Cheese and cucumber...

The salad days are here; at last my toms have grown to a size where they can be sliced and my first cucumber has finally arrived. Perhaps I’ll eat them with a nice piece of white Stilton. How I love cheese, especially white Stilton or a very mature Cheddar.

Cheddar, Gorgonzola, Brie, Cheshire, Danish Blue, Wensleydale, Parmesan, Edam - I wonder just how many types of cheese there are in the world? The French are meant to lead the cheese stakes with three different cheeses for each day of the year. Mind you, we British have 700 named cheeses – that isn’t to be sniffed at.

I once visited a cheese farm in Holland and bought a huge Gouda and an even bigger Edam. The two Dutch staples were taken home where they lasted and then languished for months before the remainder eventually being thrown away. In America I found it hard to find a decent cheese. Most cheese tasted like plastic and shone like wax. I’m sure that they have good cheese in the States, but I still have no idea what Monterey Jack should really taste like.

Not everyone likes cheese and there’s no cheese made in Japan, where it seems that cheese isn’t big – surprising given that they eat pretty much everything else including whale. I hear that the cheese made in Bhutan is unbelievably rich and creamy. It isn’t exported and it’s a bit of a trek to get it so I doubt that I’ll ever taste it other than in my dreams. In my nightmares I’ve eaten Casu Marzu, a Sardinian cheese containing live insect larvae – maggots to you and I.

Just why would you eat maggots knowingly? Perhaps, I’ll save my cucumbers and tomatoes and eat them in a sandwich with the crusts cut off.

All I need is a sunny day.

Ducks, ducks everywhere and not a....

There are times when my mind turns to the wonder that is the rubber duck.

I didn’t know about this particular ducky tale until a friend pointed it out to me. I’ve seen a couple of rubber ducks washed up in the tangle of Hell’s Mouth in North Wales over the years but have never stopped to examine them closely. I've often wondered where they may have come from and this could be the answer.

Anyway, here’s the story of the ocean-going rubber ducks and their incredible journey.

They may only have been toys - only meant to bob up and down the bath - but an armada of 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, blue turtles and green frogs broke free from a cargo ship 15 years ago and went on to float halfway around the world. Since then they have traveled 17,000 miles, floated over the site where the Titanic sank, landed in Hawaii, even spent a few years frozen in an Arctic ice pack. Some made it to Britain and were initially spotted on beaches in South-West England. Even been found as far north as the Hebrides.

While the ducks would have been a loss to our bath-time fun, their high sea adventures have proved to be invaluable to science as scientists tracked the floating plastic ducks around the world’s oceans charting the changing currents and learning how they affect climate change.

It’s believed that over 2,000 of them are still caught in the currents of the North Pacific Gyre, a vast stretch of water between Japan and southeast Alaska. This spinning churn of seawater catches anything that comes into it in a whirlpool for years and years, maybe even forever. Imagine thousands of rubber ducks churning around and around in a whirlpool of water for over 20 years. Just think of it, thousands of rubber duckies floating on the ocean. Journeying and washing up on the shores of Hawaii, Alaska, South America, Australia and the Pacific Northwest. What an adventure and how wonderful to find one of these rubber ducks.

These days they have largely faded to white and have the words “The First Year” stamped upon them. Next time I’m on Hell’s Mouth I’ll keep my eyes peeled.

Big blue sky...

Want to know something really surprising?

For the first time in a really long time I think I might be feeling happy. Yes, feeling happy. Content with my lot, pleased with how things have worked out, not angry or bitter by what life has thrown at me or raging against fate, luck, chance and a host of other circumstantial obstacles which life has put in my path to trip me up along the way.

It’s a nice feeling. Yes, nice! Nice that the Black Dog that always sounds in my distance has been muzzled, his bark silenced. Nice that my demons, who’ve buzzed around my brain forever, have gone back to whatever hell they came from. Nice that the storm of grey clouds, which permanently hung over my head clothing me in the threat of a storm, may have actually turned out to have any number of silver linings. Nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice, nice.

Nice!

So why, you may be asking?

Well it’s a number of things. Not least of all my realisation that the less I give a damn the happier I get. This and the fact that I now realise the end to my ‘career’ when it came was a blessing and not the disaster I supposed at the time. Then there’s my recent completely debt free situation – no mortgage and I’ve never done credit. I’m happy with my little shop even though I don’t make me much money painting glass, but I really enjoy it. At last I know exactly how where I stand in my father’s warped and pathetic eyes and most of all I’m not going to let anything or anybody take the sky away from me. They can’t, it’s simply too big and blue.

Yes, the less I give a damn the happier I get so I’ve decided to look forward to the rest of my life – you never know when it’s going to be over.

Just look at that beautiful sky.

7.08

My back yard at 7.08 this morning resplendent in sunshine and new informative sign. Whether it's an instruction or simply descriptive I'll leave for you to decide.

What more do I need to say apart from the world is great isn't it?

Mink…

Driving along the sunny road on my way to Criccieth last week I was surprised by a heart-lifting and exciting sight. Out of the hedge by the side of the road, tumbling helter-skelter into the dusty kerbside, came four dark brown mink cubs which are sometimes called kits.

They seemed to be playing a game of leapfrog or touch-tag, but whatever their game was they were enjoying themselves, scrapping in the dust in the sunshine. I stopped the car in the middle of the road, got out, and watched them for the all too brief minute or two that they were in view. What a beautiful site, nature at its most natural.

They were probably descended from escapees from one of the mink farms that used to be in the area until they were finally banned in 2000. These mink were dark brown, a sure sign that they are from a line that has been in the wild for some time, maybe even the 1920’s when mink farming was at its height in the UK. Yes, they may have been almost domesticated once but I guess that they deserve to be called wild these days. Not native though; all mink in the UK are descended from the American mink.

Anyway, they showed off for me for a while then three of them disappeared back into the hedge, vanishing in an instant. The remaining kit stopped, stood up on his back legs and seemed to look around as if to say ‘where have they gone?’ Then he too slipped back into the undergrowth.

I continued on my way to Criccieth for a nice sandwich in the tea garden by the square, but the picture of those mink stayed with me for the rest of the day.

Dead bees…

Our garden in Wales is full of dead bumblebees. We arrived on Saturday night to find twenty or so dead on the drive and over our long weekend dozens of others died before our eyes. I watched as they fell to the ground with a drone like a shot down Messerschmidt. 

Actung, actung! It was so upsetting. I put as many of them out of their misery as I could with a well positioned flip-flop and a twist of my foot on the concrete but it made me feel bad deep inside.

Luna, being a cat of course, was fascinated even though most of the bees were out of her reach as she was hampered by her harness. It didn’t stop her trying though and she caught a few. Fortunately male bumble bees are without sting and these were so on their last-legs (all six furry pollen encrusted of them) that they weren’t in the mood to put up much of a fight.

Apparently male bees frequently die in hot weather through exhaustion, literally working themselves to death in the heat. Or it could have been starvation; if there’s not enough nectar to go around that sometimes happens. Of course it could be just the other bees moving out their dead and dying, they do that to keep the nest clean. or maybe it was the bee disease that has wiped out a third of the bee population across the globe.

Whatever. They were dying just the same.

Bumblebee nests are uncommon, usually just holes in trees or the ground and not at all organised like honey bee nests. I watched a few of the bees, not really trying to find the nest but looking anyway. I have an idea where it might have been, but I left it alone. Let buzzing bees bumbling be is my motto.

Royal baby...

Now, I’m not anti-royal, those days have long gone; in recent years I’ve viewed their antics with amusement, affection, even a little jingoistic pride. But was the nation really holding its breath over this royal birth or was it just another royal-centred media circus? Judging by the crowds that turned out a lot of people were genuinely looking forward to the birth, but I have to admit that I don’t understand why. Now don’t get me wrong I think it great that Kate and William have a child, I’m happy for them, but it makes not a jot of difference to most people – why should it?

Of course the cynic in me says that all this baby hype is the continuation of the royals reinventing themselves as popular, benign, almost ordinary people and in many ways that’s what they’ve almost become. Certainly the ‘new breed’ of royals are popular and friendly; a far cry from the royal family of only a few years ago when the nation was outraged, almost to riot, by the behaviour of the Royal family and particularly the Queen.

Yes, I think that the Queen, Charles and that bloody Camilla woman have much to thank Diana for. I’m no Diana fan, in fact I quite disliked her manipulative ways whilst she was alive, but I have to admit that she almost single-handily made the nation notice royalty once more; albeit not always in an altogether good way. Her troubled life with Charles, her tragic death, her perceived public scorning on her death by the Queen set the stage for a huge turnaround in Royal PR and for once the Royal Family realised that they had to try harder to be liked and began to change.

I’m pretty sure that t was Diana’s refusal to allow her two boys to be caught up in the Royal sausage machine which is her real legacy to the nation. Her sons are many of the things that Charles, the Queen, Philip and the rest could never quite manage: funny, humble, down-to-earth, immensely likeable, and most importantly human; or at least it appears that way. It’s thanks to William and Harry that the Royal Family is popular once more and they, my husband and I, bathe in the reflected positive feelings that the nation has for the Princes, Kate and now their son. I’m sure that it was all part of the big plan, at least in part, but the reality is that Diana forced into place the foundations of a new Royal Family, a family that seems to be not so different from most and one that the British public can begin to relate to.

Of course they remain immensely privileged, immeasurably lucky, and most people will never have the luxury and travel they experience as the norm. They are very different, but at least they are a little more open and human than they were.

I think that Diana saved the lot of them and I hope that the Queen is grateful to her.