The Third Lockdown, Day 6: How Green is my Valley?

You'd think that between keeping the several acres of our garden under control, feeding the hoard of animal life, and caring for four young and fragile eggs, that I wouldn't have enough time to terraform an entire planet would you?

It's a cross I have to bear. Well, it is Easter after all...

This stretch of the Barn Station was always going to be a problem. How could I camouflage four rails leaving one visible, and keep some semblance of reality. 

What I really wanted was for it to represent the Wye Valley, a connection between the Welsh pits and the English Channel. I guess I'll have to find a small corner in which to shove England...

Using some cast-off stone shards, it began to take shape. Although, any vague resemblance to the Wye Valley seems to be rapidly receding... it looks more like the Pyrenees...

So yes, the greenest of valleys it is not.

In the narrow space left between the mountains and the edge of the world, I added some foothills.

 Then some grass

All these mountains are removable, in exactly the same fashion as real mountains...

Then a day spent planting trees...

The more perceptive among you may have doubts as to the realism at this point. Is it the mountain range? Or is it the fact that there is no bloody railway in the Wye Valley?

Picky picky.

The next job, after some weeding, feeding and turning some eggs, is to find time to work upon the backdrop. Thank God for the lockdown...

Now there's a thought...

Editor's note: There is actually a railway station in the Wye valley, now converted to a cafe, with a short stretch of rail. Mneh...

The Third Lockdown, Day 5: More Eggs!

This lockdown is not exactly like the first two. We are allowed to do more. It is true that non-essential shops are closed, so no more homeopathy for us! We are, this time, allowed to travel up to 10 kilometres from home. this allows us to see daughter v2 and her offspring. It also allows them to come to our house and search for eggs that, as is normal in our alternative universe, are to be found hanging from various plants and trees.

This involved much running and screaming. A normal afternoon here in insanesville...

When egg hunting you need your own personal bucket.

...and a certain amount of intent of purpose...

"Will she notice if I nick this?"

Counting egg time...

"I won but I'm saying nothing..."

"She won but I'm going to nick her eggs when she's not looking..."

With the egg hunt over, it's time to relax...

Maybe...

No way!

What happens next...

Oops

Look at me!

Don't look at me!

Hmm. That didn't quite work out...

Wild thing.

As the day draws to an end, we see tired but happy children, a tired but happy mother, and a grandmother with a warm feeling inside.

But meanwhile, life begins anew.

Let me introduce you to Foo Quack. One of the four eggs in the incubator. 

Little has changed on the outside, but inside the cells are multiplying like crazy. Not much to see yet, but here's what it looks like on the inside...

A tiny dot. Hovering between life and not life. An uncertain life. A potential life. A life called Foo Quack. 

Fuqua to his friends... 

The Third Lockdown, Day 4: Step this way...

 Please be so kind as to step this way...

If we are to get through these four weeks together, we may find ourselves spending a lot of time in the garden. The shame is that we have to do it this way. That you cannot be here with us. Thanks to this damned virus.

It is argued that we only have ourselves to blame, that this pandemic is due to our interference with the climate and the way we treat animals. This may all be true, but come on, I think we've done enough penance, don't you?  

Hang on a moment, it now appears that the virus may have escaped a Chinese lab. That means we're not to blame doesn't it?

Can my friends come to play now?

It seems not. Not for a long time.

So please step this way...

and together we can see change. We can see colour. We can see life.

And tomorrow, if we all start behaving ourselves, we can see some more eggs...

The Third Lockdown, Day 3: Easter Eggs

Having discovered the existence of chocolate zombie bunnies yesterday, we wake up to chocolate eggs this morning. I think it's time for a biology lesson...

As exciting as the sex life of chocolate zombie bunnies is, let's to inject a little bit of reality; thanks to this colourful creature, a handsome mandarin duck. 

This little guy has been busy, and his spouse has produced a small clutch of eggs. 

In an attempt to save the species and make everyone's life that much more interesting, we'll track these four little beauties over the rest of this lockdown and see what appears.

I'm guessing ducklings.

But you can never be sure...

Ducks have a habit of laying their eggs in other duck's nests. This happened last year, ending up with a baker's dozen in one nest. Too many to successfully brood. Three hatched, none survived. 

One of the problems with ducks is their aggressive behaviour. Although most animals can be judged liable in this department, ducks excel to the point where it is impossible to tell the difference between sex and murder. Killing baby ducks is simply chicken feed to them.

My normal innate empathy usually forces me to help these eggs out. By eating them. 

In this case however, I'm trying nurture not nature.

At this stage the embryos are just a few cells in size, here labeled the germinal disc. 

It is identical to almost every species of animal on earth. It is called a blastodisc in birds and blastocyst in mammals. 

Including us.

Here's a drawing of what a blastocyst looks like...

We start life like this, smaller than a pin point, almost identical to all other animals, be it human, elephant, crocodile, goldfish, mandarin or tyrannosaur.

And we continue to develop in a near identical way, as we'll hopefully see over the next four weeks of lockdown.

Egg-citing isn't it?

Apologies to those of you out there who know all this stuff. Can you suck eggs too?

The Third Lockdown, Day 2: Happy Easter

Easter. It's a weird one isn't it?

What's it all about? Why does it keep moving around so that you cannot pin it down? 

Is it to do with bunny rabbits? Chocolate? Zombies? Chocolate zombie rabbits?

Well no. Which is a great shame because chocolate zombie bunnies could have been the next big thing.

Easter is simply another pagan festival highjacked by some christian zealots. It is, in fact, an ancient festival celebrating the rebirth of the sun at our vernal equinox, when the power of the sun returns & life is born again.

This is why the weeds are such a bloody problem this time of year.

Easter is the festival of Eostre, a Saxon Goddess of sunrise, spring, fertility, new life & immortality. 

And it's all to do with hormones...

The world around us is controlled, not by governments, not by money, not by the Daily Mail, not by pesky artificial intelligences, not even by chocolate zombie bunnies, but by a higher power. 

Hormones.

Everything you do, every breathe you take, every move you make, every bond you break, has behind it the power of hormones. How we behave, how we interact, how we develop, even how we evolve, is defined by hormones. 

Sex, drugs, rock 'n roll.

Blame it all on hormones.

Just take a  look at this guy:

or what about this guy?

Did they end up like this by accident? 

No. 

Were they designed? 

No. 

Were they selected for? 

Hell yeah! 

The power behind evolution is natural selection, but sexual selection is everywhere you look. Especially in Cardiff town centre...

The start of this lockdown sees, in our garden, the unlocking of the forces of nature. All driven by hormones. Love and war. It's all here, enshrined in complex molecular detail. You gotta love nature...

With another nearly thirty blogs to go, I suspect that sex will rear it's ugly head on more than a few occasions. 

Why else would you read them?

Why else would I write them?

Every move you make

And every vow you break

Every smile you fake

Every claim you stake, 

I'll be watching you.

The Chocolate Zombie Bunny.

The Third Lockdown, Day 1: Here we go again.

Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more, or close the wall up with our English dead boredom.

Today we enter the third lockdown in France. Once more I will attempt posting something everyday, for reasons better known to the distant parts of my brain stem.

The first time (one year and two weeks ago) was new and challenging. The results of those endeavours can be revisited in this video for the first month...

and this video for the second:

The second lockdown crashed down upon us after having managed a dangerous and challenging trip to the UK. The account of this adventure was told over the thirty days of that lockdown here (in English) or here (in French)

This time? It is just challenging...

I love a challenge, but this one is likely to send me over the edge. As long as the edge is no further than ten kilometres from home and not after seven in the evening. You have to follow the rules even when slowly going insane.

All this locking down, limiting our freedom and general political buffoonery could easily be depressing, but there are some things in life that can overcome this constant pressure, this relentless push towards the edge.

Love? 

Family? 

Hmmm... maybe, but try one of these

I think we have found Maman's weak spot.

So please join me tomorrow on day two of this wild adventure. At the very least it will help you to doze off in the evenings...

The Third Lockdown, Day 12: Gnome Trek

Having been a little under the weather for the last couple of days (which, coincidentally, the weather itself is suffering in a similar way), my blogging ability has somewhat ceased to be. You may already feel it is at rock bottom, but it has just dipped below that. Now my main goal in life is removing my throbbing brain.

Thus, instead, I'd like to rewind a little to our last Gnome-Trek to the Pyrenees, a previously unpublished masterpiece. This gives me a small thread of near-sanity to cling on to while my head explodes.

Tomorrow, once the steroids have kicked in, I'll hopefully think of something else to blog about, but I have a strange feeling it may be just some bloody photos of flowers. 

That's fine by me...

___

France, the Final Frontier. 

These are the voyages of the Flying-Brick ‘Gnome’. Its continuing mission: to explore our world, to seek out new life, to socially distance, to boldly go where no gnome has gone before...

Episode 2 (Series 2): Life goes on.

These photos were taken before the loss of a close friend, but I'm writing this because she would have wanted me to. Yeah, she was a bit funny that way.

This was to be our last trip out before the pandemic once more took hold of continental Europe. We are just to enter our third lockdown, the European vaccinations scheme in tatters. Much of the British press and TV has gloated over this, however gloating seems a tad inappropriate, especially as their main fault was one of naivety and generosity. And being a little late to the party...

Thus we find ourselves more and more isolated. How awful to be isolated in a place like this...

Spending a few days touring the mountain ranges in the Gnome helps us maintain a grip on our mind's balance. A sense of freedom. Sanity; but not as we know it. 

Freedom; but not for long.

Our little valley in the Pyrenees gives us a warm feeling inside, although it does have a tendency of being a little chilly on the outside.

Some might say that being in this small part of paradise brings you closer to God. Me, I think it brings you closer to horses. I still however search for that missing thing in my life. Bears.

The one constant in our lives is this nose-bag, Sky. A spark of canine insanity in a world gone mad.

There are good days, there are bad days, and there are days in-between. But, just now and again, there are days that stand out above the rest. Days where everything just clicks together and you think "Yes, today was a good day".

We had one such day in the Pyrenees. Here's a video of it...