h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thank you all for your friendship to me during the suspension.

Gif, Novo, Ed, az, Mar, Strangely Strange, la-chupa, blicky, Toy Box, and Kea. Honest Imago. I hope I haven't forgotten anyone.

Also thanks to the eds for changing my ban from a permanent one.

I intend from now on to post my calmly. I must keep my hot bloodedness under control. The ban enabled me to reflect on things.


During the week the blackbird thing increased. I think I'm developping a serious cult of nature. I get it more each year. Unfortunately I do not appear to be mellowing with age.

It all started a few weeks ago when I stayed up 'til 3am to see the total eclipse of the moon. That was a big disappointment from here in London, but the blackbird singing in the darkness completely seduced me...Sleep 'is' still a problem, but it does have its compensations.

I spent more time than usual in the garden, planting stuff, (vegetables, herbs, basil, parsley and some old fashioned, traditional garden flowers; started tomatoes and chilli peppers indoors; putting compost on the soil which I had made over the last year, from food waste and weeds. A big bonfire. I absolutely *love* fires. Though it did singe a bit of the hawthorn. All the stinging nettles are coming up well, which I brought back from the countryside. I use them in cooking instead of spinach. Strange ironish, weird nutty flavour. Also later in the year they are needed for the caterpillars of peacock, red admiral, and tortoiseshell butterflies. The weather has been quite springlike and warmish. My cat's regularly coming out again with me, to sun herself. And then the blackbird does its familiar warning call, which alerts all the birds. Besides the blackbird at night and into dawn there are a great variety of birds chirruping away. Finches, tits, warblers, robin and loads of sparrows. Magpies' harsh squawks and wood pigeons' cooing. It's spring and they are excitable, building nests and announcing their territories to other birds. I'm getting really good at identifying them by their song and ways of flying and hopping around behaviour. Aside from the blackbird, I like the robin's song best. When I'm doing stuff in the garden, the robin comes really close and hops down and grabs worms. Despite living in London, I'm developing a serious case of the cult-of-nature. It gets more intense every year.

A couple of people came round on different nights and I did a load of cooking with stuff bought from my excellent local fishmongers, razor shellfish, oysters and mussels, cockles all sourced off the local Kent coast. And a cod thing. I know its endangered, but it's my favourite sea fish. It was supposedly caught off the coast of Iceland, from sustainable stocks. The Icelanders like their cod as much as we Brits. Also very rare rump steak, my favourite cut. It maybe toughest, but has the most flavour.

I also saw my parents. It was a bit difficult.

I chatted about sports and politics with my dad. As I always do. He still says boxing is his favourite sport. He's in his seventies and still gets in a frenzy when watching it. (That's a dead giveaway for his class despite making it from the very bottom to the very top, which he did, unlike me who spends all their time getting to the very bottom again).

I'd prefer to move on now.I don't want a permanent ban which I might get if I carry on losing my rag here and behaving like an idiot, and half crazed lunatic. That is not an appropriate way for me to behave on h2g2. I am on probation.





The nightingale has a lyre of gold,

The lark's is a clarion call,

And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,

But I love him best of all.

For his song is all of the joy of life,

And we in the mad, spring weather,

We two have listened till he sang

Our hearts and lips together.




William Henley (1849-1903)

Good to see you.

Thanks ed.

I seem to have posted that poem in a rather strange way. I have no idea how that happened.

Welcome back!

Ooooo, I love blackbirds. And that's a lovely poem.

Sometimes when you copy and paste stuff the code is different and it goes wonky here.

Remember ... the preview button is your friend.


az

Cheers az.

Hope all is well in Seville.

Hey I just remembered I forgot to thank you Otto for your friendly messages. Thank you.

I wondered what inspired certain conversations. Turns out it was this! Crikey.

Welcome back - the place has been a bit quiet without you

HI

Being the standoffish git that I am I didn't even know about the suspension. Serves me right for being self-righteously uninvolved and only a casual lurker of late.

Welcome back in any case, I've always enjoyed what I've read of what you've written.

I was just re-reading this, and as scrolling down I accidently clicked on the complaint button, can't remember which post even. To eds it was a pure accident, if you register it. Sorry.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night...take these broken wings and learn to fly...all your life, you were only waiting for this moment to arrive...

Yes, I'd forgotten, brilliant. JEllen

wellcome home

*arrives unfashionably late*

Hey, I love what you wrote in the OP. I didn't know you are a nature freak Wonderful description of your life.

Is that amount of obvious nature normal for London?

Is it not funny?I've just seen this journal. Just after quoting a few lines of Ode to a Nightigale in TGD.

Reading you OP I've thought that you live in the Arcadia instead of London!

Arcadia for a Romantic painter:

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagen:Friedrich_August_von_Kaulbach_-_In_Arcadia.jpg

For me it is closer to that plot of London

It should there be...

it there should be...

????
I need a rest

Hi Kea, good to see you again at last; better late than never

London is a funny place. Not much more than a mile from here is an unrelenting concrete jungle area. But round here the jungle tends to be of a more wild type. I live like a lot of people round here in an old Victorian terraced house, converted into 2 flats. These houses were built in late Victorian times to house with vast input of people arriving to work in jobs resulting from the vast expansion in size of London, because of the industrial revolution. This area was originally given over to small farms and market gardens, before the influx of people for jobs in the late Victorian era. The soil is very fertile.

The houses all have gardens. A lot of people round here are either the sort who take a genuine interest in nature and plant their gardens with that in mind, or people who can't be bothered to garden at all, and let the gardens go wild. On one side of me is a garden which consists almost entirely of a jungle of wild brambles and plants that grow alongside brambles. It provides brilliant cover for birds. Not to mention a great habitat for many insects that birds often feed on. Last year I had a lot of these really unusual, beautiful Jersey tiger moths in my garden. i discovered their catterpillars feed on bramble and they need a mildish climate; London has as that as a microclimate.

It's so good that so few people go in for the carefully mown lawns and spartan, and neat well weeded borders filled with a few rose bushes. i have a few roses, but they are either the wild roses or ones which climb and scramble over the giant overgrown hedge thing I have, full of all manner of wild plants. Sparrows always nest in it.

Close by is a big Victorian cemetry which is very overgrown and managed by the London wildlife trust. Not far away is a giant park that has been common land since time immemorial. William Blake had his first vision there, of angels in a tree.

I love living here.