Diggory posed for a little photoshoot today (all added to his photo album)

Personal favourites:-

This is a lovely shot of his wings in motion. You can see the arcing sweep it makes. Diggory is getting more and more fast moving and its getting harder to capture him these days.

A really nice look at a wing. Incidentally it might look like I'm pinning him down there but I'm not, he stretched and posed his wings of his own accord there.

His nose appears to be changing shape and getting more bulgy. I wonder if this is necessary for his echo location skills? He also seems to be getting a great deal more fluffy. One test to see if you have a baby bat or an adult bat is to gently blow on its fur, and if it parts, its likely an adult. Diggory's fur is getting close to this stage now.

I also finally got a nice none blurry movie of him, but its huge and as yet, YouTube spits it out. Until I figure out how to compress it, and assuming you have broadband and don't mind downloading 100MB - here's the unedited movie. Its very clear...you see him yawn and his little tongue and teeth as well as the obligatory cleaning and wing flapping.

Latest vid.

Diggory's conversion from fat pampered house bat to wild 1 inch long killing machine continues.

To date, Diggory's whole live has been seriously based on the horizontal, and I was beginning to suspect that this may be affecting his willingness to learn to fly. The key element was the heated mat. I had recently rigged a nice little climbing tower for him, but while the heated mat was still flat on the ground, this was where he was going to spend his time splayed out and basking, and I needed to address this.

Today, I completely overhauled the Diggory Residence - changing the design from Horizontal Roost to Vertical Roost thus:

what we see here is one Vivarium heating mat, selotaped to the inside of a cornflake box and covered with an old headscarf that has skulls and cross bones all over it (seemed appropriate...). This is finished off with a bit of bamboo matting, loosely attached to the cornflake box with a strip of cardboard. Bingo, one Roost Deluxe (tm) based on flowing Vertical Themes with luxurious under roost heating. Every bat residence should have one.

This has...as you can see from the picture, sucessfully persuaded Diggory off the ground and into a much more convincing 'dangle upside down' bat-esque style of sleeping. This may serve to poke subliminally at his innate instincts and remind him that he should be hunting down crunchy insects in the cold night air and not lying on a dish cloth eating kitten milk all day.

For a while, I thought it had all back fired on me totally. His food dish was still left on the floor but it took Diggory quite a while to figure out that he actually had to leave his new roost and go on a little trek downwards to take lunch (in the old Horizontal Roost set up he could just stick his head out from under his bamboo matting and find his food dish right there next to him). He sussed it eventually though, and we're both happy that Phase 2 of his rehibilitation has gone off without any serious problems.

As to flying though...periodically he's still willing to sit in my hand and when he does, I always upturn it and let him dangle to see if this will trigger any hard wired flying instincts. It has got him jiggling his wings a lot and echo locating all around him, but he still doesn't seem willing to make that final step and leap off. The temptation at that point is to shake him off my hand violently, but I haven't done this to date just in case he really isn't ready to fly yet and goes splat onto my hard laminate covered floor.

I'm prepared to be patient. It would also be nice to witness Diggory's first flight, but I would be just has happy to unzip his tent one day and find him dangling from the ceiling. Either way, I'll give it a couple more weeks, but then I may have to resort to something more drastic like twanging him from an elastic band or chucking him from an upstairs window. Either that, or I'm going to be stuck with a pet bat for the next 16 years (yes they *can* live that long).

 

Today I went to see a preview of Damon Albarn's Monkey: Journey to the West. Everyone is flailing around trying to find adequate descriptions of it, but the one I think is most fitting is 'Circus Opera'. Albarn has written the songs, and the art and set design is based around the work of Jamie Hewlett who most of the audience clearly associated with Gorillaz, though one generation older may also associate him affectionately with Tank Girl, as I do.

We hadn't a clue what to expect - kinda hoping it would be some sort of remake of the 80's cult classic TV show (and therefore requiring lots of dodgy sideburns, funky music, and badly overdubbed acting). As soon as we settled down into the first act, it became very clear that this was no way the case. They'd actually thrown away everything and started again, using Hewletts world as the starting point and then stirring in heavy dollops of Chinese Circus.

It ended up being split into 9 scenes, each one having a completely different look and feel. Each scene opened with a circus act, more or less. This might be contortionism, people whirling things energetically around their heads whilst running around, juggling, dangling from ropes from the ceiling, people climbing on each others shoulders, spinning plates, chinese dragons, you name it. The circus act loosly led into the next section of drama, and then we got a bit of high pitched Mandarin singing and some completely useless subtitles at the bottom.

The drama, as anyone would know from the 80s series, is incomprehensible. I've never properly understood the legend of Monkey and this play did nothing to improve my understanding. He met an old priest, he saw down to the oceans, he had a fight with budda and got imprisoned for 500 years, he got a change to redeem himself by helping a priest across to India, he fought lots of monsters. You don't ask why, you just accept the fact that this is what's going on. Monkey is an arrogant pain in the arse show off sort of character that regularly needs a bitchslap from the priest, and Pigsty will shag anything, thats about all the character development that goes on. Sandy only had one line, I think.

There were some lovely effects though. I particularly loved the underwater scene. Basically they dropped a fine screen in front of the stage which you could see through, but which they could also project stuff onto so they projected fish and waves and all sorts - that was very effective. One of the monster scenes used UV to change people from people to monsters, and often a projector screen dropped down and we got a short segment of Hewlett's animation to link one segment to the next.

The circus acts were also very good, though we were unfortunate in that we got very cheap seats at the back where we lost the top 20% of the stage because of the roof above us. In any other play, this would have been no trouble at all, but in Monkey, a large portion of the action happened right at the top of the stage on wires and we missed all of that, which was a real pain in the arse. Coupled with the fact that the subtitles were projected at the very bottom of the stage and we had to strain to see these, this meant the only way you could see half of the action was yo-yoing up and down to read subtitles then crane upside down to see if you could see the top of the stage, or just give up. Not that the subtitles were any good because something was clearly going wrong - various bits were appearing all out of order or far to fast to read or simply not at all, it was very frustrating.

Upshot - very impressed with Monkey, and next time I see it (and there will be a next time, when they've polished their act a bit more) it will be a dead centre seat where I can see all of the stage. If you are thinking of going to see it, I heartily recommend you do the stage or you will feel ssooooo pissed off and cheated if you don't.

Shame there aren't many pictures of it on th'interweb yet. Oh well, heres a couple of reviews:-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey:_Journey_to_the_West
http://www.bbc.co.uk/6music/news/20070529_monkey.shtml
http://music.guardian.co.uk/live/story/0,,2115013,00.html

Very convincing arguments...

http://www.websurdity.com/2007/02/28/uncomfortable-questions-was-the-death-star-attack-an-inside-job

 

E.K Jelly's Bat Sanctuary was open for more visitors today, namely my Mum who was en route to my Granny's in Lincolnshire but had stopped by my place to see if it was really true that I had a pet bat.

Just like everyone else, she was fascinated. Diggory is a lot more skittish these days though, so it was a bit more tricky holding him in my hand to display him. He reacts quite nervously to sudden sounds and movements, thus having my Mum flailing around in the background shrieking and waving her arms about was bound to freak him out. Hell, it freaks me half the time.

In the end though, I managed to calm him down suffiently for Mum to get a good look at him, and even see him fed off a paint brush. But she did think I was taking it too far not letting her use the television downstairs to watch Eastenders because it might upset the bat. Hey...this bat rearing thing requires commitment and sacrifice, she needs to appreciate this.

She did know there wouldn't be any food in my fridge though, so she actually resorted to bringing a lump of fillet steak and some salad/tomatos in her case all the way from the Isle of Man to shame me. I was quite frankly dazzled that the lump of steak wasn't confiscated at the airport - I mean, what on earth would a large lump of raw meat look like in the x-ray machine? Wasn't smuggling producing in and out of the Isle of Man illegal? Does this mean you could feasibly sneak bits of body out of a country in a suitcase and no-one would stop you? Good god, is all I can say.

Mum fried the steak with a couple of spring onions and chives from the garden plus creme freche, garnished the tomatoes with freshly killed basil from the greenhouse, and we served it with home grown spuds (not mine, but traded for a bat viewing a while back). All of this seriously impressed her, and afterwards I walked her around my garden and talked her through all my plants. The last time she saw my garden it was winter time and most things weren't out yet. Now all my vines were leafy and my herbs were covered in shiny new growth, and I even had some flowers - she was most impressed. It seemed that Granddad's cottage gardener gene is alive and well and living in me, which is heartening.

I also showed her the first blossoming of my inner hippy - aka my purple dyed jeans. Muther used to use Dylon when it meant being up to your elbows in cold water dye, getting it everywhere and everything coming out all stripy. She was most impressed by the results of the new 40 degree washing machine dyes and I think I may have set her off again. Indeed, I still have a whole bunch of stuff I need to die Turquiose, Canary Yellow, Violet and Black but I haven't yet had any time to do it. Must do all that before the next festival or yet again I'm going to be the most boring hippy in the campsite.

We hung around chatting until quite late, then I kissed the Bat goodnight and tucked it in, and pointed Muther to her room and gave her a towel.

Tomorrow....Mum attempts to cross the country despite floods all over the place, and I'm going to see a Preview of Monkey - the Musical. How exciting.

(also see Diggory's Photo Album)

(also see Diggory's photo album)

 

I have to admit, part of the reason I undertook this bat rearing was the challenge. All the websites said things like ‘this must be done by a professional’, ‘must not be undertaken by inexperienced but well meaning people’ etc. I knew my stuff though. I’d kept every flavour of pet rodent imaginable as a kid (plus a few other challenging animals like tarantula) and been on lengthy mammal recognition courses including capture and surveying. Supplement this with a reasonably biology biased education and you can see that I’m not just your average well meaning Joe.

 

I think the fact that Diggory is in such fine fettle now has proved my point. I do have to admit to one area where I am a little stumped though – flying. According to th’internet, Diggory should at least be trying to fly by now, but all he does is sit on his ass all day preening himself, and stuffing his face with cat food. Not that anything one inch long and weighing only a couple of grams could ever be obese…but there is a small chance that he’s getting fat. The world’s only bat with love handles.

 

Anyhoo. He needs to get flying somehow to burn those calories and I can’t figure out how to encourage him, being a strictly land based organism myself. I guess I could just chuck him out of a window and hope. Or perhaps tie some string to his leg and wheel him around my head a few times until he gets the idea. I suspect the key here though is to rehash his ‘roost’ somehow. There isn’t very much information about this but I found one clue in a bat rearing website which states that bat take-off requires room to drop and swoop. This would explain why all bat houses sold in garden centres (yes…I went round all the garden centres studying bat house to pick up tips) are very much styled around the vertical, with a narrow upright slot for the bat to wedge itself into to sleep, and a little landing pad at the bottom from which the bat hurls itself into the ether.

 

Diggory’s residence is very much styled around the horizontal– the hub of which is the heated mat upon which he sprawls himself so gaily. I think I need to figure out a way of turning this all by 90 degrees and elevating it somehow – with a little trampoline at the bottom of it obviously, I don’t want him injured unnecessarily. I added a tower covered in dishcloth the other night to see if he’d climb up that but he ignored it, and I think now I need to angle the heated mat itself to encourage him to dangle rather than sprawl.

 

Plans ongoing…my tiny little mind is whirring with cunning ploys. Who needs Mecano and chemistry sets to promote creative thought – just get every kid a bat.

Like a proud parent, I'm videoing my baby's every moves and boring other people with them....

Bat #2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQx-o0tuKg8

Bat #3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WP_oaKAJjI8

Bat #4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL8g2ILbC9I

Bat #5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeE75bJFKeg

 

Its funny how easily civilisation collapses isn’t it? On Friday there was a burst water main that cut off the water supply for the entire industrial park that we work in. Seems like a simple thing, something unlikely to bring on mass hysteria, but when you suddenly deny office workers access to flushing toilets and coffee/tea we may as well all be running around in fur skins killing rabbits with clubs again.

 

I arrived at our gym at 7 in the morning, stinking quietly because I had got up and hauled my gym kit straight on, bargaining on the fact that I could shower afterwards after my session. It was then that I was told that there was no water on site and I ran the options through my head. Turn back now (in gym kit and grundies) and change into new clothes at the office, have my session and get changed unwashed, have my session and drive home afterwards for a shower and a change. I eventually opted for the latter, mainly because I wanted to see how it panned out with the whole ‘no water’ thing at the office before daring to come in again, and perhaps opting for working from home if it all looked like it was a bit of a mess.

 

I’m very glad that’s what I did. At half nine, back at my house after a nice warm shower, I texted a couple of people back in the office asking what was going on. Apparently people were going quietly mad from dehydration and compacted bowel movements. People were chewing the edges of their desks, legs tightly crossed, and howling in pain. There were no working toilets in the entire site though and people had to drive to a nearby shopping centre to ablute themselves. “Stuff that then” I thought to myself, booting up the trusty laptop for a home based day.

 

Then though, oh joy of joys, our site manager announced that if the water wasn’t back on by 10 am everyone could go home and have the day off on full pay. And they did manage to get the water back on (sort of) at 9:55 but as soon as one tap failed to turn on, that was it, it was a mass march out….and I shut down my laptop again as I wasn’t going to waste a surprise day of school just like that.

 

It was great. I was never a kid that got their school shut because of snow (being brought up on a salty island where snow melts the instant it touches the ground) so this was my first experience of an act-of-god triggered surprise holiday. I sat in bed for the rest of the day drinking margaritas and watching Big Brother. Then in the afternoon I went round all the garden centres shopping for my bat. I’m wondering now if I can hire someone to tamper with another of the sites vital supplies now, perhaps the electricity…hm maybe I could do it myself assuming I wear a balaclava, hm…

Okay it had to happen...my first You Tube vid of the bat...

 

(also see Diggory's Photo Album)

Oh dear, my Diggory is growing up. He doesn't want to sit in my hand anymore, I caught him sneakily munching on solid food today (catfood not mealworms though - thank *god*) and I'm really in his bad books now because I tried to give him a bath - that didn't go down well AT ALL.

The cat food thing is a real breakthrough though. Crushing mealworms was just too horrible for words, but I soaked cat food in Diggory's favourite food Whiskas kitten milk and I caught him digging his face deep in the milk to grab off little hunks. This is far less traumatic than chopping up live worms so I can save this now til he gets his teeth and the final parts of his adult personality start coming through. Oh yes, and...8 out of 10 bats prefer Whiskas - Diggory spat out Felix Milk and started to get thin.

Still waiting for the first signs that he's trying to fly though. Nothing yet but…I know its going to be a shock when he finally does.

(also see Diggory's Photo Album)

No major bat related incidents to report. As Diggory has become considerably more active recently I’m moved him to slightly more spacious accommodation – namely a tent inner suspended from two poles hung between my sofa and a radiator. The idea is that this should give him plenty of room when he finally takes his first flap. I also installed a heated seat tray in there, and though I worried at first that it would be too hot for him, he now lies sprawled against it, his little wings outstretched, basking. He looks like a tiny weeny little hairy (winged) German sunbather.

He’s getting quite smart for something 1 inch long as well. He can hear when I’m moving about and he starts shuffling about and squeaking to get my attention (for some reason, I can hear bat squeaks, just as I can hear those cat scarer things and dog whistles). He especially recognises the sound of the zips on the tent door, and he acknowledges Glove as his mother and Dry Brush as some sort of playmate/brother and is sent into little apoplexies of glee whenever he is tickled by it.

I creep around first thing in the morning to try and avoid waking him up (it never works), then pop back at lunchtime to top up his stomach, and creep around again when I get home from work (which also doesn't work and he spots my arrival every time). Having a bat is very similar to having a very demanding small dog actually, except in the evenings it doesn't curl up on your lap, but instead in a teeny weeny little nook in the palm of your hand. And you can only stroke it with the tip of a very fine brush.

When Diggory finally grows up and leaves home I'm going to be lost without him...

(also see Diggory's Photo Album)

 

The E. K. Jelly Bat Sanctuary opened its doors to visitors today and I showcased Diggory to a few other people. He did his ‘tricks’ (i.e. waking up and eating) and everyone seemed just as amazed as me at how tiny he was. And he is tiny, it’s almost unreal that a warm blooded living creature can be so small. That said, I believe my bat is probably about more or less adult sized now – that’s to say, I’ve been doing my research and all the pipistrelle pictures I can find picture a creature sat on the end of someone’s thumb, about an inch long, and this is more or less the size of Diggory though he is less furred.

 

Also today, his eyes opened which I *think* means he’s about 9-10 days old (ergo, I only have a week and a half more of this before he’s grown up enough to be released). Despite the fact his eyes have opened, he still hasn’t twigged that Mommy is 80 stories high and that this might be a little strange. That said, I guess if he hasn’t figured out he’s adopted by now, I guess I shouldn’t shatter his illusions unless I really have to. He may start noticing something funny when he goes to primary school though, and all the other kids are 2 foot tall and like eating burgers and sweets whilst he’s a inch long hairy mammal with a fondness for mealworms.

 

Hm. Mealworms. I’m told that when bats reach the 2-3 week level, you have to start weening them onto mealworms so I went to my local petstore and got some live mealworms from their reptile section and brought them home in a plastic container.

 

Mealworms are horrible creatures. They eventually pupate and turn into beetles, but whilst they are worms they are carnivorous, eating each other, flesh, and live baby bats if you’re daft enough to leave a dish of them in a bat cage and the baby falls in.

 

Apparently what I have to do is start crushing mealworms into milk. Unfortunatly the worms are covered in a hard shell that is difficult to squish, and when you do squish them, the guts are vomit renchingly unpleasant. I certainly felt sick when I finally plucked up the nerves to crush one, and I didn’t blame Diggory when he turned up his nose either. I’ll keep hedging my bets and offering him cat food as well as meal worms when he gets a little older, hoping that he takes the cat food and releases me of worm crushing duties. Otherwise….Diggory’s teenaged phase is going to be most unpleasant, and not just because he listens to loud music and refuses to tidy his room….

(also see Diggory's Photo Album)

 

Me and the Bat have got ourselves sorted out now. I carry him around in the palm of my hand all day. When he wants a feed he wakes up and squeaks at me, and I obediently give him a couple of brushfuls of Kitten milk. When he’s done, he arches his back in disgust at the brush and I let him snuggle back up between my fingers to sleep until the next bout of activity. Occasionally he sits around grooming himself and stretching his wings, and sometimes I tickle him with a dry brush which sends him into an ecstatic fervour – it’s almost kinky. It’s a funny old relationship but it seems to work.

 

This was my Friday. Basically, I just wanted to build the bat up and help him recover from the crap few days he’d had previously. This meant cramming milk down his maw every time him woke up, and generally making him feel special and loved by letting him stay close to body warm and a heart beat.

 

Luckily, so far the sweet little guy has been polite enough to drink more or less everything I have offered to him (as well as liberally pooing it all over me afterwards as well…hey ho). This tactic seems to be working too, he seems to be coming along in leaps and bounds. Given the fact I rescued a bat that was basically miserable, floppy and useless, I now have a bat that is doing little push ups on its thumbs and having manic moments where he crawls around all over the place squeaking until his whole body trembles. He’s stretching and cleaning his wings like he’s limbering up for the big day when he takes his first flap, and he basically looks like a bat that has no idea he’s adopted, even though Mommy is 1000 times bigger than he is.

 

I’m beginning to think I have a knack for this thing, though “Sorry I’m going to work from home today, I have to look after my bat” is probably the most surreal excuse I have ever used…everyone is agreeing this is pretty weird, even for me. Once in a lifetime opportunity though eh? I mean, how often does Britain’s smallest mammal just fall into your lap and beg to be ticked with a dry paint brush. Not often, I can tell you that…

(also see Diggory's Photo Album)

As mentioned in the previous entry, I'm stuck with a baby bat. After an initial evening's confusion, I diligently followed the instructions from all the Bat Society websites and stuck my bat on a cloth in a plant pot on my windowsill, then left it out over night in the hope that Mommy would come and save it.

Only one of two things could happen, I thought. Alternative One, I would check the plant pot the next morning and find it empty, leaving me to believe Mommy did indeed rescue it (deliberately ignoring the more likely explanation that a cat got it). Alternative Two, I would check the plant pot the next morning and find a corpse, which would be very sad but at least I could have felt I did what I could.

There was a third alternative though. I woke up the next morning and checked the plant pot and the bat was, indeed, still there. It was very rainy and cold and the bat had born the brunt of the weather and when I first poked the wet, limp form nothing happened. I thought 'Oh dear - alternative two' and started to make funeral preparations. When I poked it again though, it started moving very slowly and weakly. Welcome to Alternative three.

This third alternative was actually the most inconvenient because me being me, I couldn't now abandon it if it had suffered so long and so stoically already. The fact that it had had the sheer grit to survive a really shitty night alone thus committed me to helping it survive by hook or by crook, come what may, and I think it realised this as it squoke pitifully at me from that damp plant pot in the rain. We were in this together now, until the bitter end. I had become *responsible* for it.

What could I do though?  I guess I had to consider driving the thing down to the RSCPA or local vet or similar. I'd feel a bit silly but bats are a protected species so perhaps they'd not mock me too much. Who to go to though? Web searches weren't really helpful.

In the end, I gave it fresh bedding and left it in the greenhouse where it could warm up and dry off. Then, when I got to work I rang the National Bat Helpline who told me I was doing everything right so far, and who gave me the number of my local Bat Society who could link me up to a 'Professional Bat Carer' who would take the thing of my hands and finally free me of all guilt. I rang this number but there was no reply so I left a message. Then I started worrying.

I worried, chiefly, that I was going to have to invite some hairy socks-and-sandals wearing nutter bat enthusiast to my home to collect a bat, only to find out when they arrived that the thing had snuffed it. This bugged me so much that in the end I had to drive home at lunch time to check on it, and even though I was still expecting to find a corpse, it had actually dried off and seemed much more cheerful. It even greeted me with a few brave little clicks, and lapped a little bit of water off the end of a moistened rag.

Overjoyed, I vowed there and then that I would take care of it, even if my local Bat Society abandoned me. Which is just as well as the Bat Society people never rang me back...

At the end of the day (three Bat Soc. calls later) I knew that Bat Jnr couldn't have eaten for at least two days so it was time to take emergency steps. I swung by Sainsburys and got some Whiskas cat milk, then hand fed it to the poor floppy creature using a small paint brush, taking all necessary steps to avoid rabies in the process.

I'd done a bit of research and my guess was that it was a baby pipistrelle bat. The pipistrelle have apparently recently been divided into two species - the 45hz squeakers and the 55hz squeakers and by strange coincidence I had a bat detector (a present from a guy I was dating...some women get flowers and chocolates, I get bat detectors, don't ask...) and was able to verify that I have a 45hz bat - they should come with little stickers on them like those radio controlled cars. Whatever it was though, it was extremely gratifying to have such a tiny helpless creature take food off me and then cuddle up into my fingers for a nap.

Me and Diggory had bonded, there was no going back. Once I established that he was prepared to eat Kitten Milk, it became my mission to fatten him up as quickly as possible and help him recover the trauma of a dreadful night in the rain. This meant my sitting all evening with a small bat curled in the palm of my left hand, it periodically waking up and clicking at me, and me obediently responding by giving it a few brushfuls of milk. At night, I bedded it down in a nice warm cardboard box in the airing cupboard, and Diggory contentedly hung himself upside down on a sponge and fell asleep.

Dunno what I'm going to do about work tomorrow. "I'll be working from home today because I'm nursing a baby bat". Even for me...this is probably a bit too surreal...

What am I? Some sort of animal sanctuary?

First I had a stray mistlethrush chick wandering around my garden causing me stress (I *think* it made it - I certainly seem to have a few more adult mistlethrushes kicking around the place these days)...and then I come home today and find a baby bat in the middle of my livingroom - now what's that all about?

In its own right, finding a baby bat is odd enough, but the other thing that is puzzling the hell out of me is that I don't have a chimney or any other obvious hole that the creature could have crawled through. There are only two hypotheses that seem even remotely feasible to me. One, it got dragged in somehow or crawled in during some time when I've had the backdoor open and unattended (though the last time this happened was at the weekend and it doesn't seem feasible a little baby of this size could survive without food that long). The other...that a mother carrying a baby bat flew in an open window last night (when I had all the windows open because it was so hot) and the baby dropped off. If this is the case, then I am surprised that bats fly around with babies on their backs and I'm still keeping an eye out for a mother (dead or alive) hiding somewhere in the house.

Either way...I'm presented with much the same conundrum as with the baby bird...what do I do with it? I definately knew you had to leave baby birds alone but I knew less about bats. Eventually after a couple of web searches I got the advice to leave the baby somewhere near the roost and hope it gets rescued by the parents which is all very well but where I suspect the roost to be (under the eaves of my house going on all the poop lying around the ground near by that I had previously assumed might be mice) there isn't any cover I can hide it in, just a bare pathway - a cat would get it in seconds.

I went up in the loft to see if I could find a roost and hand it back the easy way but couldn't find anything. So eventually I stuffed a plantpot with some cloth and left it on a windowsill and I just have to hope for the best now and see tomorrow if a cat got it, or it died of cold. Poor lil bugger, don't you just hate it when you come face to face with the cruelty of nature.

....I'm obviously expecting to find a beached whale, lame wildebeest calf or stray molerate on my livingroom carpet or in my garden next week *sigh* 

(Also see The Bat's Photo Album)

I appeared to be handing around a large expensive do for some reason. It was in a large mansion or castle and all the staff were setting up. I was hanging around the entrance to the place where they were having the meal (which felt and looked like the doorway to a church) and I was fascinated by all the people rushing in and out.

The kitchen, oddly, appeared to be across the courtyard someplace a long way away and lots of staff were struggling dragging over flowers and plates and things. I espyed some plumpish lady struggling with a huge, really disproportionately vast, tray of bread so I ran over and offered to help. I took one handle and her the other though for a while we couldn't get our act together and spun round and round until we collapsed giggling and finally sorted ourselves out, sprinting to the door of the main hall.

This got me noticed by the Maitre D (a woman who looked suspiciously like the woman out of the old Kenko adverts) who kindly let me inside to watch the preparations, as long as I promised to stay out of the way. I was delighted.

The main hall was very strange, it was actually laid out like a theatre, with the door entering at main stage level and all the tables being laid out in tiered rows right up to the top. I helped straighten knives and forks and tidy flowers and generally try not to get in anyone's way, but I must have lingered too long because before I knew it, the guests started filtering in and I had to take cover and hide in the shadows.

Once all the guests were settled, I overheard one woman at the back and top torturing a waitress, saying she refused to have her order taken by an inexperience child, and that she was going to complain. The poor waitress was nearly in tears so I stepped out of the shadows in my combats and scruffy jumper and addressed the woman with a big charming smile.

I told her I was off duty (tugging at my clothes) but I was happy to take her order instead and take it directly to the head chef if she desired it. I said it in a way where I wasn't scared of her, and that I might have been senior staff if she but know it, so she better not mess with me in case she didn't get any dinner at all.

It worked. All of a sudden the woman became all giggling and apologetic and said she didn't mind really, but I insisted. I asked her to write her order on a scrap of paper and she did (she wanted lilleth salmon, and she wrote it on the top of what looked like a school essay written in copper plate hand). I winked at the other waitress, then took the order to the Maitre D and warned her we had a trouble maker. She explained that the woman was actually the teenaged daughter of the owner of the castle and the meal, hence why she thought she could take liberties. She thanked me for stepping in, and rewarded me by granting me my own uniform (a nice one, more like a waiters than a waitresses) and the liberty to wander around the hall intimidating people, which I did.

At the end of the meal, when everyone was served and settled down to eat, I hung around in the cloakroom with the waiters and they told me I had done so well I was going to get a full time job.

At that point there was a loud crash and the dream meandered off on some track about how you can hear screams in large houses, but because they are so large you can't easily track down where they came from or run there in time to find out if someone has murdered someone and....I kinda woke up.

I wonder if stress at work is getting to me and I secretly hanker to be a waitress...

"This is my timey-wimey detector, goes ding when there's stuff." - Dr Who.

I want one of those.

'If you come anywhere near my wedding I'll kill you'

...I guess she doesn't want me to be a bridesmaid after all...

(also see the Wychwood 2007 photo album)

 

Woke up at an unfeasible hour of the morning again with a small flock of spiders up my nose (spiders do flock, right?). Taking the plugs from my ears I lay for a while watching the tent flies move about my head and listening to the neighbours talking. There had been thefts in the night again. Someone had lost a handbag, another a wallet. My own stuff was secure however, but then again I had slept with it clutched to my breast like some sort of obsessive miser. The only way a thief is going to get MY £25.46 and nearly full Egg credit card was to molest me, and after the length of time I have been without a bloke, this may not be such a bad thing. I did feel sorry for everyone who had got ‘got’ though and hoped there would never come a time where your valuables *aren’t* safe even if they are tucked in your sleeping bag with you. At that point I guess, peace and love is truly dead.

 

Anyhoo, waking up at a stupid hour meant I was once more one of The Unwashed, standing blinking and yawning in the shower queue at early doors when they couldn’t get their plumbing to work, so the water was ‘bracing’ (read – cold). Showers run, incidentally, by a family of people we happened to be sitting next to yesterday and were notable because they were quite happy to let their (seemingly)12 yr old daughter sit there and smoke fags.

 

 

Been doing festivals for a while now and hitherto we’ve being using a lil 1 burner portable stove balanced precariously on an upturned plate. It’s a configuration that is fragile in the extreme and rendered immediately useless the first breath of wind or a carelessly placed boot. Finally though, this year, my mate gave up and upgraded to a ‘Hot Stove ™’, a fancy pants thing with its own stand and griddle and all sorts of bells and whistles. He really got to road test it today (men like cooking so I left him to it, I guess it panders to primitive cavemen instincts to do with manipulating fire and providing for the tribe – at least that’s the way I sell it to him as he slaves over the food and I sit applying suntan lotion to myself and offering the occasional word of encouragement). The old Hot Stove ™ turned out to be a Bonza deal too – burgers are crispy on the outside and soft in the middle, bacon doesn’t do that whole ‘broiled in its own salty juices’ thing it tends to do in frying pans, and kettles boil in no time. Hot Stove ™ gets the Hungry Hippie thumbs up seal of approval.

 

Thus sated, we ambled over to the Big Red Tent That Smells of Horses for the first act, which was a lovely delicate plinky affair that was scheduled extremely badly – having to compete to folk’s equivalent of Marilyn Manson on the main stage screaming and doing bizarre dog noises and completely drowning them out. They put up a valiant effort and personally I still thought they were good, though you could tell that the bloke of the twosome was deeply pissed off and he stalked off the stage at the end fuming with resentment.

 

After this, the whole main stage line up went completely tits up with all the listed artists moved, bumped, shifted around and all sorts. Not that we wanted to see most of them, we wanted to see all the acts going on in the Big Red Tent That Smells of Horses, but it was so hot and smelly in there that we had to keep coming out for air. It started to make me grumpy and I began to politely ask people to get their butts the hell out of my way when they stood directly in front of my chair without checking to see if they were blocking my view, at which point I recognised I had to get outa there quickly and dull my fury with frozen margaritas. Eventually we split up for a bit, him doggedly sticking it out in the Red Tent but me hiding in the lighter, more airy Other Tent with a beer in my hand - keeping a keen eye out for Donald and trying not to get involved in games of ‘Dance like a Fairy Princess’ with nearby children.

 

 

Children eh? I was thinking this yesterday – I never got took to festivals as a kid. I was brought up on the Isle of Man after all, where they don’t just not have festivals, but they even throw rocks at Outsiders that try to make such devil music. I think I would have liked it a lot though. And when you think about it, look at all the expense and effort that has gone into Seaworld in Florida and yet all the kids you see there are dragging around the place looking bored and unimpressed. Then look around a folk festival and all the kids there with their faces painted, twirling poi and getting more delight from playing hide and seek in between the recycling bins than they ever would traipsing round Disney gazing at all the plastic displays. Music festivals are a brilliant weekend holiday for kids – plenty to do, instils them with an innate appreciation of music AND teaches them tolerance of their fellow man (because of all the patchouli smelling, tutu wearing nutters wandering around – SAFE nutters though, the same sort of nutters that eat tofu and cry when they stand on a buttercup and would never in a million years kidnap and molest a child). I watched a bunch today weaving in and out of the bins – a couple of kids from various neighbouring families temporarily hitched up to improvise some sort of Batman based improv session with a bubble making sword (you had to be there really). Anyway the bins were the Batcave I think, and some of the littler kids screamed when they were pulled from behind them, they loved them so much. Just like when you buy a kid an expensive present and they start playing with the box it came in I guess…

 

…Anyway, the day went in a lightening blur. I don’t know whether that was the sun, the music, or the healthy amount of beer and margaritas I consumed. Either way before I knew it, it was the final act and we hung out at the back leaping up and down chiefly just to try and stay warm.

 

And then it was all over for another year. Faces pink, feet dirty and hair in greasy clumps from being compressed into unnatural positions by our sun hats, we sat outside our tents for a good tent minutes before we realised that the Hot Stove ™ had run out of gas and we’d have to walk all the way back to the café for our cup of tea. Lesson of the festival:– the new stove is brilliant at cooking burgers but a greedy little beggar and gets through a can of gas per each two days – something to note before the festival season really kicks off. And tradition dictates that He Who Does Not Own the Stove (I owned the last one) Buys the Gas…perhaps I got landed with the bum deal with this one.

 

It was a blood red moon. Red moon at night, hippy delight – a nice note to end on. Next scheduled festival is Warwick but we’re already looking around for others to plug the gaps. I’ve missed my calling…bolloxs to IT, I should I have stayed with that Phone Line Tarot Card Reading job I had years ago and learnt how to cleanse peoples auras. I can see it now ‘Gypsy Elly – fortune told and auras cleansed. No job too big, all offers considered’. Oh well...

 

(also see the Wychwood 2007 photo album)

Waking up in tents is one of those sweet and sour things I was mentioning earlier. First you lie there for a while listening to the gentle rattle of canvas, the burble of voices and the jangle of tent zippers. Then you open your eyes and gaze up at the canopy lit up by sun, and spangled by droplets of dew and a thousand tiny little spider webs. Then you realise you need a pee. This means you have to pull on all your clothes, walk half a mile through mud, and squat over some miniature recreation of The Somme battleground whilst blearily clutching a small handful of toilet roll. I generally turn over and try to hang on as long as possible, especially as getting in and out of my bed is a complicated 93 step procedure involving liners and outer bags and mattresses and blankets and mosquito nets and inflatable pillows and...god well lets just say one don't get in and out of my sleeping bag configuration lightly. I've oft considered peeing into a bottle instead, and frequently curse the fact I lack the biological peeing equipment that men have (but only for these ocassions, I hastily add).

Getting decent sleep whilst camping is also a bit of a lottery for me. Sometimes you get lucky and get just the right combination of temperature, light, humidity, phase of the moon, air pressure, ley lines, sun spots etc to miraculously get a wonderful restful night. Sometimes though, it all goes wrong and you wake up at 5am feeling like crap.

Unfortunately I got the bad deal that morning. To make good, I stumbled over to the showers and got an early doors wash, avoiding all the queues that build an hour or two later. When I returned, I surprised my mate by being up before him (it's usually the other way around by a couple of hours). I also surprised him by being in a ferociously bad temper because I was so tired. I apologised and pretended it was down to girlie hormones - what other atrocities have been blamed on such an innocent cause I wonder?

The rest of the day was marked by my bad night. Whereever possible, I pitched, slumped and dozed. I even pitched, slumped and dozed for quite loud, jumping up and down type bands - even when I was right next to the speakers. Some people still managed to grab my attention though. Brett Dennon made me get up and stand at the front to watch, and Shooglenifty got my toes tapping (plus the fiddle guy's beard was mesmeric, it kinda pulled my head from side to side as he moved around the stage, I couldn't take my eyes from it). One String Loose appeared to be a band of 15 yr olds managed by their Mums but their virtuosity was admirable even for adults, and had me rushing to the front for a home-brew cd. They hung around later to watch Ruarri Joseph, notable because he quite charmingly established a little rapour with a threesome of drunken lasses at the front who were wearing flashing bunny ears.

He invited them on stage to dance for a number and they all did get up though two quickly wimped and left 'Bunny girl #2' there on her own. She faltered for a moment but then decided to go for it, and started leaping around dancing, banging drums, playing keyboard and strumming bass - she was absolutely fantastic and got a huge applause at the end of it.

As she returned to her mates she asked Ruarri 'Are yer married yet?' (he politely replied that he was) and they all got free t-shirts. That was a very nice show.

Interestingly, another familar face turned up in that very same concert - 'Donald'. Donald freaked the hell out of us last year at Wychwood by suddenly coming out of nowhere and plonking his chair down next to us while we were cooking our breakfast at our tents. He introduced himself, and pointed at the back of his chair (where the word 'Donald' was painted with a sun motif). He then went on to explain he was a temporary postman, thinking about being a steward at the festival next year. He creepily told us how a postman can learn everything about someone (something you know but never want confirmed), and how he liked wandering around festivals simply introducing himself to people and talking about new things.

In truth, our initial reaction was that he must be a thief scoping our tents for valuables, sadly. A short while after that, we decided he was just a nutter, though potentially quite a dull clingy one that must be escaped from quickly. Also, despite his claims that he liked to talk to people - it was difficult to get a word in edgeways and mostly he talked about himself. I started to pretend that we had a burning desire to see the next act back at the main stage and we quickly packed up and made our excuses. As we sprinted of towards the field, we saw him pitch his chair next to another bunch of suprised and suspicious looking campers and start rolling out the same speil. From then on, we realised that we had to avoid this man at all costs.

Now here we were, a year on, and Donald had turned up again like a bad penny. What really made me smile though was that he'd clearly he'd already 'done' the Bunny girls because just as me and my mate were giving each other a horrified look and preparing to flee should he catch our eye, the bunny girls also all started exchanging similar glances amongst one another. Donald pitched his chair right next to them (still with 'Donald' written on the back) and wandered off to the bar, at which point Bunny #1 quickly grabbed his chair and shoved it far away from them as possible. Then, even funnier, another guy quickly leapt up and shoved the chair away from him too - it wound up being right up at the front against a post facing the crowd and when poor old (now alcoholically buffuddled) Donald came back with his pint, he didn't initially spot it and made a woozy grab for mine (he was politely but firmly corrected). And I swear when he sat down, everyone subtely started to shuffle and lean away from him. Poor Donald. I saw him later sitting on his own near the bins eating a curry. Living proof the humankind doesn't really want to love one another, even hippies.

I flagged very early because of my poor night's sleep, and warned my companion of this. Luckily he was knackered too so we both sloped off before the start of the final act and we brewed fruit tea at our tents listening to Badly Drawn Boy drifting over campsite at dusk, it was very calming. I promised that an early night would mean I would be much more Full of Fun the next day. The subtext of this was - I had no intention of getting up early on Monday to get showered or rush off home so I intended to drink heavily all of Sunday. I do believe my mate missed the hidden message. Oh well...it's not like it's going be be anything like The Tequila Incident again is it...?