Coffee Bank on East Finchley High Road

Dear Readers, as you know, for the past few weeks I have been pretty much confined to quarters as I wait for the bones in my fractured leg to heal. Hopefully I’ll be able to be a bit more mobile after my meeting with the consultant next week, but in the meantime my husband has pushed me in my wheelchair to Coffee Bank on East Finchley High Road every Saturday, for their vegan pancakes with maple syrup and fruit, and the best coffee in East Finchley.

It’s amazing how small your world becomes when you’re mostly on the sofa – the Olympics have been a godsend, as has knitting, reading, and the constant stream of friends who’ve popped in for a chat, bringing the outside world with them. I feel as if there are lots of people that I’ve gotten to know much better as we’ve sat around, putting the world to rights, and what a bonus that’s been!

Going outside, even in a familiar spot, brings the stimulation of the outdoors though. I notice how quickly my buddleia has gone over, and how splendid the Verbena looks in the garden just down the road. I notice what a pain wheelie bins are (our garden rubbish collection has just taken place, and the green bins halve the available space to get a wheelchair around), and how just a bit of thoughtless parking can make it difficult to get down a dropped pavement. I notice how I’m having to rely on John being able to see any cars that are approaching, as I can’t see from my lower position. I notice how adults largely just look through me, though children and dogs are often curious and seem to still consider me as a person. But most of all, I relish how wonderful it is to be out and about in the world, to watch people chatting animatedly outside a café, to see the children skipping and dancing, the flowers blooming in the window boxes at Maddens pub, the bright window display in the MIND charity shop.

Inside Coffee Bank, there’s the usual mixture of exhausted young parents, chaps grabbing a quick espresso, folk sitting in the armchairs and reading the paper with their dogs at their feet. The weekend always brings the best pastel de nata in East Finchley, and Marta, the barista, knows that John likes them ‘well-fired’ and I like them as pale as possible, so she always tries to pick out two that meet our (admittedly subjective) criteria.

Pastel de nata. Not from Coffee Bank, but you get the idea (Photo by Lou Stejskal at https://www.flickr.com/photos/loustejskal/27604900533)

John gets toast and smoked salmon and poached egg, and it comes with some Lurpak butter.

“Is Lurpak Danish?” asks John.

And this is of course a chance for me to launch into my Lurpak story.

Lurpak butter (Photo Beigingao Menauha, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons)

If you look at the insignia above the word ‘Lurpak’, you’ll see what looks like two tiny trumpets. These are Lurs, an instrument that was known in Scandinavia since at least the Bronze Age. They were used to rally the troops during battle, but were also used by farmers and milkmaids to call in the cattle (hence, I imagine, the link with butter).

A Bronze Age Lur found in Zealand, Denmark (By Anagoria – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20724959)

And next to City Hall in Copenhagen, there’s a statue called the Lur Blowers, which features two musicians playing Lurs – apparently it was originally designed with just one Lur player, but it was discovered that the instrument was always ‘tuned’ in pairs, so another chap was added. When I was working in Copenhagen, I was told that there was a legend that the Lur Players would blow a note if an adult virgin passed in the square below, but they were strangely silent on my visit.

The Lur Blowers, by Siegfried Wagner (Photo by By Soys – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19143755)

And so, all too soon it’s time for me to be trundled home. I encounter various neighbours who haven’t heard the story, and so I get to linger for a bit longer and recount the tale of my tumble. People are so kind and thoughtful, and we get to discuss why there aren’t many birds about at the moment, the best kinds of feeding stations to put up, and the sad story of our cat, Willow. And now, it’s back to the sofa to knock up a blog, watch some of the Olympics and maybe have a tiny nap. All this bone growth stuff is surprisingly tiring! But how nice to get proof that the world is still going on around me.

Dear Readers, this talk featured murder, corpses and crime scenes. It wasn’t overly gruesome, but if you’re feeling a bit down you might want to move on….

Dear Readers, I always wondered if I could be a forensic entomologist – someone who uses insects and their remains as a way of gathering evidence about crime – but I’d never thought about the role of the forensic botanist until I signed up for a talk that  Dr Mark Spencer gave for Plantlife last week. And what a fascinating field (pun intended) it is!

Forensic botany has a much longer history than I realised – in fact it played a pivotal role in the case of the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr back in 1932. This case stunned the USA at the time – the young child of the aviator Charles Lindbergh was taken from an upstairs window and held for a ransom, which was paid but the child was found dead in woodland a few weeks later. The case centred around the ladder that was used to gain access to the window – it was found to be composed of both recycled and new wood. The forensic botanist, Dr Arthur Koehler, discovered that the new wood came from a variety of pine that grew only in the eastern USA, so he contacted the 1200 woodmills in the area, and asked them all to send him a sample. From this, he was able to narrow the wood down to only two woodmills, and from one of them he retrieved the receipt from the man who was eventually executed for the murder, Richard Hauptmann. When the police went to Hauptmann’s house, Koehler was able to match the recycled wood in the ladder to missing beams from the attic. All in all, the evidence was damning (especially as a suitcase containing $14,000 of the ransom money was also found in Hauptmann’s house), but questions were raised about witness tampering and planting of evidence, and also about whether Hauptmann acted alone.

In the present day, Dr Spencer is often called in missing person cases, or where the circumstances around a discovered dead person needs to be investigated. He explained that the vast majority of crimes occur in private houses or in ‘non-natural’ places, such as streets, car parks or other urban areas, and that the police, like the rest of us, often suffer from plant-blindness, a kind of tendency to see everything through the lens of being human. He has been able to look at a crime scene that the police were preparing to clear, full of brambles and other undergrowth, and to tell them not to bother, because the plants were all older than the crime and there was no sign of disturbance. Similarly, along with forensic archaeologists, he’s been able to say that a body was definitely not buried in a particular site because there had been no mixing of the upper and lower strata of the soil.

He was also able to debunk the myth that plants, especially nettles, will grow especially vigorously where a body is buried – in fact, a human body is largely toxic to plants in the first few years of decomposition. However, he did point out that brambles and ivy will both eventually grow over a body, ‘locking it in place’ in the landscape. Someone skilled in ageing the different shoots of bramble, such as Dr Spencer, can then give an estimate of how long the body has been in situ.

One of the saddest cases was that of ‘Adam’, a child from West Africa whose torso was found in the River Thames close to the Globe Theatre back in 2001. He was never identified, and the rest of his body was never found, but isotope analysis showed that he had only been in the UK for a matter of days. He was wearing a pair of orange shorts, a colour that was often used for votive offerings. The suspicion was that the child was used for a practice known as muti – the child’s body parts would be used for potions to cure illness, ensure success etc. The forensic botany investigation revealed that the child had been poisoned with Datura (Thorn Apple) and Calabar/Ordeal Bean, which is found only in West Africa. Dr Spencer described this as one of the most distressing cases in which forensic botany had played a part.

All in all, this was a compelling talk – Dr Spencer talked about what an honour it was to work with the police and other expert witnesses, but most of all what an honour it was to work with the dead, and be able to tell their stories after they could no longer speak. The talk itself is only available to members of Plantlife, so sign up if you haven’t already! Their next talk is about children and their relationship with nature, which sounds like a complete change from crime scenes and corpses,  but I’m sure it will be no  less interesting. I shall report back!

Dear Readers, the past month has been a real education in the kindness and thoughtfulness of friends, both online and in real life. And today, my friend L brought me something I’ve been thinking about getting for myself for ages – she’s lent me her spare microscope so I can have a look at my pond water and who knows what else?

I remember that when I did microbiology at Birkbeck about a hundred years ago, I loved spending time on the microscope best of all. Everything from the water that plants grow in to cross-sections of stems to the feet of a bluebottle suddenly became fascinating. The detail and the structures that are revealed are awe-inspiring, in the old-fashioned sense of the word – you can see the relationship between structure and function so much more clearly, and it’s especially delightful when you can see a tiny single-celled creature going about its business in a drop of water. One of my favourites is a tiny algae called Volvox, which forms colonies of up to 50,000 cells, and is very common in ponds.

Volvox (Photo By Frank Fox – http://www.mikro-foto.de, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20240900)

So, I shall shortly be asking my lovely long-suffering husband to head out to the garden to get me a jam jar full of pond water, and I shall report back on what I find! And if I’m not sure, L has also lent me this precious book on Freshwater Microbiology, published in 1918 and full of hand-drawn microscopic creatures.

In general news, my leg is generally improving, at least in terms of pain – I’m down to just having low-dose codeine and paracetamol once at night, from a high of 4000 mg of paracetamol and 240 mg of codeine, so that’s a real improvement, especially for my digestion. I go to see the consultant next Thursday, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get rid of at least one crutch and start building my strength back up again. Fingers crossed, but things are definitely heading in the right direction. I was also contacted by the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Royal Free Hospital today, so I’ll be going for a bone density scan later in August.

On the cat front, we have opted to have Willow cremated, and should get her ashes back in a week or so, so that we can say goodbye to her properly. We will also be getting a pawprint and a fur-cutting – I know this might sound weird, but because we weren’t with her when she was put to sleep I think it might be a way of making it ‘real’. I guess it reminds me of when I found some silver hairs in my Mum’s hairbrush after she’d died – it felt somehow important to have a physical artifact, something that was actually part of her. We’re all different, of course, and there are no right answers.

I’m definitely not ready to let another cat into my poor bruised heart, but I am tentatively thinking that when I’m back to full mobility, I might foster again for a bit – I love having a cat in the house, and having the opportunity to learn more about these animals – everyone has his or her own personalities, quirks, and annoying/endearing habits, and they always teach me something. But again, let’s see how we go. I’m feeling a little bit gung-ho at the moment, as my leg ceases to be a cause of intermittent misery, but I need to be self-disciplined and to work within my limits. I’ve come so far (it’s only four and a bit weeks since my operation) and it would be silly to over do it or cause damage now.

Female Gatekeeper

Dear Readers, today I actually managed to shuffle out to the garden with my pal S, and watched as a pair of Gatekeeper butterflies circled and danced over the hemp agrimony. It’s been a funny old year for butterflies – I’ve seen quite a few Large Whites, and some Holly Blues early on, but I haven’t seen the usual fall of Peacocks and Red Admirals and Commas. Maybe it’s because of the late spring, and it’s slightly worrying because so many of the plants that they would normally nectar from are already going over.

I love Gatekeepers – they look like little slices of flying tangerine, flickering through the air. The males have a dark stripe across their upper wings, and it’s believed that these might release a pheromone that attracts the female. I couldn’t get close enough to see the sex of ‘my’ butterflies today, but by their behaviour I suspect at least one of them was a male, as they were either chasing a female, or trying to see off another male. In Gatekeepers, the males emerge first and set up a little territory, usually above a group of nectar plants (another reason to plant hemp agrimony, which they seem to love).

Gatekeeper (wings closed)

I wasn’t intending to do the Big Butterfly Count today, but as I actually saw a couple of butterflies I thought I’d log them – I do love a bit of citizen science, and it’s something that I can do without two fully-functioning legs. Having done it, I thought I’d have a look at what had been discovered in the rest of East Finchley, and very interesting it was too. 15 people have done 43 counts in all so far, and 93 butterflies have been observed. The top five species were:

• Large White (27)
• Small White (23)
• Gatekeeper (22)
• Red Admiral (6)
• Speckled Wood (3)

I’m not surprised at all about the first three, but I’d like to know where my Red Admirals have gone – I shall have to hang out next to the Buddleia in the front garden and see what I can see. You can do more than one butterfly count, so that gives me a few more opportunities before the count closes on 4th August.

To see Speckled Wood you’d probably have to hang out in a wooded area, so I suspect that someone has been butterfly spotting in Cherry Tree Wood, Coldfall Wood or the Cemetery.

Speckled Wood

Now, just out of curiosity I decided that I’d enlarge the area to include Hampstead Garden Suburb, to see what the butterfly count was like there. And very interesting it was too! In this count, Gatekeepers were top species (beating Large and Small White), but suddenly there was a large number of Meadow Browns.

Meadow Brown in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

I’m wondering if this is because my enlarged map includes Long Lane Pasture – this is an area with an actual meadow, and it might point up the benefits that this habitat can provide (one was also spotted in the meadow at Muswell Hill Playing Fields. Goodness, looking at the maps could become a bit compulsive, and it’s great fun to see what else has been found in your neighbourhood. All you have to do is click here, and then you can use your location, or choose one. To the right of the Boundary box there’s a blue symbol – click on this, click on each point in the map that you want your area to cover, and double-click to finish. Simples!

Has anyone else done the Big Butterfly Count yet? Any thoughts?

And in other news, I’m becoming an expert on Olympic gymnastics, swimming, BMX biking, shooting, triathlon and windsurfing. If you’re going to be stuck on the sofa, this is not a bad time for it :-).

Green and Golden Bell Frog (Litoria aurea) Photo By Bernard Spragg. NZ – https://www.flickr.com/photos/volvob12b/15254781805/, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=79218054

Dear Readers, nothing cheers me up more than hearing that a simple and cheap way to help an endangered species has been found, and when the animal concerned is a frog that lifts my heart even more. Frogs and other amphibians have seen their populations plummet for a variety of reasons, but mostly due to chytridiomycosis, a deadly fungal disease that has killed off more than 100 species of frogs, toads and salamanders worldwide.

The Green and Golden Bell Frog (Litoria aurea) was once a common Australian species, but is now limited to a small area in the south-east of the country. It is described as a ‘large, stocky frog’, and although technically a tree frog it actually spends most of its time on the ground. It is often found on golf courses, in gravel pits and brownfield sites, and a population was discovered on the site for the tennis courts that were due to be built for the Sydney Olympics in 2000. Fortunately, the decision was made to build the tennis courts elsewhere (well done, Sydney!) The frog is still common in New Zealand, but could easily disappear altogether from Australia.

Chytrid disease seems to be most liable to infect frogs in cold conditions: temperatures above 28 degrees centigrade inhibit the growth of the spores, but it’s unusual for it to be this warm in winter, even in Australia. Scientist Anthony Waddle placed captive Green and Golden Bell Frogs, who were infected with chytrid, in greenhouses which contained brick shelters with holes in them. One of the greenhouses was in the sun, and temperature rose to over 40 degrees. The other greenhouse was in the shade, and temperatures didn’t go above 35 degrees.

The differences were astonishing. The frogs in the hotter greenhouse had 100 fold less chytrid fungus on their skins than the frogs in the colder greenhouse, and the heat also seemed to activate the frogs’ immune systems – Waddle observes that the frogs who have been ‘heat-treated’ have a 22 times greater chance of surviving a subsequent infection, even in cold conditions.

The bricks that make up the frog ‘sauna’ can be bought for as little as 60/70 Australian dollars, and Waddle is hopeful that people all over Australia will give it a go – he says that he can think of at least six species of frog in the country who could benefit from some winter heat. This will be an interesting project to watch!

You can read the whole article here and the link to the article in Nature is here.

Frogs in their ‘sauna’ – Photo by Anthony Waddle via New Scientist

Well, Readers, I suppose I should have remembered how after the initial grief of a bereavement, be it a person or an animal, there’s a strange, wiped-out, exhausted period, when everything feels like too much effort. But, as usual, I turn to poetry, and it’s astonishing what solace it can bring.

Mark Doty is one of my favourite American poets – in his collection ‘Atlantis’ he writes about the loss of his partner Wally to AIDS, and of his love for his retriever, Arden. I find the poem below intensely moving.

Atlantis
by Mark Doty

I’ve been having these
awful dreams, each a little different,
though the core’s the same –
we’re walking in a field,
Wally and Arden and I, a stretch of grass
with a highway running beside it,
or a path in the woods that opens
onto a road. Everything’s fine,
then the dog sprints ahead of us,
excited; we’re calling but
he’s racing down a scent and doesn’t hear us,
and that’s when he goes
onto the highway. I don’t want to describe it.
Sometimes it’s brutal and over,
and others he’s struck and takes off
so we don’t know where he is
or how bad. This wakes me
every night now, and I stay awake;
I’m afraid if I sleep I’ll go back
into the dream. It’s been six months,
almost exactly, since the doctor wrote
not even a real word
but an acronym, a vacant
four-letter cipher
that draws meanings into itself,
reconstitutes the world.
We tried to say it was just
a word; we tried to admit
it had power and thus to nullify it
by means of our acknowledgement.
I know the current wisdom:
bright hope, the power of wishing you’re well.
He’s just so tired, though nothing
shows in any tests, Nothing,
the doctor says, detectable;
the doctor doesn’t hear what I do,
that trickling, steadily rising nothing
that makes him sleep all day,
vanish into fever’s tranced afternoons,
and I swear sometimes
when I put my head to his chest
I can hear the virus humming
like a refrigerator.
Which is what makes me think
you can take your positive attitude
and go straight to hell.
We don’t have a future,
we have a dog.
Who is he?
Soul without speech,
sheer, tireless faith,
he is that-which-goes-forward,
black muzzle, black paws
scouting what’s ahead;
he is where we’ll be hit first,
he’s the part of us
that’s going to get it.
I’m hardly awake on our morning walk
– always just me and Arden now –
and sometimes I am still
in the thrall of the dream,
which is why, when he took a step onto Commercial
before I’d looked both ways,
I screamed his name and grabbed his collar.
And there I was on my knees,
both arms around his neck
and nothing coming,
and when I looked into that bewildered face
I realised I didn’t know what it was
I was shouting at,
I didn’t know who I was trying to protect.’

And my goodness, how about this one, also by Mark Doty?

Brilliance

Maggie’s taking care of a man
who’s dying; he’s attended to everything,
said goodbye to his parents,

paid off his credit card.
She says Why don’t you just
run it up to the limit?

but he wants everything
squared away, no balance owed,
though he misses the pets

he’s already found a home for
— he can’t be around dogs or cats,
too much risk. He says,

I can’t have anything.
She says, A bowl of goldfish?
He says he doesn’t want to start

with anything and then describes
the kind he’d maybe like,
how their tails would fan

to a gold flaring. They talk
about hot jewel tones,
gold lacquer, say maybe

they’ll go pick some out
though he can’t go much of anywhere and then
abruptly he says I can’t love

anything I can’t finish.
He says it like he’s had enough
of the whole scintillant world,

though what he means is
he’ll never be satisfied and therefore
has established this discipline,

a kind of severe rehearsal.
That’s where they leave it,
him looking out the window,

her knitting as she does because
she needs to do something.
Later he leaves a message:

Yes to the bowl of goldfish.
Meaning: let me go, if I have to,
in brilliance. In a story I read,

a Zen master who’d perfected
his detachment from the things of the world
remembered, at the moment of dying,

a deer he used to feed in the park,
and wondered who might care for it,
and at that instant was reborn

in the stunned flesh of a fawn.
So, Maggie’s friend —
Is he going out

Into the last loved object
Of his attention?
Fanning the veined translucence

Of an opulent tail,
Undulant in some uncapturable curve
Is he bronze chrysanthemums,

Copper leaf, hurried darting,
Doubloons, icon-colored fins
Troubling the water?

If you like these poems as much as I do, you might enjoy Doty’s memoir ‘Dog Years‘, highly recommended.

My old favourite Mary Oliver wrote this poem in the voice of her little dog, Percy.

I ASK PERCY HOW I SHOULD LIVE MY LIFE

Love, love, love, says Percy.
And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

Then, go to sleep.
Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
Then, trust.

~ from Redbird: Poems (Beacon Press, 2009)

But where are the cat poems? Billy Collins is almost too painful to read – accurate but aware of the absurdity of these situations.

Putting Down The Cat

Billy Collins

The assistant holds her on the table,
the fur hanging limp from her tiny skeleton,
and the veterinarian raises the needle of fluid
which will put the line through her ninth life.

‘Painless,’ he reassures me, ‘like counting
backwards from a hundred,’ but I want to tell him
that our poor cat cannot count at all,
much less to a hundred, much less backwards.

And Jane Kenyon – she nails it too. There are griefs keener than this, for sure, but I too have worked,ate, stared, and slept.

The Blue Bowl
BY JANE KENYON

Like primitives we buried the cat
with his bowl. Bare-handed
we scraped sand and gravel
back into the hole. It fell with a hiss
and thud on his side,
on his long red fur, the white feathers
that grew between his toes, and his
long, not to say aquiline, nose.
We stood and brushed each other off.
There are sorrows much keener than these.
Silent the rest of the day, we worked,
ate, stared, and slept. It stormed
all night; now it clears, and a robin
burbles from a dripping bush
like the neighbor who means well
but always says the wrong thing.

And finally, this one by Hal Summers – I’ve written about it before (in fact, it reminds me rather of my Dad’s defiant death), but the tone is very different from most pet-death poems.

My Old Cat – Hal Summers 1911 –

My old cat is dead,
Who would butt me with his head.
He had the sleekest fur.
He had the blackest purr.
Always gentle with us
Was this black puss,
But when I found him today
Stiff and cold where he lay
His look was like a lion’s,
Full of rage, defiance:
Oh, he would not pretend
That what came was a friend
But met it in pure hate.
Well died my old cat.

So Readers, what poems have I missed? What’s given you solace on the death of a beloved animal? Do share?

Dear Readers, last night at 9.30 p.m. I got the call from the vet that I’d been expecting and dreading. Regular readers might remember that our cat Willow was at the animal hospital with suspected Feline Infectious Peritonitis, and has been on a drug to try to combat the virus that causes it since about Wednesday. Yesterday morning, the vet told us that the cat had had seizures overnight, and was now unsteady on her feet and had displaced her feeding tube, so she would no longer be able to be fed. As she had had a good feed before this happened, we decided to keep giving her the FIP medication just in case she rallied. When the vet called last night, she explained that Willow could no longer swallow, and we took the decision to put her to sleep as soon as the vet was able to, to prevent any further suffering. Poor little cat. The vet was upset too, but we agreed that the time was right. The hard part is not being with her when the time came, but we didn’t want to put her through hours more suffering while we tried to find a way to get to the hospital in the middle of he night without a car and we weren’t sure that she would know us any more anyway. But we will have to find a way to say goodbye to her, otherwise it’s as if she’s just disappeared. I shall give it some thought.

Willow really was the perfect cat. She could have gone outside but apart from occasionally exploring the patio she was perfectly happy sitting in a sunbeam at home. She’d pursue the sun around the house in the morning and then retire to the loft, where she slept, perfectly disguised, on our mostly-black duvet cover. In the days when I used to work, I’d finish at about 4.30 p.m. and as soon as I was downstairs sitting on the sofa and ready to do some knitting, she’d jump up beside me and demand to be groomed. If I was eating fish and chips she’d wait until i’d finished and, when I put my plate down, she’d lick any remaining butter off of the roll, ignoring any fish.

But bedtime was her favourite. If I was dallying past about 9.30 p.m. she’d jump up and miaow at me until I went upstairs. Once in bed, she’d settle down happily on my lap, purring away. I’d read my Kindle, and occasionally drop it on her if I fell asleep, startling the pair of us. But as soon as I turned off the light she’d jump down and head off to one of her other sleeping spots – my office chair, for example (she was perfectly disguised on that as well, the seat being black, and I nearly sat on her more than once).

She wasn’t a saint: she took to peeing on the kitchen mat, she would occasionally do a protest crap in the office if we were away, and when we returned from a trip she’d spend the first few nights singing the song of her people every hour, just to let us know how badly we’d behaved. But she was the sweetest, most tolerant little cat, and the vets loved her – one of the nurses at our usual practice said that she wished every cat could be like Willow. She loved all our visitors (so long as they were sitting down, she did hate to be loomed over) and would do anything for a brush or a stroke. She was always her own cat, but she entwined her life with ours, and even now I expect to see her popping her head around the door to see if her space on the sofa is free.

Sllgatsby, a regular reader and a poetry lover like myself, sent me this poem a few days ago. I share it now because it encapsulates what Willow was like, small and delicate and frail as she was. Go well, little cat.

Plentitude

by Ann Iverson

Even near the very end

the frail cat of many years
came to sit with me
among the glitter of bulb and glow
tried to the very last to drink water
and love her small world
would not give up on her curious self.
And though she staggered — shriveled and weak
still she poked her nose through ribbon and wrap
and her peace and her sweetness were of such
that when I held my ear to her heart
I could hear the sea.

–from Mouth of Summer

Willow, 16 years young…

Well, Readers, last night I stayed up to watch the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony. I am torn between describing it as ‘amazing’ and ‘shambolic’ with a little bit of ‘unintelligible’ thrown in. You have to admire the ambition though – athletes from 205 countries travelling down the Seine in boats of various sizes (in the pouring rain as it turned out), 12 ‘artistic tableaux’ depicting everything from the French Revolution to the role of women in French history, Lady Gaga in 6 inch stilettos performing in French on a dodgy staircase, and lots more. Here are a few thoughts, I’d love to hear yours!

• I always love seeing all the athletes from the different countries (and had a big lump in my throat for the Refugee team in particular, plus all the small countries where their hopes rested on the shoulders of a handful of athletes). I love all the different outfits (Mongolia seems to have been a particular favourite this year, with each athlete’s tabard being hand-embroidered). I love the way that the poor old commentators have exactly ten seconds to tell us who the flag-carriers are, and, in the UK at least, throw in some arcane geographical fact (‘Indonesia is the fourth most populated country in the world”! Senegal is the furthest west of all African countries! Carthage is in Tunisia!)
• The way that the coverage went from the boats to some bizarre goings-on elsewhere was pretty confusing, though in the end I just relaxed and went with the flow. So, now we have a menage a trois with three people dressed as harlequin in a library? Fine!)
• Who was the masked guy/woman with the torch doing parkour over most of Paris?
• Not sure I liked all the beheaded people with a heavy metal band performing in front of them.
• People dressed as Louis XIV were doing break-dancing and riding BMX bikes on floating pontoons designed to resemble the gardens at Versailles. Health and Safety, people! It was absolutely chucking it down, surely it was all mega slippery.
• Kudos to the various singers/dancers/pianists who did their best while the raindrops were literally bouncing off their bonces.
• There was a metallic silver horse and rider that galloped the whole way down the Seine, to be replaced by someone on a real horse who delivered the Olympic flag. Some pedants have noticed that it was then hung upside down. I feel so sorry for the people who must have rehearsed day after day to get it right.
• I loved the range of singers and dancers – French-Malian Aya Nakamura was accompanied by the military band of the Republican Guard. It was a bit of a poke in the eye for the far right, who would also have been mightily outraged by the parade of drag queens, non-binary folk and other beautiful people parading on the cat walk in another sequence.
• The song ‘Imagine’ has become a feature of the Olympic opening ceremony, and this was a beautiful performance by soloist Juliette Armanet and pianist Sofiane Pamart, on a boat that appeared to be burning. Of course, singing ‘imagine there’s no countries’ after a parade of 205 of them, all intent on outdoing one another, always rings a little hollow, but it’s a splendid dream anyway.
• Poor old Carl Lewis, Serena Williams, Rafael Nadal and Nadia Comāneci carrying the torch to the Tuilerie Gardens via an extremely rough and wet River Seine. At one point I thought that Serena Williams might be getting seasick and Carl Lewis wore the rictus smile of someone who is going to get through this no matter what. At least Nadia Comāneci managed to keep her balance. Why did none of the commentators seem to know who she was, I wonder? Maybe they’re all too young to remember her gold medals at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
• The lighting of the cauldron was really something, and completely unexpected. How do you top a hot air balloon rising into the air in a blaze of golden fire?

• Celine Dion! Not one of my favourite singers, but after learning of her health challenges (she hasn’t performed live since 2020) I was moved to see her, and she absolutely knocked it out of the park. You can have a listen here.

Well Readers, if you watched the Opening Ceremony, what did you think? I’m especially intrigued to know what any North American readers made of it all – a lot of it was inexplicable even here in the UK, and we’re only 26 miles away. I think it was too long (as these things always are), sometimes overblown, sometimes tasteless, sometimes joyous, sometimes magical, and occasionally deeply moving. But maybe it was ever thus.

Cat Update: Bad news overnight – Willow has had a couple of seizures, which might mean that her Feline Infectious Peritonitis has progressed. We are waiting for a neurologist to have a look, but my gut feeling is that the disease is outrunning the treatment that she’s having. She is apparently settled and being kept comfortable today, but I suspect that we will soon be having to do the kindest thing, which will be to put her to sleep. Will keep you all posted.

Flower crab spider (Misumena vatia)

Dear Readers, since I have been mobility-challenged for the past month I have found myself even more interested than usual in some of the more arcane magazines that I subscribe to, and none more than the newsletter of the British Arachnological Society. This has provided me with some great stories in the past – there’s the tale of the garden centre spider, and the lady who was rescuing spiders from her swimming pool. However, I had never come across a musical celebration of the arachnid before, so when I read that a piece had been created for a distinguished British soprano who died in 2021, I was intrigued.

Jane Manning OBE (1938 – 2021) was a specialist in contemporary classical music – indeed, she was described by one critic as”the irrepressible, incomparable, unstoppable Ms. Manning – life and soul of British contemporary music”. She was renowned for her performances of works by Schoenberg, Judith Weir, Harrison Birtwistle and many others, including pieces by her composer husband Anthony Payne. She formed her own virtuoso ensemble, called Jane’s Minstrels, which nurtured many young musicians.

Manning is perhaps most famous for her interpretation of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, and you can listen to the piece here. It’s a little too eccentric for my taste, but it is very interesting.

However, what was less known about Manning was her fondness for spiders. Anyone who is fond of spiders is usually a hit with me, so I was fascinated to hear that, in her honour, composer Stephan Barchan had created a short piece, based on the nursery rhymes ‘Incy Wincy Spider’, and ‘Little Miss Muffet’. It’s not the way that I remember them from school, but you can have a listen here.

What I don’t know is why in particular Manning liked spiders. I can think of many reasons why you might – they are fascinating creatures, they are relatively easy to observe and, as we know, they often pay us visits in our houses – but what attracted Manning to them I have no idea. Still, she was clearly my sister in arachnology, if nothing else, and while some animals, (larks, nightingales, thrushes, geese) have endless pieces of music inspired by them, I am struggling to think of many works in honour of invertebrates. If you can think of any, let me know! Surely there’s a slug symphony or a beetle adagio out there somewhere?

Fencepost jumping spider (Marpissa muscosa)

Cat Update: Willow is stable, and we’re going to give her a few more days on her Feline Infectious Peritonitis drugs to see if she turns the corner. Big decisions to be made on Monday, so fingers crossed….

Jersey Tiger (Euplagia quadripunctata)

Dear Readers, I was sitting in the garden yesterday when there was a tomato-red flurry of wings next to me, and a Jersey Tiger moth settled happily in the honeysuckle. What a startling moth this is! The underside has a rosy glow, and the wings take on the quality of stained glass when viewed from below.

I am getting reports of Jersey Tigers from all over the south west, south east and even further north than East Finchley, so I thought I’d have a look at the reported sightings and see how far this delta-winged moth had managed to travel. I was amazed.

Goodness! The furthest north that a moth has reached is just a little bit north of Moffat in Scotland, with one unconfirmed record in the Western Isles. The biggest clusters are still around London, the south east and south west, but clearly a few pioneers are heading to uncharted territory in Leeds and north Wales. The vast majority of sightings are in high summer, with numbers peaking in August, so there’s still plenty of time to spot them, and do let me know if you’re in the Midlands, North of England, Wales or Scotland and spot one!

In 2000, only 109 Jersey Tigers were reported from the whole country, but in the peak year so far, 2019, over 1862 sightings were reported. These will, of course, be a fraction of the total moths that are about – most people (including me at the moment) simply admire the moths and go about our day. This is a spectacular increase, though – most entomologists believe that the moths aren’t simply crossing the channel these days, but are breeding here. This is probably due to the milder winters that we’re having following climate change, and I can’t help thinking that the range of plants that the caterpillars feed on (everything from green alkanet and nettles to brambles and plantain) helps them to thrive. All in all, I think they’re a spectacular addition to our native fauna, without apparently causing any harm to any species that are already here, and the fact that they’re day-flying means that they’re a great introduction to moths, who usually go unnoticed (unless they come indoors on a warm night).  Global warming will change things in a variety of unpredictable and unexpected ways, and it will be interesting to see who else crosses the Channel and makes themselves at home. Praying mantises? Antlions? All sorts of beetles? Let’s see.

Cat Update: Willow is basically stable at the moment – she is on treatment for Feline Infectious Peritonitis and doesn’t seem to be getting any worse, but also isn’t really getting any better. We’re going to give the treatment for a few more days (the vet is confident that she isn’t in any pain) and see if she can turn a corner. If not, we’ll be making some difficult decisions in the next couple of days. Thanks to everyone for your support! I’m so grateful.