For the Birds
It was the prospect of hearing a unique, polyphonic, surround-sound musical that did it.
In a rash moment I can’t actually remember now, I agreed to get up and listen to the dawn chorus in nearby Dulwich Wood last weekend but, if you have ever risen early for this, you’ll know that Listening to the Dawn Chorus is an example of something that is Easier Said Than Done. That is, if you don’t have a three-month-old child, are an insomniac, or, er, a dairy farmer.
The issue with the dawn chorus is that it begins at least an hour before dawn, which is a problem for me those who suffer a degree of separation anxiety when parted from their beds for too long. So the 4am start last weekend wasn’t without its challenges. In fact the morning’s preliminaries went something like this:
V: Groan. What’s the time?
Fella: [Chirpily] Six thirty!
V: [Looks at clock] It’s fourteen minutes past four!
Since this rude awakening, I have discovered that in The Wonderful Weekend Book, Elspeth Thompson suggested that the hardest part of hearing the dawn chorus is getting up – or staying up all night, perhaps – at an unreasonable hour. It’s gratifying to know she had the same problem.
Fortunately Dulwich Wood – an exquisite, gloriously unpubliscised spot of London I’m almost loath to tell you about – was within walking distance and it wasn’t long before we were in the depths of a near iridescent wonderland, whispering and creeping about as if we were participating in a wildlife documentary.
But amid the green and to our delight we heard wrens – supposed to have taken a knock this year in the absence of winter food - blackbirds, blackcaps, robins and song thrushes. We also stalked a tawny owl for a bit, although I’m sure the joke was on us for that one.
Moving through the wood, it was interesting to pass through various territories and hear the according variances in song. I’ve read that at this time of year birdsong is crucial for establishing this territory – and for attracting a mate. In avian terms, it’s kind of now or never. Knowing that, you can almost hear the desperation in the males’ voices.
I’d hoped to be able to post a recording of the birdsong, with free breathing, footfall and aeroplane noise thrown in, but that hasn’t been possible, unfortunately. A picture of some lime tree leaves will have to suffice.
The RSPB has some useful information on the topic and suggests that birdsong carries up to twenty times further in the early morning, when the air is still and background noise reduced. Reason enough, perhaps, to consider getting out of bed before dawn again. Ha, ha.
Sugar and Spice and All Things Nice
When you have spent almost an entire sunny weekend day indoors, there is nothing like popping outside and being confronted by a sea of hobbling marathon runners to make you feel like a total slug – especially if the only constructive thing you have done all Sunday is make Lemon Drizzle Cake.
Lemon Drizzle Cake? Well, it began with a homemade recipe book I bought last week at the Open Garden I mentioned in my previous post. I love homemade recipe books, especially when they are called things like Other People’s Cakes, as this one is. That said, I must admit that the recipes in this one do sound a little suggestive – Granny Meg’s Fruit Cake with Ginger, for instance, or Nellie’s Gateau au Chocolat. I’ll stop before I blush.
What got me onto making cakes this weekend was a miserable packet of malted biscuits I’d bought, earlier in the week, in the hope that they’d fill a little tea time gap. My, was I disappointed: they tasted of precisely nothing, the reason for which became abundantly clear as soon as I read the ingredients list (which I ought to have done in the first place). It was palm oil and corn syrup, rather than butter and sugar, that were sinking their way to my hips. What a shameful waste of calories.
This does, however, bring me to two blogs I’ve wanted to tell you about for some time. The first is Wandering Gaia, belonging to science and nature writer Gaia Vince,who has the kind of career I’d love were I more intrepid and better at figures. Previously an editor at Nature and then New Scientist, she’s travelling the world looking at how climate change is affecting those most vulnerable to it. She’s already visited Indonesia, where natural forest is being cleared to accommodate our palm oil habit.
The second is from über blogger and ladies’ man James Alexander Sinclair, usually of Blogging from Blackpitts, who has begun (ok, a while ago now) with some mates a blog all about biscuits. Unsurprisingly, it’s called Encounters with Remarkable Biscuits. I’d recommend a nice cup of tea and a happy hour dipping into it.
The picture is of some blossom, which I’m beginning to think is all rather too ephemeral for my good mental health. You spend months anticipating the stuff, it arrives and, before you know it, it’s over, gathering in papery drifts on the pavement. That sounds like a lot of things, actually – a slice of Lemon Drizzle Cake being one. I’d post a picture, only it’s all gone.
Suffolk Seaside
There are certainly more exciting places in the world to visit than Suffolk’s villages, but then one doesn’t generally associate places with names like Walberswick, Saxmundham and Yoxford with bright lights and dancing girls, anyway.
That’s not to say you wouldn’t find dancing girls in the district. It’s just that, well, in that part of the world, the odds are best placed on you attempting to stumble home by the bright light of the North Star after a heady night with Peronelle’s Blush – a local cider laced with a shot of blackberry liqueur.
By day the quirky fishing villages along the coastal strip from Aldeburgh to Southwold are redolent of an older England, where, it seems, no ill could happen.
‘That’s a myth,’ I was told. ‘That England has never existed.’
Well, I expect that’s true but it didn’t stop me filling up a couple of memory cards – what an apt term – with pictures.
One morning, on a beach near Dunwich, we met some fishermen, one of whom had noticed the flash of a herring in the shallows and had caught the fish with his hands. It gulped and gasped for air while he held it.
‘Would you like it?’ he asked in a Suffolk burr. ‘It’ll need gutting.’ It felt like a test; a challenge for an out-of-towner fretting about a suffocating fish.
‘Ok. If you bash it on the head,’ I answered, remembering vaguely that I had gutted the one and only fish – a trout – that I have caught on a fly.
He took a pebble to its skull and wrapped it in a bag for me to take home. Rigor mortis had set in by the time we got in and in the end I didn’t gut it. It was baked whole and given to Treacle dog instead, which seemed a bit like wasting a life.
The fishermen said the cod have been slow this year.
This boat, pulled up on Aldeburgh beach next to a tumbledown shed advertising potted crab, hasn’t been out in a long time.
And some seaside pioneers, hardy things growing where nothing else will. Any idea what they are?
2 comments