Willow, 16 years young…

Dear Readers, yesterday my husband popped our cat Willow into the vet for what we thought would be a routine visit. She’s been off her food pretty much since I had my accident, but we were putting it down to the changes in sleeping arrangements and general shenanigans – she’s a very sensitive little thing, and the slightest change in how things are done can freak her out entirely. I also thought that she’d lost a bit of weight.

Horrifyingly, she’s lost a whole kilogram, and when the vet palpated her stomach he thought he could feel a mass in the region of her liver. So now we’re waiting for a place to come up at the Royal Veterinary College at Hatfield, where they have an oncology unit. Fingers crossed that it happens today.

I feel terrible that I didn’t notice the scale of the problem before. Like most cats, she never complains. They are usually stoical to a fault.

Of course I am thinking about all the worst possible outcomes. At best, maybe it’s something benign that can be operated on and taken out – still a tough procedure for an elderly cat, but maybe something that would buy her some time and quality of life. At worst, it’s spread, or is inoperable. We’re both agreed that we don’t want heroic measures for her – she’s an elderly lady, and it’s not a kindness to put her through chemotherapy etc, even if it’s offered. So we could potentially be close to the end, and I’m preparing myself for that.

Anyhow, I will keep you posted, and hopefully things will become clearer over the next few days. It does seem as if troubles come not as single spies, but as battalions, but sometimes that’s just life. All I hope is that we can minimise Willow’s suffering, and make the right decisions at the right time. She is such a gentle, affectionate little cat. Please keep your fingers crossed for us!

Update 1 Turns out the RCVS hospital didn’t have a place, so Willow has gone to another hospital with an oncology unit close to Hitchin (John took her there in a cab, just throwing in a quick recommendation for Fairway and Kenwood cabs for any of you North London folk). The vet there was a little more hopeful than our local vet – she said that there can be a variety of reasons for a mass in the liver, but she would run tests and hopefully let us know later tonight/first thing tomorrow. If I hear anything before this ‘goes to press’ I’ll pop in another update. The cat apparently put up quite the fight when John tried to get her in her carrier, which I’m taking as a good sign! (she never scratches or bites or hisses, but she can be very, very quick).

Dear Readers, the London Climate Resilience Review was published yesterday, and it has some stern things to say about London’s preparedness for the expected flooding, heatwaves and increased levels of subsidence that changing climate are expected to bring. It contains 50 recommendations, and some of them should be fairly uncontentious – we should take better care of our street trees, for example (so many of which fail due to poor planting conditions and a lack of understanding of what they need in terms of soil and the correct fungal mycorrhiza), and when companies dig up roads they should be able to create rain gardens to soak up excess rain – there are some excellent examples of this in Walthamstow, which has embraced the idea with considerable enthusiasm.

Rain Garden by Meristem Design in Walthamstow (Photo from https://www.meristemdesign.co.uk/community-rain-gardens-waltham-forest)

More controversial (and of course, the idea that the press has latched onto) is the idea that people who pave over their gardens should be fined, and there should be incentives for people to take up their paving. There is no doubt that we are losing ridiculous amounts of green space due to people wanting car parking spaces and low maintenance gardens – a report commissioned fifteen years ago stated that London was losing an area two and a half times the size of Hyde Park every year to hard surfacing. The trend for decking a few years ago didn’t help either. Often there’s a lovely combination of hard paving and a plastic lawn. Personally, I would ban the sale of all new plastic lawns, but that’s me.

I don’t know about fining people – some people are now using porous or permeable substrate to create a low maintenance area, so in theory at least the water should be able to be absorbed. There is a larger question, I think, about the loss of biodiversity. It says something about our disconnect from nature that people often don’t want it anywhere near their houses, but of course if you’ve a health problem or have mobility issues, you also don’t want to be looking at a garden that you can no longer manage.

I’m also not sure how it would work. Is someone going to tour the streets of London keeping an eye open for stone slabs or concrete mixers? It makes more sense to me to ensure that new developments have actual gardens and soft landscaping rather than hard, even if it is more expensive.

I think what we really need is some kind of incentive, financial or otherwise, for people to increase the natural value of their gardens. In some US states you can get a plaque that declares that your garden is a quality habitat for different kinds of fauna, and maybe we could do something similar here. We need to look at competitions like ‘Britain in Bloom’ as well, which are moving away from regimented beds of petunias and geraniums to more ‘planet-friendly’ planting. I’m sure that there’s lots that could be done to encourage people to develop their gardens in a way that’s lovely to look at it, useful, easy to enjoy and good for wildlife, rather than punishing people for paving them over.

There is no doubt that we have to do something – the cost of not adapting to climate change will be paid in lives, and in money lost. It will be interesting to see which of the recommendations will be implemented. What do you think, Readers? Should we be using carrots or sticks here? What would you like to see happen?

You can read The Guardian article here and the whole Climate Resilience Plan is here.

Dear Readers, what a strange spring and summer we’ve had here in the UK – in East Finchley it’s been an unseasonably cold, wet spring, followed by a few days of ‘summer’, followed by chill and yesterday what I can only describe as a deluge. We have a couple of skylights in our house, and the sound of the rain racketing down provided an interesting backdrop to my uncomfortable attempts to get to sleep.

On that subject, I get a few more minutes of sleep every night, but there is much tossing and turning involved. I wonder if bone heals more at night, hence the pain? I have discovered that an ice pack helps, but of course you can only put it on one ‘spot’ at a time. Oh well. The trajectory is  definitely going in the right direction, and I shall have to be as patient and accepting as possible. On the bright side, I have a physiotherapy appointment at the Whittington on Thursday, which is ridiculously quick. I shall let you know how it goes.

Anyhow, yesterday was a very bad day to get a lot of rain, as 15th July is St Swithin’s Day, and the legend is that if it rains on this day, we will be in for a subsequent forty wet days.

“St Swithin’s Day, if it does rain

Full forty days, it will remain

St Swithin’s Day, if it be fair

For forty days, t’will rain no more”

But who was St Swithin, and what’s his link to the weather?

Portrait of St Swithun from the illuminated Benedictional of St Aethelwold (c. 970 AD) (Public Domain)

St Swithin (or St Swithun in the original Anglo-Saxon) was the Bishop and subsequently the patron saint of Winchester Cathedral. He died in 863, with nary a mention of him in any of the contemporary accounts. However, after he was made Patron Saint in 971, chroniclers rushed to find stories of his goodness and saintly status. He was said to have given feasts to which he only invited the poor, not the rich. He also apparently repaired a basket of eggs that a poor woman had dropped – when St Swithun heard her cries of despair, he made the eggs whole. This is the only miracle performed during his lifetime, but, on being invoked by Anglo-Saxon Queen Emma, unjustly accused of adultery, he is said to have protected her when she went through a trial by ordeal, which involved walking on hot irons – on examination afterwards, her feet were uninjured. I love that in this story Emma’s son, who was the King and the man who had accused her of being unfaithful to his father, gets whipped around the place by his mother. That’ll teach him.

Queen Emma being led across the hot coals

The weather link is, as all things, disputed, but the most frequently-cited version of the legend states that St Swithin asked for his grave to be made outside the cathedral ‘where it might be subject to the feet of passers-by and to the raindrops pouring from on high’. And so it was, until 971 when, in keeping with his new Patron Saint status, his remains were transferred into the cathedral. Alas, he showed his displeasure with a mighty shower of rain that continued for days, and so the legend of the 40 days and 40 nights was born.

Is it accurate, though? It is true that the jetstream has historically settled down in about the middle of July – if it’s to the north of the country, it’s likely to bring high pressure and warm, dry conditions, while if it’s to the south, Atlantic weather systems predominate. It’s never been known to rain for a whole forty days and nights following 15th July, and indeed in 1913 a 15-hour rainstorm was followed by 30 dry days, whilst in 1924 a beautiful day with 13.5 hours of sunshine was followed by 30 wet days out of 40.

It’s interesting to note that St Swithin is also the patron saint of drought. I suspect he has his work cut out for him these days.

Statue of St Swithin in the crypt at Winchester Cathedral (Photo By David Spender – https://www.flickr.com/photos/dspender/2972072348/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20264529)

So all this gets me to thinking about local weather legends. I know about the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil in the US, who is said to predict an early spring (or not) by whether or not he casts a shadow on emerging from his den. What he does is subject to interpretation by the ‘Inner Circle’ who interact with him on the day (2nd February) – they claim that Phil is 100% correct in his weather predictions, while more sceptical observers put the figure at between 35 and 41 %.

Punxsutawney Phil in 2018 (Photo Chris Flook, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)

How about where you live though? Did your mother ever look at the bushes, covered in berries, and announce that it was going to be a hard winter? My mother always claimed that her migraines were brought on by incipient thunderstorms, and my nan said she could predict wet weather on the way when her arthritis played up. Let me know if you have any local/family weather predictions, and how accurate you think they were.

Titanium crystal bar (Photo By Alchemist-hp (pse-mendelejew.de) – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7329436)

Dear Readers, ever since I had a chunk of titanium inserted into my leg a few weeks ago, I’ve been curious about what exactly it is. It’s funny how something that was previously just a number on the periodic table (atomic number 22 and symbol Ti since you ask) is suddenly a significant part of my body. Or maybe I should say ‘more significant part of my body’, since it’s found everywhere – in rocks and water, plants and animals, Interestingly, it’s not thought to play any part in the biological processes of animals, but it may do so in plants – nettles, for example, may contain up to 80 parts per million of titanium extracted from the soil.

Titanium is what’s known as a transition metal (due to its chemical structure), and it isn’t found in its pure form anywhere in nature. Most titanium can be found in two minerals, rutile (where the metal is combined with oxygen)(TiO2)  and ilmenite (where the metal is combined with iron and oxygen) (FeTiO3). The discoverer of titanium, William Gregor, identified its presence in some black sand found in a stream just outside the village of Manaccan in Cornwall in 1791.  Gregor named the new substance ‘Manaccanite’, but was trumped by German chemist Martin Klaproth who decided it should be called ‘Titanium’ after the titans of Greek legend.

Rutile (Photo By Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10400387)

Ilmenite (Photo By Rob Lavinsky, iRocks.com – CC-BY-SA-3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10146603)

Why is titanium so special, though, and why has it ended up in my leg? Firstly, titanium doesn’t corrode, and secondly, it has the highest strength-to-density ratio of any metal. Hooray! This means that my leg won’t weigh a ton and won’t rust. Furthermore, it’s highly biocompatible – it isn’t toxic, and isn’t rejected by the body, which means that it’s used for many implants (hips, knees and wrists as well as legs). Sounds like that old children’s song ( I particularly like this version because there’s a child in a wheelchair, but beware, it’s a bit of an earworm).

Furthermore, titanium is capable of osseointegration (what a great word!) – new bone is laid down directly onto the surface of the implant, and because the metal and the bone have similar degrees of elasticity they should function as a single unit. Interestingly, it’s the inflammation that’s generated by having a foreign body inserted into the bone that kickstarts this process, one reason why my consultant told me not to use ibuprofen as a painkiller – because it dampens inflammation, it would actually hinder the healing process.

Future possible developments include 3D printing of prosthetics and implants to exactly match the requirements of the individual patient.

Titanium wrist plate and screws (Photo by By Wouter Hagens – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16629524)

I did wonder if titanium is magnetic – I had visions of walking past a hardware store and suddenly having all the screws and nails flying towards my leg, like some kind of middle-aged, crutch-bearing superhero. But no. This is good because it means i can still have an MRI should I ever need one.

But enough about my leg! Titanium is also used for some very exciting applications. Back in the day when it was relatively cheap, Frank Gehry used it to clad the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (Photo by By losmininos – El Guggenheim vizcaíno., CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=40395018)

The SR-71 ‘Blackbird’ surveillance plane was built using 85 percent titanium – this was during the Cold War period. Ironically, the US didn’t have enough titanium to build it, so they actually imported rutile ore from the USSR, using a network of bogus companies and US-allied developing countries. The plane flew from 1964 to 1990, covering the wars in Vietnam and Laos and repeatedly flying over the USSR to gain information. It was a remarkable plane – it achieved an altitude of over 85,000 feet in sustained flight, and a speed of 2,192 mile per hour. I saw one at one of the airforce museums (Duxford? Cosford?) and it’s a very impressive beast, matt black and strangely sinister. One interesting point is that the panels that make up the plane don’t fit precisely when it’s on the ground – the panels expand when exposed to the huge heat generated on take off, so they then slide into place.

Sr-71 ‘Blackbird’ (Photo By USAF / Judson Brohmer – Armstrong Photo Gallery: Home – info – pic, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30816)

However, most of us will have been using titanium without even realising it – because it’s both lightweight and strong, you can find it in cycle helmets, golf clubs, tennis rackets, and bicycle frames. It’s often found in camping cookware (easier to carry) and horseshoes. Many dental implants contain titanium, for the same reasons as the medical uses outlined above. What an extraordinarily versatile and yet unappreciated metal it is, and how lucky we are to have it.

One strange thing that occurs to me, though, is that this metal will live on far longer than any of the other parts of my body after I’m dead. I wonder, can they recycle it, like the rest of me will be recycled? Apparently recycing is possible if I’m cremated – the metal is separated from the ashes and can be collected by an organisation called Orthometals, provided the crematorium is signed up to the scheme. I shall have to write a quick codicil to my will. Metal is too precious to waste, although the titanium won’t be pure enough to be used in another implant – it will probably be used in some kind of industrial process. That’s good enough for me!

White-tailed bumblebee on hemp agrimony

Well, Readers, I must have slept for about four hours last night (the longest so far), and so I was definitely up for a run to East Finchley High Road in the wheelchair this morning. Off we trotted to Coffee Bank, our favourite caff, and we only had one minor mishap when we ran into a bit of dropped pavement that wasn’t quite as dropped as it should have been. No harm done! And can I just say that Coffee Bank, in addition to the best coffee on the High Road (fight me! I have crutches as weapons!) also does the most delicious, fluffy vegan pancakes with fruit and maple syrup. If I’d been more of an influencer I’d have taken a photo. Maybe next time. 

Anyhow, I was so caffeinated by the time we got home that I sat outside in the garden for a bit. The hemp agrimony is in flower, and that always attracts a range of pollinators who seem to like its raggedy flowers. There’s usually a crab spider or two lurking as well, but as I can’t actually walk over to see them they’ll have to wait for now.

Leaf cutter bee on hemp agrimony

But then I spotted this little chap. This is some kind of potter wasp, which is most exciting – they are difficult to identify to species level, but all of them build some kind of chamber (sometimes in a hollow stem, sometimes out of mud, or in cracks in walls or pavements) and then lay a single egg. They then catch as many as twenty caterpillars and pop them into the chamber, to feed the larva when it hatches. The males have no sting, and that of the female is rarely used on people, and is unlikely to even be able to penetrate the skin. All in all, I’m delighted (though the caterpillars may not be).

I’m currently waiting for some help with id’ing the species, but I suspect it’s one of the solitary wasps. I’ll keep you updated!

And incidentally, while scrolling through what-used-to-be-Twitter yesterday, I came across this extraordinary artist, Liza Adamczewski. Based in Pembrokeshire, she’s started a project called #1000postcards – every day, she paints a postcard-sized portrait of an animal, plant, fungus etc that she’s seen on her land. She describes herself as ‘an accidental ecologist’, and her work is truly beautiful – she says that the postcards project is a way of ‘sending out messages from nature’. Well worth a look! And you can read an interview with her here, where she describes not only the postcards, but the extraordinary triptychs that she makes. The latest one featured a little owl and two bees.

One of Liza Adamczewski’s #1000postcards – leaf-cutter bee (from https://x.com/lizaadamczewski)

‘Guest House’ by Edward Gordon (1940 – )

Dear Readers, I spotted this rather wonderful painting on Facebook today, and when I shared it, my friend A said that it seemed to be very calm, but somewhat lacking in liveliness. Well, how a fortnight can change one’s perceptions, because I find myself looking at the rug and thinking ‘trip hazard’, while I doubt that the shiny floor would provide much purchase for my crutches. All in all, it’s a reminder that we see the world through our own eyes, and that that view can be skewed by our current situation.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, of course – as my mother and father became older and more infirm, their little bungalow seemed to become more and more like a house of horrors. Dad had a stroke, and so his spatial perception was not as good on his left hand side. He was able to walk around, but was forever bashing his left arm into door knobs and hinges and the corners of tables. As he was also on Warfarin, he regularly looked as if he’d been savaged by a werewolf, but usually didn’t notice. As I rushed over with the usual lint and bandage, he’d make little of the blood running down his fingers.

“Only a flesh wound!” he’d say. He remembered Monty Python and The Goon Show long after he’d forgotten who I and Mum were.

Mum became less and less able to walk, so even the tiny difference in height between the carpeted living room and the kitchen lino could prove to be a problem. I remember her making me a cup of tea whenever I arrived to stay with them, and then using her walker-with-a-tray to transport it over the little ‘bump’ and across the living room. It was the last little bit of hospitality that she was able to offer, before I took over all the cooking/cleaning/domestic duties for the rest of my visit. I can still see her brow furrowed with concentration as she manoeuvred her domestic chariot towards me, a small tsunami of tea heading in my direction with every step.

But the real challenges were when they came to visit us here in East Finchley, and I wanted to take them to the High Street in their wheelchairs. First there was the question of wriggling past the wheelie bins, over the tree roots and around the worst potholes in the pavement. Then there was the camber on the paths that seemed intent on dumping both of my parents into the kerb. Dropped pavements weren’t always dropped enough, cars didn’t always stop at the zebra crossing, shops and cafes aren’t always accessible. Why had I never realised this before? I felt like an idiot for not realising sooner how hard it was for people with any kind of mobility problem.

I went to see a talk by a remarkable woman called Sinéad Burke. She is a Little Person who also has a passion for fashion, and was the first Little Person to be on the cover of Vogue magazine. Many of the things that she said in her talk have remained with me, but one was that, although when we think of a ‘person with disabilities’ we usually think of a relatively young person in a wheelchair, there was a strong possibility that, if we live long enough, all of us will end up with a variety of disabilities. Then there are all the disabilities that are invisible to the observer, but very real to the people who have them. Plus, as I know, you can go from able-bodied to disabled (at least temporarily) in a matter of seconds.

I can’t help but wonder how much richer all our lives would be if everyone was able to play a full part in our communities, rather than being stuck in their homes because they can’t get outside. At East Finchley Station, no one in a wheelchair could possibly get a tube train because they’d have to go up two steep flights of stairs (and I know how steep they are because I fell down them only a fortnight ago 🙂 ). It’s even worse at Dorchester Station, where there’s a railway bridge from the westbound platform to get to Dorchester town centre. I have no idea what people are meant to do if they can’t get up all those iron stairs. And this is the tip of an iceberg of hazards and problems that face someone who simply wants to go out. As usual, if you have money for taxis or carers or other aids life is easier, so it’s the poorest who usually suffer the most.

I do think that some things have improved, but there’s still a long way to go. It’s so important to the health and vibrancy of a community that everyone who wants to be included is included, that everyone who wants to be heard is heard. Let’s hope that it will get easier and easier for people to play their part, regardless of their disabilities. We need everyone, after all.

Fruit from Tony’s Continental, from my friend L

Dear Readers, it would be easy to get a bit downhearted when confined pretty much to quarters for six weeks, but I have been so thankful for my friends and for my Readers. I have had lots of excellent advice from people that I’ve never met in real life who have had fractures or breaks, and who have great insights into how to manage the situation. People are offering to take me out for a drive, or to help me in a whole range of ways. To say that it’s cheered me up would be a real understatement.

My friend A brought me vegetables, my friend L brought me fruit (and how inviting does that look!) Another friend called L brought me homemade soap, and very lovely it is too! Several friends have brought flowers, my friend J brought an orchid and some Hotel Chocolat chocolates including some Apfel Strudel ones (though my absolute favourites were these cherry ones). They came in a packet of six. My husband had one, and the rest seem to have completely disappeared.

Friends have brought me books, and my friend S brought me this wonderful little jigsaw, small enough to do on a tray. Look at how elegant the individual pieces look!

But most wonderfully of all, what my friends bring is the outside world. It would be so easy to feel isolated and depressed, but every time someone visits, they take my mind off my poorly leg and turn my thoughts elsewhere. My friend J popped in with her daughter E yesterday, and it was so good to talk about rocks, and foxes, and drawing and writing. I’ve heard about what’s going on in Coldfall Wood, and Long Lane Pasture, and all the gossip from the street. It actually makes me quite tearful to realise how lucky I’ve been. And the biggest shout out of all to my husband, who has looked after me cheerfully even when I’ve been in grumpy and in pain, and who is adding a few more meals to his repertoire every week.

Independence is such an illusion, isn’t it? I’ve always thought of myself as an independent person, but in truth we are reliant on other people to an extent that I can’t even begin to describe, from the people who empty the dustbins to the people who run our shops and hospitals and schools. We are all suspended in an almost infinite web of connections, and sometimes it’s only when things go wrong that we realise it. So thank you to everyone who has commented, or visited, or reached out. I feel bathed in love.

And finally, I hesitated about whether to share this poem, so I’m just sharing the link. Be warned that it includes anorexia, suicide and the death of a cat, so not an easy sell. But I think it’s extraordinary. See what you think.

Love Poem with a Dying Cat, by Nen G.Ramirez.

View through the consulting room window

Dear Readers, today I had my ‘wound check’ and an additional X-Ray on my poorly leg. What a beautiful sunny day! I sat outside the front door in my wheelchair waiting for the taxi to arrive, and watching the bees circling the last of the lavender, and felt more at peace than I’ve felt for a fortnight.At the hospital, the lovely Irish nurse took out some of my stitches, and I got a first look at my leg once all the bandages were off. There’s a long incision on my knees and then a smaller one, and a couple of nicks on my ankles, plus some bruising, but honestly it’s not too bad. I’m not actually worried about scars – they tell the story of who we are, and what we’ve experienced – but it was a relief to see everything healing up. What a wonder our bodies are!

Then it was off to X-Ray. John, my husband, is a novice wheelchair driver but managed really well. It’s tricky negotiating the lifts at the Whittington as, until you have a bit of experience, you never know what side the doors are going to open on. Plus, one lift in three is pretty much permanently out of order (or maybe I’ve been unlucky).

John came in with me for the X-Ray, and then stood behind the protective screen, so he could see the photographs. He said my leg looked as if it had been patched up by an enthusiastic home DIY-er.

Then, back to the fracture clinic. Looking out of the window I could see the most extraordinary tree, with huge leaves and candelabras of white flowers. Forgive the photo quality, the window was dusty and the light was wrong.

I do believe it might be a catalpa or Indian Bean Tree, which in a decent photo looks like this:

Catalpa bignoniodes (Photo Magnus Manske, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons)

The consultant popped in and announced himself very pleased with my leg, the X-Rays show that everything is healing as it should, and he’s going to refer me for physiotherapy and will see me again in a month. I’m going to be using my crutches/wheelchair until then, as I’m still only 50% weight-bearing on my damaged leg. He suggested moving on to low-dose codeine once my current high-dose stuff has run out, but the worst of the pain in my leg seems to be easing, so hopefully I won’t need anything for much longer – I’m not going to be a martyr, but I’m not used to being on drugs long-term. Interestingly, the consultant said that I should avoid ibuprofen – part of the healing process with bones is actually inflammation, so you don’t want to dampen that response down. Who knew? You learn something new every day.

And now I’m home again. And I’m determined, once I’m mobile again, to go and find the catalpa tree, and say hello to it. I wonder how many people have been cheered by the sun coming through its leaves as they wait for news, or for a painful procedure?

Dear Readers, the origin of the ‘invasion’ of London by ring-necked parakeets has been a source of speculation for decades. Here are just some of the stories.

• Jimi Hendrix released a pair of parakeets from his flat in Brook Street, London, while on an LSD trip back in the 1960s
• The parakeets escaped from the set of The African Queen while it was being filmed at Shepperton Studios
• The birds escaped from aviaries destroyed during the Great Storm of 1987 (this one is easily rebuffed – ring-necked parakeets were already spreading in London back in the 1970s.

For various reasons, all of these theories, attractive though some of them are, don’t quite fit the bill, so I was interested to read a report in The Guardian today by Tim Blackburn, a naturalist and author whose work I greatly enjoy (I currently have ‘The Jewel Box’, his book about moths, on my steadily-increasing reading pile). Blackburn has been involved in trying to determine the Geographic Profile (GP) of Britain’s parakeets – this technique aims to track an organism back to its point of origin, and is often used to determine the source of a disease outbreak, or, as in this case, where a novel species came from.

The study has revealed that the parakeets come from more than one source, with two major clusters in Croydon, South London, and Dartford in Kent. The first reports of a breeding population of ring-necked parakeets seems to be from the mid 1960s, but the study points to a ‘scare’ about psittacosis, an infectious and highly dangerous disease transmitted by parrots of all kinds, which was widely publicised during the 1950s. The study conjectures that fear of the disease may have led to the release of pet parrots of all kinds, but ring-necked parakeets are particularly adaptable birds – I’ve seen them roosting happily in sub-zero temperatures in their native India, and they also seem very able to find homes and food in human-influenced habitats.

Pet birds were much more popular when I was growing up than they seem to be now – everybody had a budgerigar or a lovebird or a cockatiel, or sometimes several of these birds. No wonder a health scare had such a big impact.

The study discounts Jimi Hendrix’s ‘trip’ and ‘The African Queen’ as a source of Britain’s parakeets, but doesn’t entirely rule out the theory about damaged aviaries in 1987 as a way of adding birds to the established population – there seems to have been a jump in numbers following the storm. But it also points out that ring-necked parakeets are now established on five continents and in thirty-four countries, so they don’t need a lot of help.

Like so many species, ring-necked parakeets arrived here with our help, and now I think that they’re pretty much here to stay, much like the terrapins that were dumped into our ponds and rivers when the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle craze wore off. It has been possible to completely eradicate some species – nutria, or coypu, were widespread on the south coast when I was growing up (they were used for fur, but like all rodents were fond of gnawing, and managed to establish themselves in the ditches and damp areas of Kent, Essex and East Anglia) but were trapped and poisoned to extinction. Mink are also gradually being eradicated from East Anglia (another fur animal, though these were deliberately released, with devastating effects on the ecosystem). But I hope that the parakeets will find their niche alongside our other birds – there is some evidence that small birds nesting close to parakeets do better because predators are not so likely to attack their nests, and also that parakeets often enlarge nest holes, making them easier for birds such as stock doves to use. On the other hand, there are fears that the competition for nest holes will impact bats, nuthatches and woodpeckers. I wonder how it will all play out? I just know that the parakeets always brighten my day with a ridiculous drop of tropical vivacity, especially as I’m mainly housebound at the moment and can only really see them out of the window.

Ring-necked parakeets in St Pancras and Islington Cemetery

Leg Update! Well, my leg is still aching and sore even after my humungous quantities of painkillers, but then the orthopedic surgeon did say it was going to be painful. Off to the hospital for a check on how things are going tomorrow, so will keep you posted!

Florida carpenter ant (Camponotus floridianus) Photo By Bob Peterson from North Palm Beach, Florida, , CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=21785629

Dear Readers, ever since I fractured my tibia ten days ago, I’ve been wishing that there was a way to detach my leg, sort it out and then screw it back on once the problem was sorted. However, as this is impractical I’ve been turning my attention to the first aid procedures of other creatures, and in particular ants. Ants are amongst the few creatures that tend the injuries of their nestmates: the Matabele ant, for example, produces an antibacterial substance from a special gland. This species lives by raiding termite nests, a dangerous expedition as the termites fight back hard, and the ants are often injured – up to 22 percent of the ants on each raid end up with at least one limb missing. Damaged ants are carried back to the nest and treated by special ‘nurse’ ants, who lick the wounds clean and who often apply a special antibiotic from the gland on their back. 95% of the ants so treated survive, compared to only 5% of ants that are callously separated from their ‘nurses’ by the scientists studying them. Can the ants  tell that some wounds are infected, and some not?The jury is still out, but it appears that infection causes a change to the hydrocarbons in the exoskeleton of the ant, which might signal to the nurse ants. If this was to be the case, the ants would be the only animals other than humans who can specifically treat infected wounds.

Matabele ant (Megaponera major) running off with a termite (Photo by By ETF89 – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52639002)

And then there’s the Florida Carpenter ant (pictured above). Scientist Dany Buffat was studying a captive colony of the species when she noticed an ant chewing off a nestmate’s injured leg. The injured ant put up no resistance, and on further observation it appeared that amputations were not unusual, but that they only occurred when the injury was to the ant’s upper leg. The mortality rate of amputees was 90 percent higher than that of ants with a similar injury but no amputation. In ants with a lower leg injury, there seemed to be no difference whether the leg was amputated or not, and in fact ants did not amputate a leg with an injury in this part of the leg.

The reason seems to be to do with the ants physiology – the muscles that pump blood (and infections) around the body of the ant are found in the upper leg, so amputating the leg prevents the infection from spreading. However, an injury in the lower leg doesn’t involve these muscles, and so amputating the leg at this point doesn’t stop the spread.

It appears that the ants are able to determine the best course of action depending on the location of the wound, just as the Matabele ants appear to be able to determine whether or not a wound is infected.

To me, this is mind-blowing stuff, and just makes me wonder what else we will find out about these extraordinary animals. And in a fractured leg update, I can announce that I made it both up and down stairs yesterday, so I could sleep in my own bed. It’s lovely to feel a gradual return to normality. Onwards and upwards!