A day for rambling...

Spring just keeps on springing. More blue skies and sunshine.

I sorted out the pots at the front of the cottage this morning, removing all the dead plants and changing the compost where I needed to. The string of frosts we had in February and March killed off pretty much everything this year, including the huge marguerite plant I’d been growing in a big pot for the last eight years. We don’t get many frosts on the Llyn, the peninsula touches the tail end of the Gulf Stream wash so it has its own mini climate. You can pretty much grow anything around here, I even have a cactus that belonged to my grandfather on the front step. I leave it out all year around – summer and winter.

Most of my aquilegias have survived thank goodness. They can stand up to pretty much anything, but they’re not indestructible. I have dozens of them – all grown from seed, some quite rare. I love aquilegias. I’ve been trying to grow aquilegia ‘green apples’ for the last four years or so and have managed to get three seeds to start. I must have spend at least thirty quid on seeds – it’d be easier to just buy a plant from a specialist nursery but…well, it wouldn’t be quite the same. My aquilegia ‘green apples’ are tiny at the moment but I’m hoping to get them to grow. I think you’ll be reading about and seeing a lot of my aquilegias as the spring progresses.

Yes, more blue skies and sunshine – long may it continue, a decent summer would be nice.

We went to Porth Colman this afternoon, took a picnic and a beer and went looking for cowries. Cowries are tiny pink and grey shells that you can find on some of the beaches around here. Finding a cowrie is meant to be lucky and once we start looking for them we can’t stop, looking for ‘just one more’ and ‘just one more’. A few years ago on a particularly low tide at Porth Dinllaen we found three hundred and seventeen in about three hours - ‘just one more’, ‘just one more’ - we found fourteen at Porth Colman today which isn’t bad.
Port Colman is a good place to come in the winter, you can drive right down to the sea, along a tiny winding lane, and park up on the rocks to watch the waves. The sea can get very rough with huge waves that come crashing in and over the black spurs of rock. We saw a seal there once, watching it for an hour or so before it dived and disappeared under the deep green water.

There isn’t much of a beach at Porth Colman, it’s mainly a rocky headland, easy to walk on as the rocks form a natural pathway. It’s very beautiful. A good place for spotting oyster catchers but not a good place to beach comb as the rocks stop any ‘stuff’ getting washed ashore. Still, you work with what’s available, so I made these pebble towers. They look simple, but you wouldn’t believe the number of times they tumbled down before I got them to look like this.

All balance and prayer… how very Zen.

I am not a number...

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Here's Portmeirion from across the bay. We took the toll road to get there, over the rickety wooden railway bridge and through the narrow rocky gorge. I love it, but Gaynor hates crossing water.

This is where they filmed 'The Prisoner'. I've been around the village a number of times and despite what Patrick McGoohan says at the start of each episode increasingly we are all numbers.

Nice view isn't it? Hard to believe that back in the sixties huge white globes chased Number Six across the sands that I can see from where I'm standing. I remember as a young child watching 'The Prisoner'. It was all a bit scary, but even at that age I knew that it was very different and intriguing. It seemed impossible then that there might be an island where you were watched all of the time and camera images could be played back to use against you by the authorities.

Impossible...

Each of us is captured on camera at least fourteen times a day. If we are in our cars for longer than two hours we can be captured as many as two hundred times. We are filmed in the bank, in the supermarket, in the street. Local authorities have begun to use cameras to catch and fine people for putting out their bins on the wrong day, allowing their dogs to foul the footpath, and dropping litter. The police are considering putting cameras in pub car parks and within pubs to film drink drivers.

We are the most filmed nation on earth .

Are we film stars or have we become prisoners on our own island? Are we free men and women or are we numbers?

Impossible.

Anyway, let's just enjoy the view, but be careful what you get up to... you never know who's watching you.

Easter Lamb

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Here’s Holly and a little orphan Easter lamb born
at the stables to a winter ewe. A winter ewe is a female sheep not wanted to lamb in the spring – this one got lucky though and some passing ram must have had other ideas.

Holly rears orphan lambs at another farm and keeps them as pets. She bottle feeds and names them, and they come to her call. But despite this we generally eat the male ones once they are big enough. That is the way in the countryside and we get beautiful fresh lamb for around fifteen pence per pound (the slaughter fee). Holly says that this is the right thing to do as someone has to eat the meat and if you have reared and looked after the lamb then you appreciate the meat more. Holly is very sensible and what she says is true, the meat tastes great and we try to eat as much of the animal as possible out of respect.

Don’t worry though this one is safe. A friend of ours is taking it home as a pet to graze in her garden for ever.

I like this picture a lot. Holly looks like the lovely young girl she is, rather than the disenchanted young woman she sometimes pretends to be. Oh well, we all have to find our own way to grow. Anyway this is the real Holly holding an innocent young lamb – just look at them, you can hardly tell which is which.

Pet lambs… only in Wales.

I’m on my way to Wales but for now I’m at the Oxford services car park blogging. I’ve been down to Reading and I’ve stopped for a break. Spring is well on the way down here. The trees are greening up nicely, the rain is warm, and I passed a huge carpet of wild white anemones under the beech woods just down the road.

By the way – I’ll be in Wales for the next couple of days and might not be able to blog. Grrrrr. I’ll do my best to find a passing yacht though.

The incredible Blog...

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh... mmmmmmmmmm....

That - is - so - much - better.

I really needed that. I’ve gone days without, this is such a relief, you’ve no idea what I’ve been through. At last I’m blogging at will again, in control, no longer a puppet to my own emotions. I’ve been blogged off and blogged out for far too long and it was beginning to get too much for me… and that can be dangerous.

Let me explain.

You may have noticed that over the last few days I haven’t been blogging as regularly as I usually do – I've wanted to (desperately) but I couldn’t. It really wasn’t through any lack of will; I had the will but not the opportunity. For some reason technology and North Wales don’t seem to go together very well. Maybe it’s the mountains, the weather, or maybe even the sheep, but for some reason I couldn’t get my laptop and phone to sync so that I could reliably access my blog.

Now, as you know - the blog is the life – so it has been very hard coping. Most of the time I could get some things to work… grrr… a little of the time I could get everything to work…grrrrr… but I couldn’t make everything work all of the time or even enough of the time to post…grrrrr… which was…grrrrrr… very frustrating. Sometimes I managed log on, but when I tried to upload I… grrrrrrrr… crashed, other times I couldn’t even access the Grrr... world… Grrrr… wide… Grrrrr… web.

GRRRRRRRRRRRR… must calm down, must calm down.

I tried everything to get on and out there– early morning logs, late evening logs, I tried driving around attempting to pick up a signal (not as I was actually driving obviously), from on top a fog-bound mountain, in the centre of Caernarfon (by the castle gift shop), I even logged on to the unsecured network of a big yacht in Pwllheli harbour (I guess that’s illegal) – until it sailed away taking my signal with it.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR… Steady now, steady.

And on the few occasions that I successfully logged on I wasted hours waiting for stuff to upload only to find that it didn’t and ‘site unavailable – please check your network connections’ popped up - or ‘your blog has published successfully’ only to find that it hadn’t.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR… Now calm down, you’re running out of decent shirts.

I’m an addict and I really needed my blog-fix. I won’t go into the details of what ‘not’ blogging does to me physically, but if you are familiar with the Incredible Hulk or have ever seen the movie of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde… well, you should have some idea.

Mentally it really messes me up. I get really tetchy when I can’t blog and my angst escalates through a number of levels.

Level one – I begin to twitch.
Level two – I start to pace.
Level three – I shout.
Level four – I start speaking in tongues.
Level five – Don’t make me angry… you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.
Level six – Grunnnnkkorrrlf – Ripppppp – there goes another shirt.

You see the thing about blogs is that they are like sharks they gotta keep moving or they die. Of course I could (and do) produce and read it just for myself, after all it keeps me calm and It’s important that I remain calm at all times. Otherwise – well you know what happens when I get angry. Don’t you just hate it when you wake up in a pair of badly torn trousers?

Anyway – I’m back and blogging but it was a close run thing. Next time I’ll give you some warning, just in case I get angry - and trust me, you really wouldn't like me when I'm angry.

A stroll on the beach

Yes, another absolutely beautiful day - hot and sunny - far too nice to ‘do’ anything, much better to waste it having fun. So we took a picnic to Criccieth and walked on the beach.

As you can see we weren’t the only ones out for a stroll, we passed this family of Tripodolites on their way down to the sea for a swim. Tripodolites aren’t the best of swimmers on account of their long spindly legs, heavy bodies, and the fact that don’t have any arms – all disadvantages to the swimmer - but they do their best, bless ‘em.

Tripodolites come from Portugal and are to be found there on beaches everywhere, getting a tan or playing beach volleyball, but to see them in Wales is something of a rarity. I asked one of the older Tripodolites what they were doing in Criccieth and she told me that they were just visiting, on holiday with a large coach party from the Algarve – so that explained it.

Holly seems to have caught this beach sculpture bug thing – here’s one she made whilst I was chatting to the Tripodolite family. She tells me that it’s a Kissing Creature and that they are the best kissers in the universe. Just look at that big dark eye, those long eyelashes, and those really kissable full red lips… I think that she may be right.

Hey, you Tripodolites! Watch out! Here she comes… Kissy, kissy.

Invasion of the Killer Monster Robots...

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We drove across to Dinas Dinlle today.

The early morning grey sky and drizzling rain seemed to lift as soon as we arrived at the beach - and the sun came out, blueing up the horizon in no time at all.

Dinas Dinlle is all steep pebble banks and white crested waves. It’s hard to climb the fifteen feet high banks. The pebbles roll away from under your feet and you find yourself sliding back down to where you started from.

It was whilst I was slowly being swallowed by the pebbles that I saw my first swallow of the year. Now I know that one swallow doesn’t make a summer but it was nice to see an indication that it is on its way. I followed the swallow with my eyes as it swooped and dived along the top of the ridge and then suddenly from behind a bank of grey and white pebbles emerged…

Oh my God a Killer Robot Monster!

I’d heard that they’d been spotted a couple of times around here but I never expected to see one. As reported it was carrying a death ray weapon in its left hand and the right hand was a deadly sharp hooked claw. A green airline supplied it with whatever gas it breathed, and one of its feet seemed to be some sort of traction device whilst the other was a horrible gnarled claw. A small red laser blaster protruded from the cavern of its black mouth and it wore the blue wiring of a MegaBot – the most dangerous and deadly of its dangerous and deadly kind.

I looked it in its single eye. What did it want?

With a terrifying rumble of internal gearing and a repetitive beep it began to walk towards me as I realised that whatever it wanted, it wanted it from me.

Fortunately I have absolutely no fear whatsoever. I rushed towards it screaming ‘Death to all Killer Monster Robots!’ It fired its death ray at me – it missed. It fired again, but I was on him, slapping my sticker (the one with my blog address printed on it) just below its flat, oval nose. It struck out in panic catching me a glancing blow that sent me tumbling down the ridge of pebbles. I leapt to my feet ready to face the Robot once again but… it was gone!

My sticker had done its job. The Killer Monster Robot was marked and never again would it creep up on an unsuspecting victim. Its cover had been blown.

Good had triumphed over evil once more!

Tesla and Twain

Two more of my guys off today – great people, gifted people. What funny old times.

Here’s something from Mark Twain to think about. It has truth at its heart and I wish I’d written it. Hey, what the hell. Let’s say that I did write it. Me. Not Twain. Okay? Twain just wrote something very similar.

'Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.'

People think of Twain as a writer, which of course he was, and a great one - but he was also a lot of other things. He loved science and invested almost all of his money financing new inventions. He even invented things himself - a bed clamp for infants (that one is a bit worrying), a new type of steam engine (just as electricity became all the rage), and the Paige typesetting machine (which was a bit prone to breaking down). Perhaps it would have been better if he’d stuck to his writing, but isn’t it always worth ‘taking a punt’? As Chris would say.

Not many people today think of him as an inventor, but in his time he was well known for it and he loved to mix in the company of scientists and inventors; where he was well accepted.

Twain became a great friend of Nikola Tesla. Tesla was a genius with electricity and was on the verge of creating free energy, energy without the need for a power source - when he ran out of money, and some might say… luck. Tesla’s a hero of mine thanks to OMD - and don’t worry you don’t get off that lightly I’m sure I’ll come back to him in the future.

Tesla and Twain spent a lot of time together in Tesla’s laboratory. It’s been rumoured that between them they invented a time machine. Twain’s book ‘A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court’ features an American time traveler who uses his knowledge of science to introduce technology to Arthurian England. Danny Kaye played the time traveler in the movie (Danny Kaye is also a hero of mine but I’ll save him for another time as well).

Twain spent a huge amount of his own money financing Tesla’s inventions, which ultimately didn’t pay off – actually they weren’t allowed to pay off which is a whole different story (yes, I’ll save that for another time as well, I know that you’re in a rush).

Anyway, here’s the point I’m trying to make (I’d have got here sooner if I weren’t so easily distracted, but my brain works just like surfing the net – I’m on some site or other when I spot a link to something that is connected and I’m off onto that, then I spot another connection, and another, and so it goes on until I have to use the back button to get to where I started from. I think the back button is a little like time travel and…stop – Stop - STOP… I was off mind surfing again; I’ll save that for another time as well).

Just a minute, I’m going to click the back button.

BACK BUTTON. Anyway, here’s the point I’m trying to make - Tesla and Twain dared to dream big and weren’t afraid to fail. They were brave enough to sail away from safe harbour, catch the trade winds, explore, dream, and discover.

There’s a lesson for us all there.

So here’s my thanks and respect to Vicky and Chris, neither one of which ever gives up or gives in, and like Tesla and Twain they both dare to dream big – I know that they both will succeed.

Even so I still wish I could click the back button.