up lanes that lead down to Branscombe.

Saving the planet

I was just in Somerfields supermarket, where neatly packaged courgettes from Spain in a little plastic tray were three times the price per kilogram (all but 6 pence) of identical loose courgettes from Spain. I watched a stream of people picking up the packaged ones.

We blame the supermarkets for using too much packaging, importing food by air and so on, but if customers actually prefer to pay almost three times the price to have packaging around their vegetables, what hope for the planet?

Wessex Downs

I walked up on Walbury Hill near Inkpen today and saw a buzzard and a red kite sharing the same updraft; the wind was so strong the kite was flying backwards at times. Eight Roe deer made their way across the fields below, grazing at first, but then in full flight as something unseen startled them. Returning down the lanes I stopped the car fifteen feet from a hovering kestrel, close enough to see every feather, and with the car window closed it ignored me. It's wings were working like crazy in the blustering wind, but keeping its head and eyes absolutely still relative to the ground below, and then after several minutes it dropped the few feet to the ground and flew away with a vole in its talons.

Walbury Hill is a fortified iron aged settlement dating back about 2700years with ditch and bank defences. Walking across it is a half mile walk from one set of defences to those on the other side, nearly as far as walking up nearby Hungerford's High Street. It must have been a major population centre all those years ago, but now it's an isolated place with views across much of Berkshire and the wind whistling in across nearby Gallows Down. There was a raven here just before Christmas, but it seems to have moved on.

Clacton on Sea

Had to photograph a Granny in Clacton, far from West Berks on yesterday's day of storms. Blown over trucks and lorries littered the roads, some motorways were closed, railways out. Everywhere lines of lorries parked in laybyes waiting for the wind to subside. A man unconcious on a pavement in Clacton wrapped in a policeman's day-glo visibility jacket, worried faces crouched around him, waiting for an ambulance. Clacton didn't even manage to achieve that depressing (but somehow appealing) gloom of Englsh sea side towns in winter. Just a line of holiday flats along a shore. The only building of interest was being allowed to rot away over a Weatherspoons pub.

Oxford brass

Looking for JRR Tolkein's old house in Oxford yesterday, I came across this brass plate on a doorway. Thanks goodness she's not a brain surgeon.

Oxford brass
Originally uploaded by jpequal.

The Road

I've just finished Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". The journey of a starving father and son struggling through a post armaggedon wasteland makes Nevile Shutes post nuclear story "On the Beach" seem positively jolly. In the end though, their repetitive mind numbing struggle against impossible odds towards an unknown future leaves a spark of optimism about what the love between a father and son can acheive when everything else is stripped away. The most moving book I can remember. Prepare to feel as if you have been clubbed around the head.