Category: nature

Coasting

Gez and Lucy drove us to the seaside for the weekend, stopping en route to admire a neolithic monolith in a churchyard:
It was a glorious late-summer day, and we travelled on to Bempton cliffs…
…where we saw a tatty one-eyed jackdaw

and a plunging of gannets. Later we went to Scarborough and observed the moon over the water. After fish and chips on the prom from Winking Willy’s, A1 and A2 went back to Green Gables Hotel but Gez and Lucy went out on the razz. They were up for breakfast though.Thank you Lucy, thank you Gez and thank you Caroline for looking after our cats.
And back home, to end the day, a rainbow:

Spin Cycle

Another rider on the anemometer merry-go-round/ Look at that pigeon go!
A2 is reading City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer; a compendium of novellas concerning the imaginary city of Ambergris, with an appendix at least as long including information about squids, a partially decoded cryptic text, bibliographies, glossaries and tasting notes on the fonts employed. Reading it I was struck by the similarity to the works of Alasdair Gray and sure enough it turns out that Jeff is a massive fan of Alasdair and cites him as a mentor. Books send out hyphae into the literary subsoil and somewhere far away another book pops up like a mushroom.

Winter Blooms

18 months or so ago we took pictures of the weathered logs blocking the entrances to Scott Hall Playing Fields. Whether it is the age of the logs or the time of year, they are all now blooming with magnificent structures. Here are a few:A1 is reading Wild Animal* by Joel Dicker, a typically convoluted thriller, with two pretty loathsome intertwined families and a jewellery heist.

Fungal Infection

A2’s travels took her past many rotting tree trunks sporting a fine selection of fungi. Here are some of them.
In other news, geomagnetic activity was very lively this evening and, in a small gap in the black clouds, we photographed a purple thing in the sky which was possibly a STEVE. No aurora though.A2 is reading The Passengers on the Hankyu Line by Hiro Arikawa. Time was, writers like Yukio Mishima and Kenzaburo Oe dug into the raw depths of the human soul. Now it’s all trains or cats or both.

Bracket (Fungus)

Fruiting bodies in the woods.
A1 is reading The Einstein Girl by Philip Sington, a somewhat ponderously written “literary thriller” set in pre-WW2 Germany, about a psychiatrist treating an amnesiac woman who may or may not have some familial connection to Einstein. Well researched, and the rise of Nazism is grimly drawn, but overlong.
A2 is rereading The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman.

Autumn Fungus

Storm Amy has been blowing around us all day but there’s nothing to photograph so here are some mushrooms on a lawn up the road.
A1 is reading The Chemist by AA Dhand, who, having apparently exhausted the criminal possibilities of Bradford (in his Harry Virdee books), has turned his attention to Leeds. In particular Headingley and Beeston, with side trips to Beckett Park and Harehills. Who knew Headingley was such a pit of vice?
NB: When A1 did it, the Otley Run started in Leeds/Headingley, not in Otley. But being confused is pardonable, given the quantity of booze.
A2 is rereading the wonderful On Wings of Song by Thomas M Disch.

Autumn Crocus

Flowers with no leaves that grow in the woods at this time of year.
September was our rainiest September ever: 141.6mm, beating last year into second place, and our second coldest, only beaten by last year, but the solar panel output was close to average.
A1 is reading the unseasonal The Masquerades of Spring by Ben Aaronovitch, a Rivers of London “novella”. Time was when a 165-page book would be a fairly standard SF novel.

Not a Fun Guy

A Miserable Mushroom in the woods.
A1 is reading The Art of a Lie by Laura Shepherd-Robinson, a Georgian-era picaresque novel. Indeed, Henry Fielding, one of the originators of this type of fiction (Tom Jones), is a character. It’s very hard to write about this terrific and wonderfully well-written book without spoilers, so you’ll just have to read it yourself 🙂

Speckled Wood

New life on a dead tree.
A1 is reading A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering* by Andrew Hunter Murray — an enjoyable light read (if a bit overlong), and highly reminiscent of Andrew Cartmel’s Vinyl Detective books in style and characterisation. So much so that A1 wondered if a pseudonym was in effect here … it turns out not (AHM is a Private Eye contributor, among much else). But in the course of this wondering A1 discovered that, on that very day, a new Vinyl Detective book was published! Spooky or what? Anyway, duly ordered.
A2 is reading The Friends of Harry Perkins* by Chris Mullin.

Autumn Colour

A pretty tree. A2 spotted a bloke photographing it and stopped for a quick chat but instead got a lengthy lecture. Mansplainers eh?
We had chicken stew and apple crumble for our family dinner, did 2 old quizzes and scored 10.5 on one and 11.5 on the other.
A1 is rereading Bryant and May and the Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler. A2 is rereading Fundamental Disch by Thomas M Disch.

Thistle Do Nicely

There are no good clouds or wildlife at the moment so A2 is reduced to wandering the byways admiring the fine selection of weeds. When we deliberately attempt to plant wildflowers nothing comes up.
A1 is reading The Prey* by Yrsa Sigurdasdottir, a horror short story expanded tediously to novel length. A2 is reading Gallows Rock*, also by Yrsa Sigurdasdottir, which was not as ghastly as The Prey.