Joyce Barrass's Blog, page 49

MAD ABOUT MAGPIES, CRAZY ABOUT CORVIDS!

[image error] Corvid controversy.

That's a given if you're a fan of these amazing birds!

I can guarantee that whenever I post a photo of a Magpie (Pica pica) on social media, there are going to be polarized reactions. Some, like me, adore them. Others get hot under the collar just seeing them. Like Marmite, the Magpie knows no middle ground. Rather than click "share" with a Magpie pic, I might as well throw a tea party for a bunch of Brexiteers and Remoaners and expect balanced adult debate!

I love corvids. Magpies make my heart jump for joy.

There. I've said it. Feels as bold a statement as standing up in a room of strangers to admit I've never watched Star Wars all the way through!


"But they eat birds! Little chicks!" someone will comment, as if I didn't know.

"They destroyed all *my* Wren's eggs in the nest three years on the trot!" someone else adds, whipping up the outrage till everybody has a Magpie Murder Casefile episode to share.

My own garden's no stranger to Magpie mayhem. Round here, Wrens, Collared Doves and Long-tailed Tits flap themselves into a frenzy of alarm-calls to ward off what they rightly count as a threat to their nesting babies, as soon as the Magpie glides in all butter-wouldn't-melt from the Ash tree.

I've witnessed angry Blackbirds gang up to warn the world of potential predators, whistleblowing on Magpies and Carrion Crows. Once a mob of Blackbirds here ejected a Grey Squirrel, another visitor rather partial to eggs and nestlings, from the garden in Spring. They successfully froze the furry invader in terror on a branch by disorientating him with their relentless cacophany of alarm-calls as they gathered from nearby gardens and woodland to join in a wall of sound. Yet there seem to be as many people complaining on message boards about rowdy Blackbirds these days as about Cockerels crowing!



Make no mistake. I understand how Magpies use their sparky corvid brains to devise all sorts of devious ways to feed themselves and their own young. Including supplementing their diet with small and accessible bundles of protein like songbird chicks. So will other corvids, birds of prey and mammals. It's just that as Magpies thrive and move closer into our gardens and back yards, they have come under the scrutiny of human judgement.

Photos of Kestrels, Sparrowhawks or those silent assassins the Barn Owls in all their cuddly anthropomorphic glory don't seem to attract such vitriol as the Magpie. Superstition and lugubrious rhyme has done him no favours! Even if he turns up alone as a Billy-no-mates, he's accused of being "One for Sorrow"!

We all have our favourites. Our avian heroes and villains. That's human nature.

But Magpies have been on the naughty step for far too long, to my mind. Magpieism from the Anti-Magpie League is alive and well, so I find myself on the defensive on behalf of one of my feathered favourites.

After all, that's the nature of nature. That's survival. That's birding for you.


We don't have to look very far from home to spot the species who genuinely do lasting damage to songbird populations on this fragile planet with our wasteful, polluting stewardship of Earth! Magpies don't come close to rivalling us in destructive lifestyle choices! But that's enough controversy for one blog post!

I'll go on treasuring every close encounter I have with these particoloured jesters, loping across the lawn, using their wits to forge their future, yet still jumping back theatrically as if shocked by their own shadow.

I'll go on posting photos of them, too. So freedom of speech can prevail, differing opinions can be aired and everyone, from Magpie-sceptics to Magpie-philes like me, can enjoy the drama these birds bring into our lives!

SALT ON YOUR TONGUE

You wanted salt on your tongueWithout the wrecking sea spill
You wanted time to flyWithout earth's tilt and spin
You wanted warmth of empath With neither kiss nor touch
You wanted soft connectionWithout fingertip's brush
You wanted unspoken knowingWithout creed or troth
You wanted the steady flameWithout the spiralling moth

WICKERSLEY'S HISTORIC BUILDINGS: IN REALITY AND IN FICTION

The Round Houses on Wickersley's historic Morthen Road near Rotherham, South Yorkshire, UK


Above are the Round Houses on Wickersley's Morthen Road as they are today.

I used the local geography as one of the backdrops for my novel 'Goatsucker Harvest' set in 1855.

These gorgeous buildings, once used as a place of worship and a shop, now private dwellings, are the ones that catch our heroine Thirza Holberry's eye and fire her imagination as she is waiting for Lucas to collect the new millstone from the quarry to cart back to Thirza's grandparents' windmill on the outskirts of Thorne and Hatfield Moors near Doncaster.

The quarries were one of lovely Wickersley's claims to fame, once renowned for their high quality "Wickersley Rock" sandstone. Their excellent grindstones were in demand for Sheffield's cutlery industry and exported worldwide. You can still see grindstones scattered around Wickersley and in the village there are still many beautiful old houses and walls built of the local stone.

"To while away the time, Thirza set out to stroll the length of what she imagined was the main street, back towards the parish church of St Alban. She gazed at a pair of unusual bow-fronted cottages and puzzled how the occupants chose furniture that would bend to the shape of the room. Or did they design their own? It must be like living in a windmill, only a windmill cut in half." - Joyce Barrass 'Goatsucker Harvest' ch 25 "Grindstones and Goatsuckers."

Here's St Alban's Parish Church. As Lucas says in the book, the top of the tower is the highest spot between Sheffield and Bawtry and used to have a lantern lit on top to guide travellers by stagecoach in the nights before streetlamps made night like day!

St Alban's Parish Church, Wickersley, from Church Lane
In the story, Thirza is hoping for a quick getaway from the stifling summer heat as she wanders around the village, but Lucas has met his friend from the Old Hall and is getting more than a little merry and incapable of driving their carriage, as he takes more than one drink at the Needles Inn (now Wickersley Social Club, still an excellent venue for a pint or two!)

The former Needles Inn, now Wickersley Social ClubThe Inn stands alongside what used to be the main road between Bawtry and Sheffield, before the dual carriageway (Bawtry Road) was built just to the north in more recent memory.

The Gazebo in the grounds of Wickersley Grange beside the Inn, is a listed building reputed to have been where passengers would wait for the stagecoach, dating from the early eighteenth century. More info here on the Historic England website.

The listed Gazebo, just east of Wickersley Grange
Wickersley Old Hall is still standing proud nearby on the opposite side of the road from pub and gazebo, the road across which Lucas staggers dangerously drunk in my novel. Today, it has been converted into flats.

Wickersley Old Hall, south face

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BLOCK-BUSTERS THAT HELP BUST THROUGH CREATIVE BLOCKS

We all bash our heads on them, sometimes, don't we? Brick walls. Creative blocks.

Sometimes the block's as wrinkly and stubborn as the biggest elephant you can fit in the room.

Sometimes the block comes over all soft and squishy but it still ends up suffocating your flow like a massive pillow with odd feathers spilling out to make you sneeze with sheer frustration.

I don't so much get blocked with writing in general. Oh no. It's much more specific than that. It's only now in enforced ill-health retirement I'm getting down to penning the novels I've always dreamed of writing, those longer projects, that the dreaded block taps me smugly on my unsuspecting shoulder.

Indignant me growls: "But I love this story! I love writing it! So why am I more inclined to write my boring old shopping list than pick up where I left off with the first draft?"

Yes. I get blocked with whatever the main project is. All other writing becomes a tempting seductress of a sideline. I can procrastinate as much as I like,  writing other things, shorts, poems, comments, letters, emails, blogposts, serendipitous daily scribblings. Nothing wrong with any of that. Trouble is, the block's still there, waiting, where it was all along. Helping me avoid the risk of not getting the perfect word in the perfect sentence first time around. Not reaching 'The End'.

Once I realise what the block really is, I can face it. I can thumb my nose at it and get on with the job in hand. It isn't an anonymous block, you see. It's that little voice inside me that talks in the irritating critical accent only I can understand.

For me it's my perfectionism.

For me it's my fear of failure.

For me it's my wanting to keep my options open.

For me it's the ludicrous grammar nerdish inner pedant.

It's all manner of unhelpful things. Specific things. Specific lies. Once I've identified them and pinned them to the desk, they haven't the power to bully me into neglecting the very thing that brings me most joy, for one moment longer.

So I self-medicate these days for this common ailment of us crazy creatives.

There is help out there. Help that rings true because it comes from other writers who have been there. Like most of us, they've been there daily but won't quit!

Two books I find especially therapeutic for kicking the blocks into touch and tricking my inner critic into allowing me back to the page, I always keep at my elbow as I write these days. I think of them as my block-busters. My life-savers!

One was a present from a very dear writer friend who had found it helpful.

Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way Every Day; a Year of Creative Living."



The other was bought as a treat for myself after I read it in the bibliography to another of Cameron's books and simply couldn't resist the title:

Susan Shaughnessy's "Walking on Alligators: a book of meditations for writers."


Wherever I open them, there are bite-sized nuggets of good-humoured wisdom. Best thing is, they really help me get past my pesky personal writing-resistant sticking points. Perhaps the latter's my favourite writing encouragement book of all. My go-to lifesaver block-buster!

A page or two and I can laugh at my inner cowardly lion or elephant again. Laugh at it, cuddle it compassionately and more importantly, plunge back into writing the manuscript.

I wonder what your own personal blocks and block-busters are?

I'd really love to hear about them! (In the moments before we all head thankfully back to the unwritten page only we can write!)

Thanks for stopping by!

BE THE BEST YOU CAN BE FOR THE BEES

Cheap and cheery Bee Bath on my patio
I'm always on the look-out for simple ways to be a better friend to wildlife.
This year, a couple of very simple, inexpensive additions to my garden are going down a storm with wild visitors!
One is this Bee Bath I made in five minutes out of:
-an old plant pot as a base, weighted with stones to discourage it from toppling over when landed on by over-enthusiastic birds! 
-a surplus plant saucer  -some pebbles I had lying around.
The water in this bath needs to be kept fairly shallow, with the pebbles protruding above the surface, so the bees can drink without drowning. Nearby, in the hot days of summer, I also intend to put a bee-sized serving of sugary water in a very small container, to revive tired workers we sometimes see struggling after a busy day making honey and pollinating the precious planet.
In past years, it's been a privilege to see a sluggish, dying bee instantly rejuvenated and flying off like a new buzzer when I've offered it a bit of sugar water. This year I'd like to make that offer a bit more permanent and accessible to all.
In my neck of the woods in South Yorkshire,  I'm fortunate to meet a variety of bees from the 250 species still found in the UK: some of my regulars are
the Buff-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus terrestris)
Buff-tailed Bumblebeethe White-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lucorum)
White-tailed Bumblebee


Red-tailed Bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) Red-tailed Bumblebee

and many more!
I hope by making our gardens a happy health spa for these amazing insect friends, so hard-working, beautiful and sadly now under threat from pesticides and other changes worldwide, we'll be welcome hosts to our guests. Maybe by these simple gestures, we can see their numbers growing again, and the crops they pollinate so faithfully may not fail in the future we all share. 
Have a Happy Bee-Cherishing Spring and Summer!

THE GREAT FIRE OF LUNCHEON (Short story/humour)

           



 "You're joking me, right?"

             "No, mate. That's what you said on the phone. That's what I've written. That's what you're paying me for."

            Sign writers; couldn't write their own name if it wasn't taped in the back of their boxers. I said it clear enough:

            "The Great Fryer of Luncheon" I said. "Fancy font, curlicues or whatever you call those poncy swirly bits."

             Turn some heads, have a laugh. Now look at it. Right above the door, making me sound like a ruddy Samuel Pepys grappling with Gordon Ramsey. No subtle chippy reference after all, thanks to this jobsworth.

             "It's a license to print money, mate," my cousin Nobby said to me and the missus as we were driving him to the airport. He's off to Australia to open another chippy there for ex-pats. I say he just has a crush on that lass off the telly that does the holiday programme. He fancies escaping to the sun instead of being stuck in sunny Plumstead. He's had this chippy since Uncle Horace passed away. Good turn over. Nice little earner. Catches the passing trade. You can't lose.

              So I do a bit of brainstorming with the wife and she has this flash of genius. Jane calls it 're-branding'. I call it a disaster. When the sign guy peels off the dust sheet, I see the writing on the wall. Literally.

             "The Great Fire of Luncheon" it says in great magenta lettering two feet high. Thank crikey we didn't go for that flat fish logo in the catalogue. We might have ended up with a Technicolor Jaws slavering over the door. Anyway, I'm not one to stick fast, so I say to Jane, "Let's go upmarket. Ditch the deep fat and go Bistro."

             How hard can it be? Jamie Oliver eat your heart out.  Just don't book your holidays in Rotherham. The refit goes like clockwork and we put in these up-lights that stop you seeing what you're eating and a bit of the old Rennie Mackintosh I saw once on the Antiques Roadshow. Then some mood music and a  bit of silver service. I've stocked up with a load of crates of plonk. Three Pinot Grigiots and Jane's anybody's. Health and Safety gave us the green light when the wrappers were still on the fish knives, so we were opening on Monday.

             It was over the weekend Jane said to me, 

             "Can you cook all this stuff?"

             That made me stop for a minute. Only a minute, mind, because I've never been much of a one for navel-gazing.

             "Cook it? What's the point? There's that little restaurant on the High Street that does takeaway deliveries. Why keep a dog and bark?"

             So it's into cruise control with Plumstead's own Antony Worrall Thompson. Once we've taken the orders, out comes the complimentary carafe and while they're getting a bit chillaxed after a hard day at the office, I'm ringing the 'Fatted Calf' for whatever's required. I mark it up a few percent, natch. I've my overheads, phone bill, free plonk and all that to cover, but I'm quids in at the end of the day as there's no delivery charge for orders over twenty pounds within a radius of two miles and the 'Fatted Calf' is only just round the corner.

             "Sorted, love," I say to Janey, cos I could see she's going a bit Eastenders boom-boom-boom-bup-bup-biddly-biddly on me. It was all working like a well-oiled machine. Until today.

             Tonight when I rang the order through, the phone just went on ringing.

             "Come on, mate," I'm saying into the receiver, "get a shake on, we're getting busy this end." We were, as well. The punters from the new solicitor's office on the High Street came in with their other halves, as well as the usual steady flow of couples on a first date when he fancies a bit of Dutch courage and she fancies getting him blotto so she can go back and watch a box set of Sex and the City.

             "Come on, geezer, let's have you," I'm saying when suddenly the answer machine kicks in and I'm hearing this plummy speaker phone voice:

             "I'm sorry. 'The Fatted Calf' will be closed until Monday next due to a family bereavement. We regret being unable to serve you at this time, but look forward to welcoming you when we reopen after the weekend. Thank you for your understanding at this time."

             Jane comes through to fill up some of the glasses and she sees me with my mouth open, staring into space.

             "Have you rung them yet, Dave? One of the girls is debating whether to order your famous quail with cucumber and peppermint jus. Peppermint jus, Dave!" -she's getting uppity now-"Where's your head at, tonight?"

             So I tell her the news and she just looks at me like I've completely taken leave.

            "Well, there's only one thing for it, honey bun, beloved. You're going to have to do exactly what it says on the tin. You're going to have to step up to the white imitation porcelain dinner plate, and actually be a restaurateur."

             Jane does an impressive line in comedy when it's called for; most often when it's not. I put the phone down and flick through the local directory but no restaurants are making what's on our menu. That's all down to the 'Fatted' flaming 'Calf'! Their chef's rubbed shoulders with Egon Ronay, somewhere down the line, which is why I now find myself up the proverbial creek devoid of proverbial paddle. I tentatively ring a couple of places further away, but they either don't do deliveries or we're out of their area.

             Jane's schmoozing and each time she comes back to see how I'm getting on, she makes one of her little comments.

             "Get a wriggle on, Dave!" she says, "the natives are starting to get twitchy. We don't need the background muzak any more with all those executive bellies rumbling."

              I look in one cupboard, then another. Then I push my head in the chest freezer. It's actually starting to look appealing just leaving it there. Bare, apart from some frozen vol-au-vents and a tub of cookie dough ice cream.

             Then I have a look in the fridge: left over lasagne verde that Jane buys because she thinks anything green is healthy; half a bottle of brown sauce I buy in because my dad always had it with his ham sarnies for work; eggs, bacon, hash browns, all the breakfast stuff. Perhaps we could ask the patrons to stay over and I could do them a full English as compensation. 

             There's this huge plastic bag of baby potatoes with some wilted salad, scotch eggs and two packets of mini pork pies, one with pickle, one with apple. That's something me and Jane can't compromise on, so the pies are a sort of his and hers selection. There's white bread rolls on the counter and those rye cracker things Jane has, to make up for it when she's been at the cookie dough deluxe.

             I can hear the hubbub in the front of house getting a bit more lively. I'm hoping that's the free booze though time's ticking by. My mind does a little juggling with those ingredients but then I realise it's now or never; do a runner or run them up some grub, sharpish.

             I grab a frying pan out of the bottom cupboard and look around for some oil. Every legit establishment in our game has its signature dishes, so perhaps it's time I left the 'Calf' with its hackneyed old peppermint jus and its balsamic vinaigrette and got our clientele's palates buzzing with some all-new flavours. 

             I unearth some garlic butter, a bit dried at the edges but serviceable and that gives me a bit of a confidence boost. I tie on an apron. It's got fake boobs and striped like a butcher down below, but I'm on a roll, so I stride to the front and shout:

             "Ladies and gents, tonight you're in for a treat. Our usual dishes are being suspended for one night only in order to introduce you, our most valued customers, to our brand new special gourmet menu. These dishes have been a long time in the production and as we value our customers so highly, we would appreciate your feedback...on the feed."

             This seems to go down reasonably. Nobody cries. Nobody starts eating the place-mats. Nobody screams and pulls the table cloth off. More importantly, nobody leaves.

             Jane starts clinking the bottle against their glasses to cover my exit, talking about how her genius husband is expecting to be asked onto the advisory panel for Ready Steady Cook very soon, though he's such a connoisseur, he's had to turn them down a couple of times already, in light of their disregard of the requirement of the more discerning palate such as we cater for here.

             I can still hear her going on about me in the background while I stick a couple of the scotch eggs into the pan with the garlic butter and grub around for the rest of the starter ingredients. We'll deal with the mains and the desserts later.

            There's some ready-grated cheddar in the fridge door next to the piccalilli and pickled onions. It isn't actually cheddar, it's that half fat nonsense, but who's counting? I sprinkle some over the scotch eggs (giving my trade secrets away, here!) and bang it all under the grill. I plate up and bung on some wilted salad. Well, not wilted in the traditional sense, but this is gastronomy at the cutting edge, after all. It's looking pretty limp, anyway. 

             I do one of those streaks of brown sauce, that kind of flourish all the chefs seem to do these days, when they're not busy calling a teaspoonful of frozen mousse a quenelle. I'm sparing with it. Not enough on there to satisfy, just enough to make the plate look a cross between dressy and messy, so you wonder if you can get away with licking it off before the waiter comes back. I daub a quenelle of piccalilli on each cover. They don't all stay as quenelles, mind. A few slump a little, but what the heck, I've got my mains to churn out yet!

             "Here he is, the man himself," I notice Jane is swaying slightly, even though she seems to have taken her heels off. Not too formal. Casual but welcoming, that's our way. She helps me serve up and there's a real buzz going round the room.

 “Ladies and gents, I present our exclusive new starter, oeuf sauté with wilted salad and a quenelle of crudites à la moutarde jaune. A votre santé!” French GCSE comes in handy, at last. It never did in Ibiza.
The punters are all busy chewing so I hare back into the kitchen to look for the next hotchpotch of ingredients. I need to go for more substantial this time, so I winkle out the bag of baby potatoes and fling open a couple more cupboards. There's the lasagne verde, of course, and a line of microwavable packets of savoury rice. That'll do for the carb fix. Now for the protein. 
I end up back at the fridge where the only protein I can spot is the pork pie selection. I get to work with a knife and teaspoon, gouging out their innards onto a baking sheet. Offal's very popular these days, so maybe I could pass these pie fillings off as something similar. I put the bacon and hash browns in the pan for good measure. I'm mashing the potatoes when Jane comes in carrying the crockery from the starters.
“Nobody's got food poisoning yet, as far as I can see,” she says, reaching under the counter for a couple more bottles of Blue Nun. She's crashing about in the sink when I start to gloat.
“Mains is pork paté with bacon and hash served with mashed baby spuds and a whole raft of subtle and innovative sides. Sorted. Then it's out of the freezer with your cookie dough delight smothered in a bit more alcohol and drinking chocolate powder and job's a good 'un.”
“I ate it.”
“Ate it? Ate what?”
“The ice cream. I had a midnight feast at eleven o'clock. I think I left a little bit in the bottom of the tub, just in case I get the munchies before I do the supermarket run.” I can see she isn't joking.
One of the guys staggers into the kitchen, tie askew by this point, a bit flushed and merry, looking for the gents, so Jane waltzes back out with him while I stick the insides of the pies on the plates in a bit of horseradish sauce with the mash and some dollops of white bread soaked in gravy, which is a new kind of dumpling, the way I sell it to them in my best jovial host mode. I've had it with fancy. Needs must.
Jane's rarely wrong, but this time she's way off. There isn't even a lick of ice cream in the empty tub. It must have been a heavy night. That's why there are all those blinking rye crackers on the counter, to redress the balance.
I eye these up, with dessert on my mind. I do a bit of a find and replace for any sign of fruit, but nothing's doing.
I didn't bother investing in one of those expensive solid marble mortar and pestles, so I get the rolling pin and start giving the rye crackers a good going over. Could have done cheese and biscuits, but I've used all the cheese and anyway, that is SO seventies.
Jane comes in tutting and frowning to see what the noise is, and I manage to keep the blunt instrument focussed on the task in hand. I'm glancing round wondering how to make the crackers less dry; sweet, moist and melt-in-the-mouth would be good, too, but I'm not going to push it at this late stage.
“That bloke who came in here's very chatty. I think he's impressed. Keeps asking where you get your inspiration,” Jane giggles as she necks the dregs of the Blue Nun without bothering to decant it into a glass.
“Gotta keep the customer satisfied,” I mutter as I put some black pepper on the rye crumbs. Well, it works on strawberries. It's supposed to get your juices flowing so everything tastes more intense. I can see the dishes are maybe lacking a little je ne sais quoi so I do some fancy spoon work with half a jar of marmalade and some treacle topping stuff we never used out of a hamper our Doreen won from the old folks' bazaar last Christmas, and we're in sight of the winning post.
When I'm clearing the dishes and Jane's showing out the last of the diners, I notice a few tips under the mats. A bit of my sweet Seville sauce left on the occasional plate, but nothing major, so I'm ready for an early night and a private pat on the back. Never again. Then I see the card on the table by the window.
“This is where your chatty mate was sitting, wasn't it?” I say to Jane as she turns the 'Closed' sign round with a long overdue burp.
“Excuse me, soggy muesli” she says, as per.
“He's left his business card, if we ever need a solicitor with no taste buds.”
Jane snatches the card off me before I can turn it over.
“Joe Collinger. Food and Wine critic of the Saturday Standard,” Jane looks a bit blank, but it is late.
It's only the local freebie paper, but it's a start. We're taking on more staff next month when I can get the paperwork sorted out. They're queueing up for a job here waiting tables.
Joe did us a great write-up, and the review online got loads of hits. We've set up a Facebook page, but Jane deals with all that when she's Twittering with her girlfriends. I'm back in the kitchen, dreaming up all these new dishes.
“Tastes like home but with a twist. You'll be laughing from the moment you catch sight of the quirky name over the door. What cookery lacks today is comedy. Mine hosts Dave and Jane have changed all that. Theirs is the most comical bistro this side of the Thames,” wrote Joe in his article.
I read the other week that 'The Fatted Calf' is selling up and shutting down. It's a competitive world, and with us on their doorstep, who can blame them?
Bon appetit!

FIRST SNOW AND THE OWL

This poem I wrote while I was at Leicester University studying for a BA in English Literature.
One of my lecturers was poet Robert Wells who was on the editorial board of the English Faculty's 'Poetry Worksheet'. The Spring 1982 edition carried this poem of mine which Robert Wells had seen and recommended for publication. 

30p, eh? Cheap at half the price!
FIRST SNOW AND THE OWL
Sun's haemorrhageOn snow's anaemia momentarilyLights up the owl's alarm.
Pink freezes blue in the forgetfulnessOf moments while the owlCalculates winter's coming.
Above, numb limbs of treeGirdle him in stupor,Sore, separate suddenly from his hooting.
Conspicuous as blood on snowHe breathes steadily beneath measuredFeathers.
He will not hoot again,Or call to the vast, heedless settlingDelicacy. The nest is cold.
This he knows, eyeing the white shockOf the hibernal onset, mistrustful,Weighing a branch beneath his weight.
Below him, slow, the roots leak pathsIn the void, rising, stern, determinedLike the grip of bruised fingers.
The owl flies low, buoyed up by fearAnd the air's crisp parsimony,To warn the sun.

THE CAMERA NEVER LIES. HASHTAGS, RATHER MORE OFTEN!

I take lots of photos these days with my faithful ultrazoom bridge camera.

Even on days when I'm too ill to venture far, there's always something swanking into shot, flaunting its best profile, posing for its spotlight moment, framed by my lens.

Birds. Such remarkable characters, always up to some busy business!


The Moon. I try to capture her in all her moody magnificence.


Clouds. A member of the Cloud Appreciation Society and a BBC Weatherwatcher, I aim to keep one eye on the sky.


Trees. Flowers. Fungi. Every one inspirational and unique.


Planes. Pipers with their sleek lines and their ankle socks aka in less anthropomorphic style, their wheel fairings or spats. Cessnas with those jaunty struts bracing up their wings. Taildraggers. Show-offs phuttering over my rooftop.


Anything that makes my imagination do a creative somersault.

I upload my snapshots to Flickr (other photo clouds are available!)
Flickr has its own puzzling range of bewildering tags. Even when you've tagged your own images with the appropriate search terms. Sometimes I find my crescent moon's been labelled "FULL MOON" or even worse "PIZZA" or just "FOOD".

Flickr once labelled my image of a Pheasant as "DOG" and a Wood Pigeon recently metamorphosed via Flickr tag into an "EAGLE". Though I never was quite sure what kind of crossbreeding they imagined was going on, or what they'd been drinking!

Then there are clouds that Flickr insists are "MOUNTAINS" "SEA" or "SNOW". Local upland fields here in northern England it calls "PLAINS" as if they've been transplanted into the New World. Often the Flickr bots throw up their hands and attach perplexing tags like "ABSTRACT" "MINIMALIST" and (even when it isn't) "MONOCHROME".

I often marvel at how Flickr manages to transform birdwatchers like me into unwitting soft porn peddlers! No sooner have I tagged a Great Tit, Blue Tit, Coal Tit or Long-tailed Tit than my view count soars up into the hundreds overnight! Last week when I tagged the catkins of Salix caprea, Goat or Pussy Willow, my view count skyrocketed and kept on climbing off the scale.

Just imagine the droves of disappointed users clicking and salivating in anticipation of extracurricular thrills, only to be frustrated by my innocent picture of a tree in springtime!



If you've ever had hilariously inappropriate tags added to your photos, please share your laughs by leaving a comment below.

If you fancy exploring my Flickr, ditch your dirty raincoat, grab a cuppa and join me over at:
Joyce's Flickr

APRIL DAWN

Feathersmiths swim through friable cloud
Dunk wings as wafers at lips of the wood
Caw still hangs in the dazzling air
Through her fan of rays Sun
 Sifts gold and blood
No-one has spoken though thousands sing
Earth submerged in her tidal Spring

MY DAD: BORN THIS DAY 1924

Today would have been my dad's 93rd birthday. He isn't here to celebrate it with us, but we remember him with love through the years. Dad died at 65, 20 years after suffering a series of massive strokes at 45 (or as the doctor airily insisted to my mum, who knew only too well what had happened, "It's just a touch of bad bronchitis, Mrs Barrass!"). The doctor walked out of my parents' bedroom that day, leaving my mum bereft and alone with the obvious lie that my dad had merely a bit of a chest infection, even though his speech was slurred and he was weakly doing the opposite of every action, pushing away when he should be pulling towards, spilling when he should be holding steady. Only a second opinion brought diagnosis, but soon the ambulances were on strike and he was forgotten for much of the time he should have been fetched to physiotherapy. Such were the times at the dawn of the 1970s. The strokes left him permanently disabled and unable to do anything without support. For many things he most loved, that meant not enjoying them at all, ever again. At 8, I saw the happy, strong, capable, funny dad who used to stand on his head to make me laugh and gave me fireman's lifts till I was hysterical with giggles, turn overnight into a stranger who struggled to make himself understood by slowly spelling out words on my old toy chalkboard with magnetic letters, choked at almost every meal and lived in a huge hospital-issue iron bed in our tiny front room with calipers, pulleys, feeding cups, commodes, canes and humiliating helplessness. No more running down the path, past the freight weighing shed, across the yard, along the platform to meet him at the little station at the bottom of our garden where he worked as head porter and shunter. No more that thrill of hearing the purring crescendo of the engine of his motorbike as he arrived at the school gates to whisk me off home or on some impromptu adventure in the Yorkshire countryside. Dad overseeing my first steps on the lawnBut that happy, strong, capable, funny dad was still inside that often child-like, stubborn stranger as I learned to understand, growing up in the shadow of his loss of freedom and dignity. So many things remind me of him with thankfulness: maps, bikes, unplanned picnics, cherry genoa cake, corned beef sandwiches with brown sauce, trifle, playing patience, silly black-and-white movies, radio comedy, pit ponies, mystery outings in the motorbike-and-sidecar, steam trains, railways, picking the second favourite in horse races on TV, the spiral staircase up Hooton Pagnell church tower, watching the wrestling and scrambling and snooker, tinkering with things, laughter with crinkled-up eyes. Me & Dad near Filey, c1965My next book, Cloudhover Solstice, is dedicated to him, set in the places on the beautiful Yorkshire Coast my dad loved and which, without him, I might never have discovered or laid down such treasured memories that keep him alive in my heart. I could go on, but I'll just say: "Happy Birthday, Dad! We love you and we'll never forget!" Dad & his only child - yours truly, 1961
My dad, porter at Bolton-on-Dearne railway station in the last days of steam.
Quintessential Yorkshireman and a decent, lovely lad.