Decaying Buildings

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With a spare bit of time this afternoon, I went to take some photos of the Anderton Boat Lift at Northwich. I wasn’t particularly inspired by the Lift itself; the light was pretty poor and flat, and there was no definition to the clouds behind it.  With a fence all the way around the Lift, I also could get close enough to take the photos I wanted.

However, across the water from the Lift was this industrial complex which caught my eye.  I’ve started to have an interest in decaying buildings and the swan floating past made for quite a nice image.  Unfortunately, the idiot in me forgot to charge my camera batteries before I left, so I had a very short trip!

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Falkland Islands: Revisiting Remembrance

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At this time of year when we remember the country’s war dead my mind is automatically drawn back to my visit to the Falkland Islands. Two years on from my trip to the South Atlantic, I thought about writing another long blog post about the military history aspects of my visit but after re-reading my post about visiting the battlefields, I’m not sure I can put my thoughts and feelings any better – that post can be found here:

BLOG POST: Falkland Islands – Visiting the Battlefields

Strangely, after reading so many books about the 1982 war over the years, I didn’t revisit them in the months before my trip. I’m not sure why I didn’t but perhaps it enabled me to take a fresh look at the war when actually being in the locations in which it was fought and when talking to people who were there. Since my return home, I have gone back to some of those books I previously read and I’ve finished many that I hadn’t read before. Having been in the Islands, the images that the words in those books paint are now so much more vivid.

One thing that really strikes me, therefore, in this period of remembrance, is that no matter how hard those of us who have no experience of war try to imagine it and understand what our veterans have been through, it is very difficult to do so. However, actually setting foot in the places where the battles happened and talking to people who were there makes those connections so much easier and stronger.

Not everyone can get all the way down to the Falklands, or even to the fields of Flanders, but in this country we are surrounded by people who have fought or who have been affected by war as civilians, either a long time ago or, indeed, very recently. Taking a moment at this time of year to listen to those who have been through those experiences can only help to aid our understanding and strengthen our remembrance.

There are so many aspects from my trip that will stay with me forever but perhaps the strongest and most poignant memory is of seeing the marker buoy identifying the final resting place of HMS Antelope beneath the cold, dark and wind-blown waves of San Carlos Water.  I was thinking of that spot at 11 o’clock yesterday morning.

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Billy Connolly: High Horse Tour

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I know my blog is usually about nature and outdoors (except for an occasional Manchester Building) but I had to write this post.

Whilst I have a bucket list for some big things to do, I also have a mini-bucket list for easier things that I’ve never quite got around to doing.  Not far from top of the list was to see Billy Connolly live on stage…and last night I went to see him…and it was everything I hoped it would be!

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I first really came across Mr Connolly when his World Tour of Scotland was shown on the BBC in 1994.  His style of comedy fits perfectly with mine – his sense of the daft in normal life, of seeing comedy in the small things and being afflicted by general misadventure – as my grandpa used to say “he’s a good lad but he’s had a lot of bad luck” (I think I’m quoting that correctly!).  Some of the passages from that series have stayed with me ever since – “Hey Billy, you’re like us, you’ve drunk wine in the graveyard!”, amongst many others.

When I heard he was touring again, I simply had to get a ticket (even if I did have to go by myself!). He’s not been in the best of health lately and he touched on that during the gig, in his usually self-depricating way – anyone who can take the p*** out of himself, especially about such problems, is good’un as far as I’m concerned.

As I’d wanted to see him live for so long, it was almost a dreamlike experience, made all the more etherial by his voice. For me, he has the voice of a Glaswegian angel and a way of talking that a grown man could happily go to sleep listening to.  His real magic comes from his approach to comedy – none of these instant laughs or one-line wonders – he’s a storyteller; in fact, a storyteller extraordinaire.  He starts off on one story, and really getting into the detail, but then getting sidetracked onto another storyline and sidetracked again, only to, after quite some time, quite a long time actually, after finishing a few more stories and many laughs, coming back to the original story again and opening you up for another round of laughter.  In some ways, he’s like your Dad telling you a long rambling story when you’re tucked up in bed at eight years old, but with a hell of a lot more f***ing swearing!!!

Not wanting to be mean, I can summarise his performance as ‘his body is weak but his spirit is strong’ – very strong!  Last night was a true Billy Connolly experience but made all the more brilliant by the fact that he stood on stage for two straight hours in an unbroken monologue – truly outstanding!

..and he got a thoroughly-deserved standing ovation at the end; some stood for his sheer stamina, given his troubles, some stood for the performance (it was true Billy Connolly), but I stood for his sense of comedy that has spread into my life ever since 1994.

Good one Big Yin, you’re a legend!

Back to birch

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Today was another spent at Wybunbury Moss with Crewe & Nantwich Conservation Volunteers.  We were out in the very centre of the Moss clearing birch trees and then treating the stumps left behind.  With the fair weather and no sign of rain, it was one of the first chances we’ve had to take advantage of the newly acquired skills in the group for applying herbicide.  Without treating the stumps, the birch would simply regrow and we would end up with even more trees to clear in a few years time.  The herbicide is painted onto stumps and is therefore very localised and only affects the individual trees rather than the wider environment.

Whilst we had fewer people than usual, we still managed to clear a good-sized area of birch but unfortunately there is a huge area to go at and we’ll not doubt be back at the task over the next few months (and probably years!).

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The Malverns – A very English autumn

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Last weekend I had an autumn breather staying in a cottage beneath the Malvern Hills. Standing so clear above the flat Severn Valley to their east, the hills catch the eye even at some distance. Passing the hills when driving down the M5 numerous times in the past, for a while they had been on my UK bucket-list of places to stay.

I took the scenic route from my south Cheshire home – out to Shrewsbury and then winding my way down the A49 and on to Church Stretton, Ludlow, Leominster and Ledbury. I left the main roads and approached the cottage through the small village of Colwall Green and then down a narrow single-track, high-hedged lane. At the end of what used to an old farmyard stood the Threshing Barn, converted into a rustic retreat. The outside was a pure old world agricultural building but in stepping through the front door I entered somewhere special. I first passed a small farmhouse kitchen and then into a cloister-like corridor; this then led to a room not unlike a medieval banqueting hall with large dining table and sitting area all beneath the beams leading up to the full height of the barn – a quite spectacular room for a weekend retreat.

My plan was to get up early on the Saturday morning and to walk up to the Malvern Hills, only a kilometre away and then wander along their length to see where else the day took me. I was so glad that I had set my alarm when I stepped out of the door. The sun had already risen but was hanging low in the sky, shining through the trees and sparkling off the dew heavy grass. A mistiness was hanging in the air as I set off up the narrow lane, passing more timber-framed houses and barns. The bright light of the morning picked out the changing colours of the leaves as the greens were turning into reds, ambers and yellows. Up into the fields, gradually increasing the incline, my boots soon became wet from the grass and I nearly slipped over walking across a damp footbridge into the woods. The sun now shone into the pines, showing beams in the wooded mist and picking out cobwebs hanging between branches and twigs. I strode out onto the top road for a moment, having made good progress up the hill, and then stepped onto the last track to climb to the first summit of the day. Breaking the crest, the views opened up all around, a 360 degree vista over the flat valley to the west and rolling hills to the east, the Malverns reaching out both to the north and south.

I made my way north to Pinnacle Hill, Jubilee Hill, Perseverance Hill, Summer Hill, Worcestershire Beacon, Sugarloaf Hill and finally North Hill – all clear peaks in the Malvern chain. The weather improved all day with clear blue skies with a few small white clouds by mid-afternoon – all very summer-like and not the middle of autumn. I thought about retracing my steps after lunch but decided to form a circuit by heading down off the hills and into the lower rolling lands to the west. There I found sheltered pastures and quiet woodlands with small hamlets and villages hidden in the folds. I eventually came back to where I started but couldn’t resist a final hill of the day and went up Herefordshire Beacon with its old defensive earthworks clear to see. As I got to the top, the weather could be seen closing in from the south, large dark clouds starting to obscure the light and threaten rain. Dropping down into the valley, I made it back to the Barn just in time as the rain came on.

The overall sense I had throughout the day was just how English, typically English, the area is – the autumn colours in the woodlands and the changing of landscapes from flat valleys to steep hills and to rolling countryside; the villages of timber-framed houses with well kept gardens, the cricket pitches and narrow lanes; the red telephone boxes and post boxes and the country pubs. In a country that is changing fast in so many ways, the Malverns and the surrounding lands seem to have a sense of a constant, an unchanging way. Despite the M5 and M55 being so near, and large towns being only short distances down those roads, the pace of life seems slower, the traffic less and the time stood still – all except the seasons, with the colours of one of the brightest being on show.

As the sun set on my last evening there I headed back up to the top of the hills…

 

Back to burning trees!

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I spent this morning with Crewe & Nantwich Conservation Volunteers (CNCV) out at Wybunbury Moss doing a task for Natural England.  I missed the last task two weeks ago, and with the early weather looking sparkling, I was keen not to miss another.

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The group is a frequent visitor to the Moss and we have worked in today’s particular spot a few times over the past couple of years.  We were removing trees to soften the edge where the woodland meets wet pastureland on the outside of the Moss.  The strip that we have cleared so far has transformed over the summer, turning from a big patch of mud to an area of lush reeds and regrowing coppice.  This regrowth of the understorey plants will provide good habitats for breeding birds over the coming years but we will no doubt have to return to the cleared areas every so often to cut it back again.

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Unfortunately, I could only stay for the morning – I had work to do – but at least I could go out for part of the day and enjoy the first fire of the autumn, it had been a while!

An apology to Greenpeace: it all comes down to money!

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Recently I’ve had a go at Greenpeace on Twitter for pestering me to give more money per month. After recent news headlines of charities pestering people for money, I felt empowered to make a stand. I give monthly to a number of charities as well as giving quite a lot of my free time to charitable volunteering, so receiving calls from charities (Greenpeace certainly weren’t the first and won’t be the last) trying to guilt-trip me into giving more irked somewhat.

It started with one call, and then another, and another, and another. Over the past 18 months I’ve been plagued by nuisance calls by ‘companies’ trying to get me to make false claims for compensation as a result of the extremely minor and short-lived discomfort I suffered after a road accident last year. I have resorted to disconnecting my landline phone and not answering any mobile calls from a number I don’t recognise just to stop the endless harassment of these ambulance-chasers. These insurance scam companies don’t often use the same telephone number, they seem to be able to channel their calls through numbers all around the country, so when I started to receive multiple missed calls from the same number, I eventually called it back. When I did, I heard a recorded message saying it was a company working on behalf of Greenpeace and that they would be in touch again shortly. After a few more missed calls, I finally had my mobile on me when it rang from the same number and I spoke to a representative of Greenpeace. The nicely spoken young chap wanted to tell me about all the good things that Greenpeace had done recently; I instantly knew where this was going, eventually it would lead to a request for more money. At that time I was already giving more money per month to Greenpeace than any other individual charity, so I didn’t want to give any more. I said to the chap that I didn’t have time to talk and I politely ended the call. Over the following few days, I received more and more calls from the same number until I’d finally had enough. Not only was I being harassed by scam insurance companies, I was now being pestered by the charity I gave more money to per month than any other! (this is an apology, honest! Just keep on reading!).

I posted a tweet and got a tweeted apology from Greenpeace and I then sent an e-mail complaining about their behaviour and I cancelled my direct debit. I thought the only way that charities will learn will be for people affected by this behaviour to make some noise as well as stopping donations. I quite quickly got a nice e-mail in return again apologising, promising I would receive no more contact from them but saying that they hoped I would return to them sometime – ‘not I chance’ I thought! My mind was even more firmly made up when later that day I received a text from Greenpeace asking me to increase my donation to them by £10 per month. That was the last straw and I tweeted my annoyance again.

The issue of being pestered with calls from charities, which has been in the news quite a lot over the past few months, is, for me, coupled with a feeling that charities don’t always treat their staff and volunteers in the way they should. I should say here that I’m not pointing the finger at Greenpeace at all – I have no particular knowledge of their staff or volunteers’ conditions; this is a general rather than specific observation. For some time I have thought that some charities use those who want to work in their particular areas or ‘industries’, for want of a better word, by squeezing as much out of them as they can for as little investment as possible to a point where it gets close to, if not actually, exploitation. There are many charities, especially those working in areas where there is a great demand for jobs, which offer unpaid work, long term volunteering posts or internships, leaving those who want to get a foothold in those areas work without an income for months and in some cases many years.

However, these are blinkered, short-sighted views, of both the telephone calls and the employment of staff and volunteers, from a position of being comfortably off and already well into the career I set out to build. When the interests that environmental charities, for example, are up against can throw money at more frivolous activities such as the arts and sport (I’m not having a go at the hard work and dedication of sports men and women, just the elitist hangers-on) it just shows the difference in financial clout.

The hard truth is that the interests that cause the greatest damage to the earth and its environment are those with the most money. Oil companies, agri-chemical businesses, land owners or, indeed, whole groups or classes of people who have enough money and low enough scruples not to care what damage their desires have, all have huge vested interests against which environmental charities are struggling to have an impact. To be able to fight for their causes, charities rely on the contributions both in the form of money and time from the general public, and they have to account for every last penny and make the best of every hour. Few charities have products they can sell to generate millions or billions of pounds of revenue; they can only persuade the public to support them as much as they can. When those major industrial and landowning interests have such huge resources, and regularly don’t play clean, it’s no wonder that charities have to resort to sometimes less than comfortable practices to even vaguely compete.

The phone calls and the treatment of those who work and volunteer for charities is, for me, coupled with an increasing corporatisation of large charities. It’s not the local, individual charity staff who decide to make those calls, and they do not decide to squeeze budgets to such an extent that they have to turn paid jobs into voluntary posts; they have to deal with the day-to-day, the coal face, the delivery of the overall charity’s aims. It is, rather, the head offices of large charities that make those decisions, head offices in many cases staffed to a significant degree by people from the corporate world not the charitable one, people who have less interest in the charitable concerns and more thought on general finance and resources, as well that their own promotion and self-development. However, big charities need to have a corporate approach to enable them to combat the actions of the big corporates, but this can go too far. I get the general feeling that large charities, in trying to do their best for their primary goals, are actually moving away from what matters most; engaging on a human scale with those whose support they desperately need.

The sometimes hard actions of charities, whether it be nuisance phone calls or treatment of staff, do deserve inspection and frustration is at times understandable. However, these issues pale into insignificance when compared to the damage caused by the organisations and groups they are facing up to. It is right that charities have to account for the money they receive and spend, it’s the public’s money afterall, and they need to treat their staff and volunteers correctly. However, by fighting against them on these issues, we’re only making it more difficult for charities to succeed and hoping for them to succeed is why people give their money and time to them in the first place. Charities try to be whiter-than-white but this is a real struggle when they have to make the most of their resources and their opponents have enough money to liberally spray-paint their operations with white or, indeed, green-wash.

Time to give charities a break, give more money to support their campaigns, give more voluntary time in the hope they can provide more paid jobs and give them some leeway when they get it a bit wrong.

Sorry, Greenpeace!