The Entomologist: Part One.

When I was little I was going to be an artist and world-renowned bat expert, who wrote novels whilst living on a farm with a collection of insects to rival that of the great London Museums.  Whilst at 24 I still have some way to go before I achieve all of these dreams, I have never quite managed to leave behind  the obsessive need to pick up every bug I find and the sun really seems to have brought out some treasures this week.

As yet I have never actually gone as far as pinning butterflies (I was vegetarian and a little oversensitive as a child;  treading on a snail could induce floods of guilt based tears and I nearly caused a family-rift the day my grandfather tried to pour boiling water in an ants nest), but having read Kaelah's adventures in insect pinning I have to admit the idea is beginning to take hold.  I don't think I could ever actually catch and kill a perfectly happy, flitting butterfly but perhaps a morbid hunt for their pretty cadavers is a possibility?

 

For the time being however I am simply going to continue bullying James into taking me on long walks with my bug book and my camera (and the borrowed dog).

in the garden.

So here in Blighty we are experiencing a bit of a heat wave or what the rest of the world might call 'Summer'.  As a nation we seem to be a little slow on the uptake; I popped to the shops earlier and was met by a sea of burnt faces and interesting tan lines.  My neurotic habitual slathering of SPF 50 is finally paying off.

My mum's garden has gone crazy, the glut of rain followed by intense sunshine seems to have sent plants into overdrive.  The courgettes are practically firing off the plants whilst James and I continue to pick our way through the harvest of Alpine strawberries.  Baby bump is growing solely on chorophyll and sunshine!  James got his introduction pack for his first grown up doctor job today, he starts in two weeks.  I am starting to dread the end of this sun filled limbo.

An overview of our annual camping trip (and even more shrimping).

Every year at the start of Summer we go camping (you can see some of last year's pictures here).  At first there is the fun planning that mostly involves reminiscing over the previous adventures, then we progress to the half-arsed 'who has a tent' phase, finally we make the transition to the darker 'Jai becomes a total cow and spams everyone on facebook every ten minutes nagging and planning' phase.  Luckily the last phase is the shortest.  

Then finally we get there and everything, even forgotten tent poles and pegs (no exaggeration), or sleeping bags, or rollmats, seems somehow thoroughly unimportant.



I am trying so hard to not bombard you with my pictures from this weekend, so photo-heavy though this post may appear, please appreciate that this is me 'holding-back'.  I mean, camping, in the UK, in the Summer?  Seems like a recipe for a Buffy-esque tragedy right?  But no, we had sunshine, a perfect sea-breeze and even a little sunburn for our weekend trip.


 

The days were hot and sticky and perfect, but the evenings were better.  In the evenings, smothered in aftersun, we headed into the dunes to light fires and cook our supper.  We planned ahead this year and packed garlic and lemons and we cooked brown shrimp, caught earlier in the day, on the open fire and spent hours afterwards picking through their fiddly shells.  Fire cooked shrimp must be one of the best things in the world.
Then, like in a feel-good-family-film, we huddled and chatted round the fire, spotting the occasional shooting star till we fell asleep under rugs and blankets.  I literally have the most awesome friends. 
(Admittedly waking up shivering on the cold sand and finding the fire has died out - less movie like).

Umbelliferous plants and Turkish luck.

Umbelliferous plants are my weakness, whenever I see their spindly arms I can't help but sneak a few into my bag to dry.  Umbelliferous; umbella meaning 'sunshade' in Latin and ferre meaning 'to bear'.  Sunshade bearers. 

They are stored in my Brass Elephant.  The Brass Elephant is an oil burning lamp I got given in Turkey.  A long time ago a friend and I, having between us worked hundreds of hours in cafes, supermarkets and a fairly unpleasant pub, bought two tickets to Europe and spent a perfect summer meandering, catching unknown trains and getting lost.  
In Turkey I found perhaps my soul home, a small cafe tucked behind a door as magical as the one in the secret garden.  The threadbare seats were covered in blankets and throws, the place was lit by cracks in the tin roof and candle light and the only thing you could buy were glass thimbles of thick sugary tea. 

Everyday, after exploring, we would hunt for the hidden door that led to the cafe and drink syrupy sage tea.  I think the owner was just so tickled that we turned up evening after evening, despite perhaps being entirely unwelcome - you know that moment in the film were the slightly clueless tourists walk into the dingy pub and everyone stops talking to stare at them - that on our last night stay, he sat with us and drank tea.

When we got up to leave he handed us a gift for good luck and walked away.  The Brass Elephant has lived with me ever since and now houses my Umbelliferous collection.

A cheating 'magic of nature' post.

I love writing posts about sea-based-critters.  There is something so exciting about that journey that goes from 'what the heck is that' all the way too 'omgosh, he eats wwhha...?!'.



However due to horrendous rain/hail/deadlines, I have been inhabiting a more indoor based habitat of late but I did get to make a small trip to (probably) the world's worst aquarium.

No joke, it consisted of four floors yet had less fish than a pet-shop!

Floor one - promising; five tanks filled with beasties.
Floor two - bemusing; 1 depressed lobster (clearly bought from an upper-class supermarket) and 2 shrimp.
Floor three - bizarre; a single table in the middle of the room filled with 'interesting' shells and stones that had clearly been found in a desperate afternoon of what the heck shall we put here?

And what was on the final floor - the grand finale of the aquarium - I hear you ask?



A beanbag and a TV.  Yup.  So it was pretty exciting as adventures go!  

But I did learn something very exciting - Clownfish (y'know - Nemo) are sequential hermaphrodites.  This means that the wee little clownfish develop into a male first, then as they mature they turn into females (who are much larger and more aggressive).  This happens when the female clownfish of the group dies, then the top-dog male clownfish becomes female and the rest of the male clownfish move up the ranks in their hierarchy.

How much does that change the film Finding Nemo - not long till Marlin becomes Marlena!

I know most of these pictures are blurry but the colours are just so beautiful I couldn't not post them.  Also look at the little dude in the last picture, there were tonnes of these Garden Eels who just popped up and disappeared again like a whack-a-rat game.  I was in love and I am now desperate for a tank-garden of garden eels.

The selkie and the sea.

When I was little I had a story tape about a Selkie.  A selkie lives in the sea as a seal but sheds its skin to come up on land as a human.  This story was about a selkie, a beautiful woman on land and a lithe seal in the water.  Mostly she lived in the sea, she had a selkie-husband and selkie-pups who played amongst the shoals of fish and danced in the sprays of the storms.  
Sometimes though, she would come onto the land, shed her sleek, black skin on the sand and pace the shore line, feeling the sun on her back or the rain on her face.  Sometimes her children joined her and dug their toes into the sand but mostly she came alone.

One day a fisherman was on the shore.  He was a pleasant man, simple but lonely.  He had been standing a long time, his toes were cramping in his gum-boots and his eyes lashes were heavy with salt. He saw the dog like face of a seal bobbing in the shadows and watched, dead still and silent.  The seal dog danced and arced through the water and eventually, with a bound, hauled itself onto the dense sand.  He watched the selkie-woman emerge from the black skin, which she gently folded and placed on a rock.  He watched her pace down the shoreline, he could feel her enjoyment of the cold sand between her toes and the smell of the beached seaweed.  He watched until she unfolded her skin, now dry and velveteen, redressed and, with a small ripple, disappeared beneath the water.



The fisherman was addicted.  He went to the beach and stood in the same sheltered alcove every day.  Eventually he stopped bringing his line and bait, he just stood and waited for the selkie-woman with her long black hair. 
His perseverence eventually paid.  On a hazy morning, she made an appearance.  She danced and arced through the water, she hauled herself onto the dense sand, she emerged from the black skin, which she gently folded and placed on the rock.  She began to pace down the shoreline, enjoying the sand between her toes.  
Without even thinking why, the fisherman moved from his vantage point and went over to the skin.  He touched and stroked it, he bought it to his face, it was cold and smelt of animal, then he put it in his pocket and waited for the selkie-woman to turn back.

Without her skin she could not return to the water.  The fisherman was kind to her, he comforted her in her grief, his arm tender and loving around her shoulders.  He took her back to his small house, he gave her food and tea and gazed at her with adoration.  He loved her mane of hair and her wild eyes, he loved her voice which soothed like whale song and he loved her affinity with the ocean, knowing the days that the fish would be close and the days where they would be too far for his rod.  And yet, despite the love, he kept her selkie-skin locked tightly inside a chest.



After a year she married him.  He was all she had in this new, land-based life and he truly loved her.  But by night she dreamt she heard her selkie-family calling from behind the wave, crying salty sea tears.  Mostly she was a quiet and sensitive wife, but each evening she begged and pleaded with him to be allowed to look at her selkie-skin, to simply touch it once.  She cried and screamed, she paced and raged, she begged and bargained but on this subject, although no other, she would not get her way.

Five years later, in the gloom that only comes with the false night of storm clouds, a storm hit the coast with a terrible might.  A small and tatty boat could be seen from the fisherman's window, struggling to pull into the cove and the fisherman could imagine their mouths open in silent shouts for help that could not be heard over the screaming wind.  Without hesitation, because truly he was a kind man, the fisherman pulled on his boots and his overcoat and ran towards the coast to help, leaving a key on the table.  The selkie-woman picked up the key and, stroking its rusted contours, realised her decision.  
She kissed her small human children on their sleeping foreheads and then, disappeared back into the ocean.

The fisherman came back to a house with the candles still lit and babes still in bed and an old wooden chest open in the corner.

Life for the fisherman did not change a lot, but sometimes. looking out the window to the sea, he could see his children playing with a large black seal with a dog like face.  Sometimes he would wave but the seal never waved back.



When I was little, my mother took me and my brother endlessly to the coast and we paddled, or rock-pooled, or went for long bracing walks, no matter what the weather was like.  Sometimes I used to worry that she was a selkie and one day she would disappear.  I even checked in her drawers once to see if I could find her hidden skin.  

The thirteenth hour and the secret snow garden.

When I was little, I lived in a tiny house.  The tiny house was on an endless hill and from each window you could only see fields and woods.  After my dad died, in the tiny house there lived me, my little brother and my mum.  The three of us were snug and safe for years without other humans being able to interfere.  It was difficult and charmed and for a long time we simply hid away.

One night, asleep on the top bunk, little brother snoozing below, mum snuck into our room.  Quiet but excited, she shook us both awake.  In the whispers of the half awake and half confused she helped us dress and took us downstairs.  It was dark, I wasn't used to the house in the dark and I wasn't sure I liked the long shadows the furniture cast.  The dog was excited to see people despite the day having ended.  Mum chivvied us into our boots and coats, pulled mittens onto small hands and, together, we stumbled outside.  

It was glittering, the moon reflected off the fresh snow that blanketed the garden.  The three of us ran around in the dark, squealing and throwing snowballs at the dog who loyally ate them all.  We built a snow man with twiggy limbs and stony eyes.  Eventually though we got tired, we started to get cold and our mittens were soaked through.  I never wanted to leave the magical garden but we were taken back inside and tucked into bed, already asleep before the light was turned out.

By the morning all the snow had melted and it was like it never happened.

Whilst I still haven't found the secret snow garden again since that night, dawn in the snow with James was still pretty magical. 

Collections: she sees snail shells on the sea shore.

Another collection to add to my personal museum of curiosities.  Where James and I had our picnic, there were hundreds and hundreds of these empty shells, half buried in the sand.  Most of them were paper thin and crumbled in my fingers the minute I picked them up but the ones that made it as far as my palm were beautiful.

The spherical ones are 'Flat Top' Shells and the conical ones are Colus Gracilis.  Disappointingly there is absolutely nothing interesting to be read about the critters that used to inhabit these shells.  My coastal wildlife book (the font of all seaside wisdom) simply tells me on which coasts you are most likely to spot them (less useful when I have already spotted them) and even the Wikipedia entry on Colus Gracilis is blank.  

However, in general snaily terms, did you know that as they grow they just keep adding to the entrance of their shell (known as the 'outer lip') which is how they never outgrow their shells.  And, my favourite fact of the day, 90% of snails coil to the right and only 10% to the left!  I mean that is basically like people - the right-handed-folks outnumbering the left-handed-folks.  So if you do find a snail that coils to the left, the individuals from the shell-collectors-club (oh yes, it really does exist) would love to hear from you!

Sea Collections: tube worm rocks and treasures.

James lives and dreams by the sea and it is highly contagious.  Every moment he has spare (and the many more moments he cannot really spare) the surf boards are strapped to the roof of the car and I am being chivied out the house and bundled into the passenger seat.  I love it, as he disappears behind the walls of white water into the green out-back, I am left to forage and hunt till my soul and bag are full.

Whilst photographing these beautiful treasures I got a bit preoccupied with the trails on this stone, they are strangely labyrinthine like a stone marble maze.  After much searching (key words such as - what are the squiggly white things on my pebble - didn't help much) I discovered that they belonged to tube worms.  These fellows knit themselves hard calcified tubes all along their length and glue themselves onto a stone or the shell of another critter, then they live in isolation in their tube.  That beautiful fan splayed out in the picture below is all that is left from a tentacle that used to poke out and grab tasty snacks from the water overhead.  Isn't that neat?  There are so many on this rock I think it must have been quite the tube-worm-party.

And on another note, one day I hope I will be able to wear a smart bag for more than five minutes without filling my bag with treasures; 'interesting' twigs, strange feathers and tube worm shells.  It truly is a mess.  I will never be able to do a 'what's in my bag' style post.

On childhood terror and adult bravery.

There is a hidden island of paradise in my town, a strange and empty area forgotten by civilisation, where growing out of abandoned cans and microwaves the ferns and mosses have reclaimed what is rightfully theirs.  

My town used to be a bustling hub with markets, shops and a soul and we used to be connected to the rest of civilisation by a real life railway.  But then life dried-up; the markets stopped, the shops got boarded up and the people moved away.  Eventually the railway was also closed and the metal tracks were taken to the places that deserved them more than we did.  The station was abandoned and the tunnels fell into disrepair.

The plants reclaimed our damage but you have to earn the right to see their work.

As a child these tunnels terrified me.  They are dark and dank and no matter what the weather is like, a cold breeze always seeps out.  On either side of the tunnel there are strange gaps for the people of history to escape the path of the train if there was not enough time to leave the tunnel.  I used to believe I could hear them whispering from within the dark alcoves.

My mother would stride through, holding mine and my brother's damp paws as we pressed into her coat, the dogs following closely behind.  We knew that the forest on the other side was worth the fear of the eyes and ears trapped in the tunnels.

That was the tunnel on the left.  The tunnel on the right we never went in.  We weren't that stupid; twice the length of the left tunnel, it bends in the middle and you can see no light at the far end.  Without any light who could guess what manner of beings inhabit it or predict whether you might ever leave.

But this year we did it.  My mother, James and I (and two cowardly dogs) made it through alive...

...and it was beautiful.  Well done you plants.