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A personal weblog with photographs and comments. Quiet ramblings, quite rambling...

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• London Mayor - (1)
  
• Looking Greenwich up and down - (2)
  
• Police incident in Tandridge - (2)
  
• British War Criminals - (2)
  
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• What really happened in Croydon? - (3)
  
• Bike hire in Berlin - (1)
  
• Brandenberg Gate - (1)
  
• Three Way Chess - (1)
  
• Gamelan instruments - (2)
  
• Oh no! John! - (2)
  
• “Bells and Smells” Mass - (1)
  
• Turn cash into less cash - (6)
  

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This is an outhouse at Trericket Mill in Wales. The outhouse is for the use of campers (who I think also have use of a communal bathroom in the mill guesthouse).  I love Trericket, having visted there a number of times. They are a vegetarian guesthouse, and I believe they will feature in next year’s ecoscape, the green travel guide.

ecoescape was founded by Laura Burgess, a communications specialist working in the tourism industry. After working in marketing and communications for tourism destination marketing bodies at regional and sub-regional level in the East Midlands, Laura became increasingly aware of the lack of accessible information available about sustainable travel in the UK which has traditionally focused on travel abroad.

Laura set up ecoescape as an independent enterprise to ensure that the people and environment remain central to its purpose. All profits go back into making the sustainable tourism industry exactly as the name suggests: sustainable. Ultimately the project aims to help integrate sustainability into every aspect of the industry and sees its place as integral to changing consumer perceptions through communication so that demand for sustainability increases into the future.

ecoescape’s first project is the launch of a green travel guide in spring 2007. The guide will be the first free guide to green tourism in the UK and has received support from the National Lottery Fund. Alongside the guide, educational and industry events will take place to promote sustainable tourism focusing entirely on the UK.

ecoscape also has a blog.

This video shows the final eight minutes or so of Mudkip’s concert last night. It commences with a performance of We three swingers by The Teachers, followed by Can Can by the RSO Juniors (conducted by Lindsay Leighton) followed by Away in a Manger and We Wish You A Merry Christmas by the Joint Orchestras (also conducted by Lindsay Leighton).  The other teacher in the first performance on the clip is William Bass.  I hereby suggest the following motto for these young musicians:

Better sharp than out of tune.

This evening I went to another of these mad hat affairs (this time not for Pinkie but for my Dharma Daughter). She’s the one with the Mother Christmas hat that stands up better than the others’.  Her trick is to stuff a rat in the hat. It was the fund-raising Christmas Concert of Prelude Strings and RSO Junior. I caught the second half of the concert on video, and at the end of the concert Mudkip strolling over to the conductor and explaining the hat trick to her.

Did I mention that I had put a short video of Savannah, a number performed by the Surrey County Percussion Ensemble at the Towards the Unknown Region gala at the Royal Albert Hall last week?  Apologies for the quality - it was shot with my mobile phone.

I don’t know what’s been nibbling at this toadstool. It was described today in a Sindy article as highly poisonous. Fine. It stinks too. God must have made it like this for the same reason that she made metholated spirits purple: to discourage tramps from eating it. Perhaps birds and fieldmice don’t see the same colours as we do.

Here are some interesting extracts from the aforementioned Sindy article (that appeared in The Sunday Review magazine - not yet online).  The author Emma Townshend takes a walk in the woods with Justin Ruddle, the national Trust warden of Slindon Woods (West Sussex), as part of a National Trust off-season activity.

What starts as a whimsical weekend becomes a real experience on conversion. As we walk and talk, Ruddle’s enthusiasm spreads to me and all my fellow fungi-hunters. Far from being a prelude to culinary activity, on this walk, he encourages us to “look and leave”, while telling us about the forest ecosystem, as well as stuffing our heads with remarkable facts about pavement mushrooms splitting Tarmac as they come up, and the fungi that can only grow on London Underground seat cushions.

Unfortunately that’s the only bit about fungi on the London Underground. May they devote a future feature article to this subject, and answer questions such as What do these fungi live off?. My guess would be body sweat, and spilled fast-food and drink.

The article does explain how the forest fungi fit into the local ecosystem:

Ruddle’s primary goal is to get us to see this woodland as a system. Just as orchids can’t grow without their own particular friendly fungi, trees seem to do better with the local mushrooms living among their roots, exchanging nutrients for tree sugars. He explains: “In the storm of 1987 we lost so many beeches that the village was cut off for three or four days. But when we replanted with outside trees, we found that they don’t do as well as ones native to this spot, that have grown here from the start, right from seed”.

These mutually beneficial associations of tree and fungi are called “mycorrhizae”, and the invisible underground trading floor is increasingly seen as crucial to the survival of many tree species, particularly as climate change puts greater pressure on them. “Our understanding of what fungi do is changing all the time,” says Ruddle, who is trying to use his expertise to look after the woodland as a whole. Some more hostile fungi, for example Ustulina, rot a tree at the base, creating a risk that it may suddenly break at the bottom. Some eat out the heartwood. And some appear to be able to change the biochemistry of a part of a tree they “capture”, making the tree’s cells work slightly differently, for their own benefit. In general though, most fungi are doing mucn more good for their trees than I had ever realised.

I found the article fascinating. As I read these words I wonder how the village was cut off by losing so many beeches: Are they used as a local (Tarzanesque) means of transportation perhaps?

Anyway, that’s an aside: thinking about the crux of the article I wonder if they are researching the effect of the 2012 Olympic Games on the fungi of the London Underground.  All those foreign bodies coming into London and sitting on the train seats could disrupt the delicate and yet crucial ecology of our capital city’s subterranean transport system.

Pinkie had a friend sleep over last night and today I dropped them at Godstone Station so they could get the train to Tunbridge Wells. Pinkie came back this evening, via another friend’s party in Redhill. The train coming back was apparently delayed - due to knock-on from a vehicle striking a railway bridge near Sevenoaks.

This got me thinking that it would be useful if we had a better integrated public transport system in South East Surrey and West Kent. For starters it would be good if the two railway lines - the Oxted/Uckfield line and the Redhill/Tonbridge line - connected. A regular and reliable bus service that connected up the train services would be good.  This list is confusing. This is more user-friendly, but ultimately a service from Oxted to South Godstone, and from Oxted to Sevenoaks, would be useful.  And this sort of brings my mind back to the question of how much money has the council spent on traffic information signs (presumably for cars), and for what end?

These signs appeared around Tandridge district several months ago. Lately their plastic coverings have started peeling like that on a two-day old mobile phone, and yet they are still not operational.

In vain I have searched the Internet, including the Tandridge District Council and Surrey County Council websites and been unable to find any further information about these constructions. I wonder what problem they are supposed to address, how much they cost and what service they will provide? 

Today it is Mocker’s birthday, and we gathered at his place for supper and a ginger cake tart. He proudly showed us a book that has been written about him. 

Because I love the Royal Albert Hall so much I am adding this photograph which is a composite of two separate photographs and which as a result has a small amount of distortion.

There is information about the hall and its history at Wikipedia, including a strange list of “famous concerts”. 

The thing with blogging “live” as I was yesterday from the Royal Albert Hall is that I don’t find it easy to compose long email messages from my mobile phone. Hence I didn’t give much information about the show, which was The Unknown Region organised by Surrey County Arts.  The evening involved performances by massed choirs, the Surrey County Youth Wind Orchestra, the Surrey County Youth Jazz Orchestra, the Surrey County Orchestra, and Surrey Harp and Percussion ensembles.  The title of the concert was derived from a Ralph Vaughan Williams composition, Towards the Unknown Region.  They filmed the concert last night and will be bringing out a DVD next year. Hopefully the DVD will be entitled Towards Region Two (or preferably Region Zero).

Besides for SCYWO (which Pinkie is part of) I enjoyed the percussion ensemble the most, especially the number entitled Savannah (click on link for poor quality mobile phone video of part of this).  The finale involved a single performance by over 1300 young singers and performers, followed by Pomp and Circumstance, Jerusalem, and the dropping of balloons (pictured above).

Everyone stands for the national anthem.

Where Pinkie is performing tonight. In a few minutes…

This is Raguevarra, the iconic image for the future.  Get your Raguevarra merchanise (t-shirts, buttons, mugs, ...) here. Unfortunately CafePress doesn’t have red t-shirts .... I might have to make another plan.

I’m still ill and spent most of the day sleeping, in bed. I’m hoping that it won’t impact on the dreamtime tonight. This post will nonetheless be a mish-mash.  The above image contains nine photos which I have posted here before. Here are their descriptions, with links to my Flickr stream: 1. Stream, 2. Pen-y-beacon, 3. la descente, 4. King Henry VII, 5. Hay Castle, 6. Shepherds and me, 7. Trericket Mill, 8. Moss on the roof, 9. St Mary the Virgin.

I ran this blog through Regender, a different kind of translator which asks the questions

• What would the world look like if the two sexes switched places?
• What would it look like if English had genderless pronouns?
• What would it look like if English identified races the way it identifies gender?

I have added a widget at the bottom of the sidebar showing a recently played list and link. This will indentify and share the songs I have recently been playing on my computer, using last.fm.  I’ll see how this works over the next few days - I got rid of my Flickr widget because it seemed to slow the site down.

Philobiblon has a short post on the recent Neathandal genetic discoveries, with a link to a John Hawks post on the subject.

Around here the leaves are still clinging onto the trees, which have been unable to shake off their orange autumn coats. This suggests that we haven’t had the seasonal snap of cold weather yet. I have written before about the process that causes leaves to go yellow, orange, brown and red.  This weekend I have been (unsuccessful) in my attempts to shake off a cold. My car went in for a service on Friday and hasn’t been returned (due to unexpected complications). This has meant I have been able to concentrate on keeping warm in bed rather than the usual weekend taxi duties.