Well Readers, I don’t know about you, but I generally have at least two, and sometimes three books on the go, so that whatever mood I’m in I have something to match. First up is ‘Vermeer – A Life Lost and Found’ by that bloke off of the telly, Andrew Graham-Dixon. What a pleasure this book is! I’ve learned so much about the history of the Low Countries, the Thirty Years War, and the growth of religious tolerance in what is now the Netherlands. Graham Dixon manages to make all of this interesting rather than dry, and at the heart of it is the mystery of why most of Vermeer’s paintings were bought by just one couple. I have always loved Vermeer – there’s something of the transcendence of the every day in his paintings, a moment captured and somehow shot through with a divine light. I am loving Graham-Dixon’s insights into the paintings themselves as well. This is a hefty book, though, and so it’s for bedtime reading rather than for lugging around in my backpack.

What I’m lugging about in the aforementioned backpack is this rather brilliant book about the conservation of the Amur tiger in remote north-eastern Russia. The author, Jonathan C. Slaght, has already brought this region to life in his book about Blakiston’s Fish Owl, “Owls of the Eastern Ice‘, and as in his previous book Slaght has a gift for conjuring up not just the animals, but also the people involved in the conservation effort and the whole sense of walking in the forest. When I last picked the book up a 300 kg brown bear had been caught in a tiger snare, and the resultant carnage left two scientists up a tree. Way too exciting for night time reading, I’m sure you’ll agree.

And then there are those books that you’ve forgotten you’ve ordered, and which turn up out of the blue. I’ve read most of existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom’s work, including his previous book which he co-wrote with his wife of 65 years who was dying. I put the other two books down to read this one: Yalom is 93 years old, and his memory is failing, but he has spent the past few years during and since Covid giving one hour, one-off sessions to people, and then referring them on to other psychotherapists who he thinks can help them.I have always been fascinated by therapy (and have been in therapy myself for almost ten years – to me, it is to my psyche what pilates and walking are to my body), but I wondered what good could come of one intense hour of connection. The answer is ‘quite a lot’.

So, Readers, any recommendations/thoughts? What are you hoping that Santa will put in. your Christmas stocking? Do share!

Grolar (Grizzly/Polar Bear hybrid) in Osnabruck Zoo (Photo By Corradox – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63796271)

Dear Readers, there was a very interesting article in New Scientist this week, concerning the hybridisation of polar and grizzly bears. As the Arctic ice that enables polar bears to go north to hunt for seals becomes less and less reliable, polar bears are increasingly moving further south, where their range overlaps with grizzly bears who, finding the climate to their liking, are moving north. Hence, some interbreeding is taking place in the wild. One female polar bear met up with two grizzlies, and had two cubs by each male – three daughters and a son. In a turn of fate that even Shakespeare couldn’t have dreamed up, one of the females then mated with her own father and with the other male that her mother had mated with. She in turn had four cubs.

Scientists were initially excited by this turn of events –  for a start, the cubs of the original mating should have been infertile but, as one of the daughters showed, they could clearly reproduce. Would the offspring be better adapted to the changes occurring due to climate change?

Grolar bears (and pizzlies, bears with a polar bear father and a grizzly bear mother) are more heavily-built than polar bears, with larger feet and heads. Scientists originally conjectured that this might mean that they could hunt for a wider range of prey, rather than being restricted to seals as polar bears are. But, as I learned on my biology course last year, hybrids are often not well-adapted to either of the environments of their parents, being somewhere in the middle between them, and so it proved with these hybrids. There are no wild grolar bears/pizzlies except for the ones that we already know about. These bears don’t have the non-slip paws of polar bears, and so can’t hunt on the ice, but they also don’t have the massive forelimbs and shoulders of grizzly bears, which enable them to hunt terrestrial prey. It seems that they are not the future of bears in the far north after all.

Grolars and pizzlies are not the only climate-induced hybrids that exist as populations that were once separate move together – there are blynxes (bob-cat/lynx hybrids) in North America, and coywolves, the result of wolf/coyote matings. Where both animals serve a similar purpose in an ecosystem, these hybrids might not have much of a knock-on effect on their ecosystems, but where they have different ‘habits’ things could change significantly. For example, grizzly bears leave carrion for other animals to feed on, but polar bears eat pretty much everything. If grolars and pizzlies inherited the polar bear habits, this could have a significant effect on the grizzly ecosystem.

However, this is largely hypothetical. It looks as if grolars and pizzlies are not common, and are unlikely to be the future of Arctic bears. It’s ironic that the word ‘Arctic’ actually means ‘with bears’ (Antarctic meaning ‘no bears’). Our only hope is a) that climate change is actually taken seriously by our governments and something is done about it or b) that polar bears learn to eat some of the prey that grizzlies currently take. Neither is likely, but hope was the last thing left in Pandora’s box, as we know.

Incidentally the bear in the photo was the result of a grizzly/polar bear mating at Osnabruck zoo. Whether this was an accident or a deliberate attempt by the Zoo to raise an ‘unusual’ animal isn’t clear to me. Two hybrid cubs were born, and the female, Tips (in the photo) was shot dead after escaping from her enclosure in 2017. It’s an open question about whether any animals should be in zoos, but clearly this was a desperately unhappy end to an unhappy story. Not very festive, I know. I promise to ease up on the misery going forward.

Photo By Simeon87 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=53696653

Dear Readers, I wanted to find a few new Christmas poems for this slot this year, so here are some that I rather like, and hadn’t come across before. Let me know your favourites!

First up, this one by e.e.cummings. Strangely enough, I still feel sorry for the Christmas baubles, hidden away all year and only allowed out for a few weeks in December and January. I love the child’s perspective here, which I think (just) saves it from being saccharine, though I would agree that it teeters on the edge. Let me know what you think!

[little tree]

E. E. Cummings
1894 –
1962

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don’t be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i’ll give them all to you to hold.
every finger shall have its ring
and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you’re quite dressed
you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they’ll stare!
oh but you’ll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we’ll dance and sing
“Noel Noel”

Photo by By Dependability – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=77539359

This one is so closely observed, and I love the changes in scale, the way the poet zooms in and then pulls focus.

Model-Train Display at Christmas in a Shopping Mall Food Court

James Arthur

These kids watching so intently
on every side of the display
must love the feeling of being gigantic:
of having a giant’s power
over this little world of snow, where buttons
lift and lower
the railway’s crossing gate, or switch the track,
or make the bent wire topped with a toy helicopter
turn and turn
like a sped-up sunflower. A steam engine
draws coal tender, passenger cars, and a gleaming caboose
out from the mountain tunnel,
through a forest of spruce and pine, over the trestle bridge,
to come down near the old silver mine.

Maybe all Christmases
are haunted by Christmases long gone:
old songs, old customs, people who loved you
and who’ve died. Within a family
sometimes even the smallest disagreements
can turn, and grow unkind.

The train’s imaginary passengers,
looking outward from inside,
are steaming toward the one town they could be going to:
the town they have just left,
where everything is local
and nothing is to scale. One church, one skating rink,
one place to buy a saw.
A single hook-and-ladder truck
and one officer of the law. Maybe in another valley
it’s early spring
and the thick air is redolent of chimney smoke and rain,
but here the diner’s always open
so you can always get a meal. Or go down to the drive-in
looking for a fight. Or stay up
all night, so tormented by desire, you can hardly think.

Beyond the edges of the model-train display, the food court
is abuzz. Gingerbread and candy canes
surround a blow mold Virgin Mary, illuminated from within;
a grapevine reindeer
has been hung with sticks of cinnamon. One by one, kids
get pulled away
from the model trains: Christmas Eve is bearing down,
and many chores remain undone.

But for every child who leaves, another child appears.
The great pagan pine
catches and throws back wave on wave of light,
like a king-size chandelier, announcing
that the jingle hop has begun,
and the drummer boy
still has nothing to offer the son of God
but the sound of one small drum.

Detail from ‘Journey of the Magi’ by James Tissot, Photo by Eric Wilcox at https://www.flickr.com/photos/joethelion/2623731774

And I know I said that I’d only include poems that were new to me, but re-reading ‘The Journey of the Magi’ by T.S Eliot I am struck yet again by how he evokes the journey, and the musing at the end of it. So here it is!

Journey of the Magi

T. S. Eliot
1888 –
1965

‘A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.’
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins,
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

Echocardiogram image (Photo from https://www.thevesey.co.uk/new-patient-information/echocardiogram)

Dear Readers, as you might remember a few years ago I was diagnosed with a congenital heart condition – the valve in my heart that feeds the aorta should have three ‘leaves’ but instead it only has two (bicuspid aortic valve). So far it’s not really caused me any problems – I’m a little more breathless than I think I should be, but that could just be because I’m not as mobile as I was following my broken leg/peripheral neuropathy diagnosis. Anyhoo, once a year I toddle down to the Whittington Hospital to have an echocardiogram – this is an ultrasound of the heart, and enables all sorts of measurements to be taken, which can then be compared to my previous report.

If you have to have a medical procedure, it’s rather a nice one to have – you lay comfortably in a darkened room while someone pushes a probe gently into your ribs and takes a series of photographs. They also listen to your heart as it swishes away. An extra bonus this time was that the person doing the procedure was left handed, so I could see the screen as she went through the process. It was rather lovely seeing my heart lit up in shades of blue and red – it was as if I had a miniature Aurora Borealis going on in my chest. Sadly, the reason for the colours is rather more prosaic – it shows the operator of the machinery the direction and strength of the sound waves. Sigh.

And on 30th January I’m actually going to meet the cardiologist dealing with my case in real life – I’ve had a chat with him, and received a report, but it will be good to actually see him. I want to find out if there’s been any deterioration in my heart function over the past year – over time, this condition can lead to heart failure and clearly I want to avoid that if possible. I also want to get some clarity on exercise – one of the risks with my condition is that the wall of the aorta becomes thinner, and lifting heavy weights could cause an aortic dissection, where the aorta actually splits. Yikes! I’ve been told that I can lift up to a third of my body weight, but it does mean that my promising career as an Olympic weight-lifter has had to go on hold.

In the end, I might need a replacement heart valve, but even this isn’t as bad as it sounds – in the past it would have meant open-heart surgery, but these days they can do a procedure rather like popping in a stent – they go in through an incision in the groin and manoeuvre the new valve into place. Doesn’t exactly sound like a bundle of laughs, but then neither is heart failure. Anyhow, let’s see what the cardiologist says at the end of the month, and do shout if you have any experience with heart conditions – there are so many of us about that we should definitely form a club!

Olympic weightlifter Kuo Hsing-chun lifting 105 kg at the Paris 24 Olympics. She won’t have to worry about me! (Photo By 教育部體育署, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151473490)

Drunk Raccoon in Virginia (Photo from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/drunk-raccoon-virginia-liquor-store)

Dear Readers, it’s that time of year when the late-night tube is full of people who are, shall we say, a little the worst for wear, but this raccoon took things a bit too far when he or she found themselves in a liquor store in Virginia after falling through the ceiling.

The liquor store! (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/03/drunk-raccoon-virginia-liquor-store)

The poor raccoon was scooped up, allowed to recover, and then released back into ‘the wild’. I love what the staff at the rescue agency said:

“After a few hours of sleep and zero signs of injury (other than maybe a hangover and poor life choices), he was safely released back to the wild, hopefully having learned that breaking and entering is not the answer,”

However, this incident is one of many, many raccoon-based felonies (being a regular visitor to Toronto I’ve posted about this before, here and here ), and there is growing evidence that hanging around people is changing the appearance of raccoons. In many animals, domestication is linked to physical changes which are genetically linked to increased friendliness and a reduction in aggression – these include a shorter muzzle, floppy ears and ‘piebald’ (black and white) colouration. It appears that urban raccoons have shorter muzzles than their rural cousins. Foxes show a similar reduction in snout length but, interestingly, cats do not. Then again, I remain to be convinced that cats have ‘really’ been domesticated – I’m sure they’re just taking advantage of their human butlers/servants, and are more than capable of looking after themselves.

For now, though, let’s just be grateful that raccoons haven’t developed opposable thumbs. Yet.

Photo by By Darkone – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=260394

Dear Readers, I might have mentioned that my Open University course includes a number of projects on ecosystem services this year – an estimation of the amount of money that having trees saves us in terms of carbon captured, flooding ameliorated and air quality improved. So my first task has been to measure some trees. By looking at the circumference of the trunk plus the species, it’s possible to estimate the size of the canopy and the overall bulk of the tree.

So, off we go with a notebook and a tape measure into the wild streets of East Finchley, First up we measure ten trees in the County Roads – these are rows of Victorian terraces, narrow residential streets with a lot of character. The trees are a fine  mixture of species – crab apples and cherries predominate, but there are also hawthorns and rowans, and more recent trees such as crape myrtle, shadberry and hibiscus.  However, these are also small trees, with a maximum circumference of 101 cms. In total, they store about 1500 kgs of carbon dioxide, and remove about 190 grams of particulates from the air every year.

A Rowan tree on the County Roads

But then today my husband and I measured some of the street trees along the High Road, and enormous bruisers they are. Mostly these are London Plane trees, with some large lime trees further north, and a lone ginkgo tree.

Well, some of these trees were so enormous that I couldn’t get my tape measure round them, with a maximum circumference of 332 centimetres. When I plug in the calculations for these ten trees, it turns out that they’ve sequestered a whopping 12,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide so far.

Converted to monetary value, the trees on the County Roads have saved us £94 so far, while the ones on the High Road have saved us £757.

Now, if I had to choose between the trees on the High Road and the trees on the County Roads with my accountant’s hat on, it’s clear that the High Road trees would win – they sequester more carbon, and also alleviate more flooding and improve air quality to a greater degree. However, the calculations don’t include the costs incurred by such large trees – they need to be pollarded regularly, the London Planes are a major cause of hay fever, and their roots may sometimes impinge on buildings and sewers.

What also isn’t taken into account is the biodiversity value of the trees involved. London Plane trees provide nesting and roosting sites for birds, but that is about it. Crab apples, cherries and rowans provide food for a wide range of insects, their fruit and blossom is eaten by birds, and all in all they provide a much wider range of habitats and feeding opportunities than the trees on the High Road.

In the hypothetical scenario that we were presented with, it wasn’t possible to save some High Road trees, and some County Roads trees – it was all or nothing. What a conundrum! I love the way the temperature drops when you walk under the London Plane trees on your way home from the station on a hot summer day. I love the way that the starlings have chosen one of the Plane trees to roost in, and the way that they swirl around it before they settle down. But I also love the audible hum of bees in the cherry blossom, and the way that the parakeets munch on the crab apples. In terms of saving the planet from a climate change point of view, I should probably save the High Road trees, but that can feel as if it’s about just saving ourselves, rather than saving the whole range of living things that we share the planet with.

So, I shall crunch some more numbers and knock up a few graphs and see if there’s any way of coming to an answer that I’m comfortable with. If nothing else, it gives some insight into the difficult decisions that will have to be made going forward, though hopefully not too many of them will actually involve cutting down trees. If this exercise has shown anything, it’s that we need all the trees we can get.

Dear Readers, it was a bit of a shock to come back from Namibia and to discover that Christmas was nearly upon us, but I am getting into the swing of things, and on Thursday I met my friend S in the cafe at the Sunshine Garden Centre. In December most of the place is taken up with Christmas trees (you can see just a few of them in the left and right-hand corners of the photo above). I asked one of the chaps who work there if they actually managed to sell all of the trees.

“Last year we closed on 23rd of December, and we had three trees left” he said.

Wow. The good burghers of Muswell Hill and Bounds Green must have a real liking for Norway Spruce. Anyhow, here is some of the wisdom that I picked up from the very helpful chap.

1. Underfloor heating is a nightmare for Christmas trees (after all, they’re used to the cold and damp outside). If you have such a thing, you need to lay down some tinfoil to the same diameter as the lowest branches, and put a mat on top – this should protect the tree from the heat
2. Cut a bit of the trunk off when you get the tree and stick it in a bucket of warm (not cold!) water so that it has a bit of a drink before it all dries up.

The chap also expressed a preference for branches of Eucalyptus in the house, because of the fresh smell. Who knew?

And then it was off to the cafe, past squadrons of cyclamen and bunches of mistletoe. And because it’s nearly Christmas, a gingerbread latte was essential.

Incidentally, am I the only person in the world who didn’t like the sound of ‘pumpkin-spiced’ drinks because who wants coffee that tastes of pumpkin? Maybe it’s just me.

Oh, and on Wednesday I went to see ‘A Christmas Carol’ at the Old Vic. What a joy it was! There were free mince pies and satsumas, some splendid carols and a bit of hand-bell ringing, all the usual ghosts and Scrooge’s change of heart. At one point there were brussels sprouts on tiny parachutes, and at another point there was a positive snow storm. It was all a bit anarchic and over the top, but when Tiny Tim said ‘God bless us, every one’ there was not a dry eye in the house. And if that doesn’t put you in the mood for Christmas, I don’t know what will.

At the Old Vic for A Christmas Carol

Okonjima at sunset…

Dear Readers, for our last day in Namibia we went out into the reserve at Okonjima, and headed up the local mountain to watch the sun go down. As we bumped up in the jeep, a troop of Chacma baboons ran away from us – the primates here are not habituated to humans, and so they largely avoid us, which is good for them, and for us. They headed towards their favourite tree, which is where they spend the night to avoid the leopards. Leopards can, of course, climb trees, but the monkeys would be able to see them coming from a fair distance.

One young baboon did keep an eye on us though, as crisps and gin-and-tonics were unloaded from the jeep. He seemed to be indifferent, but I suspect he’d have grabbed a few nibbles given half a chance.

The sun goes down so quickly here, and the colours are constantly changing.

By the end, the baboon tree glows crimson, and the baboons are silhouetted against the sky.

I had been a little frightened about coming to Namibia – it was my first ‘big trip’ since I broke my leg and discovered that I had peripheral neuropathy, with only an estimated 20 percent feeling in my feet. And yet, I coped with dunes, rocky paths, clambering in and out of vehicles and all the trip hazards in various lodges and camps. I ended the trip feeling much more confident than I started it, and I’m already thinking about my next trip. Cheers!

Greater Kudu

For our last two nights in Namibia, we were in Okonjima, a private reserve of some 220 square kilometres. It was originally a cattle  farm, but the family who owned it became increasingly concerned by the amount of human/leopard conflict, and in the 1990s they turned the place into a reserve. It is home to 33 leopard who have been extensively studied – some are collared, and are tracked by telemetry. I’m always a bit torn in these situations, but the scientist in me realises that the information obtained can be very useful in trying to understand leopards and to protect them. Plus, the leopards that we found seemed extremely relaxed: one male barely flicked an ear when we drove up.

We also found a female with cub, who was equally indifferent to our presence, at least on the face of it.

But wonderful as it was to see the leopards, they weren’t the highlight for me: the bat-eared foxes were wonderful. I’d never seen them before, and the cubs look like little Yodas. They make their dens in termite mounds, and we saw two families, one with two pups and one with three. As with most foxes, the male and female look after the cubs. In both cases, the male ran off and watched from a safe difference, while the female stayed put and kept an eye on things.

I only wished I’d gotten some video of these little heads popping up and down, but you get the general idea I’m sure. What exquisite little creatures these are! They live mostly on beetles, crickets and other grassland invertebrates.

There were, of course, birds too, and I rather fell in love with these Go-Away birds. They are members of the Turaco family, but are rather more austerely coloured than their rainforest relatives. The name relates to their call, and I suspect that they are the ruination of many a hunt, animal and human, with their habit of alarm-calling at the slightest sign of trouble.

I really loved Okonjima, and in the afternoon there was a chance to relax. It’s the only place I’ve ever been where it’s possible to birdwatch from the bed. This was the view from our window…

And here’s a view at sunset. What an absolute treat, and what a place to spend our last days in Namibia.