Nesting: jackdaws, starlings and seagulls

I'm not sure if I've ever seen a jackdaw before - but there are two hopping slowly about the chimney pots and aerials on the roofs of the houses opposite.  There are also a couple of pigeons and a starling.  It is odd to see a solitary starling - but that's what its silhoutte suggests it is.  It clearly wants a chimney pot for its own nest and his hopping about looking for nesting materials.  One jackdaw was sitting quietly on an aerial - while the other inspected the chimney pot - and menaced the starling.  Eventually the jackdaws decamped to the next set of pots - as they settled down there a seagull flew in low and they took fright and flew away.  The starling's persistence has been rewarded: he is now in possession of the original pots, and another starling has come to inspect his site.  No doubt in due course my neighbours will be rewarded with a starling nest bunging up their chimney, but this will be fine as long as they don't have a fire for a while.    Meanwhile the seagull has settled in her nest between the eight chimneys further down the terrace - and the jackdaws have flown past - continuing their search.

After the most wet, soggy and grim Easter weekend (apart from Good Friday of course, which is nearly always sunny) today is lovely - thin, high cloud, but nothing too serious.  I might get into the garden and plant a couple of things: Coells brought me a heuchera, a primrose and a sedum.  It the sedum can survive the Gobi desert in the front garden, it will be great... it will just have to take its chances.

Moodscope & Dungeness

There's an interesting website called Moodscope on which you can measure your moods every day.  I have been doing it for 5 days, you get feedback from them - which is helpful - and you can share it with friends (no one I've asked so far has been that interested!).  I started low - peaked on Easter Sunday - and have now declined (due to drinking! which does have something of a knock-on effect).   On Easter Sunday I think I felt good because I felt reasonably in control, and had the happy anticipation of seeing my father and Coells and her newish boyfriend... I had also had some ideas about the next novel re-write - and felt much more perky about that...

I suspect my "guilt" score is going to get higher as the arts festival approaches (a guilt inducing email arrived this morning, which I did not reply to as I was "on holiday").  The site sends you feedback - I wonder if I know my "guilt" score is going to rise does that indicate I should not offer to do these things?   I don't want to let other people down, but I also definitely don't want to get distracted from writing etc.  There's also the question of the PR - I can't be arsed to do it - wonder if Sam would be up for it?

Today we went to Dungeness - Mark wanted to go there and we had a nice long drive enabling my father to see the Royal Military Canal and a bit of Romney Marsh - they all went up the lighthouse - except me.  I dislike spiral stairs (vertigo coming down usually).  I sat in the car, read, dozed, stared at the rainswept landscape, the nuclear power station standing in the misty near-distance and the small scale trains of the Romney Dymchurch and Hythe railway.  We saw Derek Jarman's cottage... we went to a pub and decided not to eat there - it didn't look very thrilling and was a bit costly for what was on offer.  Since I had the most fantastic 3 course meal a few weeks ago for the price of one portion of lamb shank (probably the cash & carry frozen ones) I thought it was better for us to do what the boys wanted: go to Dover and eat at the ludicrously cheap Chinese place Chapter Eight.   So we did, then dashed into the museum and enjoyed the Bronze Age boat (still amazes me) and a nice exhibition of childhood in the past.   After that we felt as though we'd had a full day's entertainment.   I have to say that it rained all day and was very miserable: a great contrast with the baking days of last Easter.

Boat Race 2

The Boat Race swimmer who screwed the whole thing up was a privately educated 30-something, a graduate of LSE who runs an anti-elitist website... Personally I wish he had saved his efforts to undermine the IOC officials who are unbelievably arrogant and will be lording it over everyone when the Olympics start.

The most shocking thing about the boat race was the obvious fact that both universities are "buying in" talent from abroad, rather as US universities give football scholarships.  All those strange doctorates/post-grad studies... do they have time to work, or are they too busy building up their strength in the gym, eating and rowing?  I'm not saying Oxbridge aware "Mickey Mouse" degrees - but one can't help wondering about their validity.

Easter

This seems the perfect picture to me - the crucifixion with great light and open space behind it - suggesting the Resurrection.  No chocolate was involved.  I am intending to send it to a number of people as an Easter greeting.  The photo was taken at Botany bay - one of our local beaches - by my friend Jeremy Hall - who doesn't get enough credit for his work.  I'll probably put it on Facebook too.

The Boat Race

I haven't watched the boat race for years - it was a regular fixture when I was a child and I would watch it with my mother; we supported Oxford because my grandfather had been there for a year as part of his theological training.

I no longer support anyone in particular, Mark's family has strong Cambridge connections.  However, I thought it would be nice to watch it for a change and was rewarded by a particularly exciting race.   Well, it seemed quite exciting, everyone said Cambridge was a shoo-in, because they were much heavier... they had 2 British people in their team, as opposed to Oxford's one (both the coxes were British).  However, Oxford started extremely well - they seem to have the edge there and were leading most of the way, although Cambridge were very close.  I was shocked by how close together they were rowing at various points and they had to be steered away from each other.   The race was quite interesting.  Then everything stopped because a swimmer appeared near the Oxford oars, risking decapitation! - After a lengthy period of faffing about, the boats went back to the beginning of the Chiswick Eyot and the race re-started.  Again Oxford started briskly, the two boats got in each other's way - and clashed, an Oxford rower lost the blade of his oar - about 30 seconds after the re-start.  I thought they'd re-start, but that didn't happen, so Cambridge just waltzed away with the race, and watching Oxford heaving away, one oar short, was a depressing sight.  I felt sorry for the cox: the commentators first described her as "experienced" and then as "aggressive" - it may have been her fault - she may have been adjusting her path and Cambridge were scuppering her... I doubt it though, it would be such a risky strategy, they could just as easily have lost one of their blades.

Rowing is perhaps the only bit of the Olympics I will watch, but charging about the Dorney tank won't be as exciting as going down the Thames - no swimmers either.   I wonder what he was protesting about.

Nigel Farage...

Oh dear, saw a video of the dreaded Nigel Farage, a right-wing politician of dubious credentials who was speaking locally, being asked about equal marriage (the pc name for gay marriage - it is better I admit) - he made exactly the point I've made (and everyone else no doubt) that equal civil marriage will immediately result in European Human Rights cases - he claims that Peter Tatchell lines up issues like this... I admire Peter Tatchell, he's done a lot of good things, and seems to have some vague respect for the church... but I think what horrified me is the fact that I was agreeing with NF (and indeed a great many other people whom I actually know and like).  

I maybe ought to reassess my politics, I don't feel anything will ever eradicate my innate Marxism, but I cannot share the popular attacks on any established group just for the sake of it.  I might have agreed with some of it when I was in my 20s, but I guess I have developed a less polarised position, able to see more sides of the question.  Able to accept that people are not as we wish them to be, or as they ought to be.  Is this inherently conservative?  Not exactly, but I want people to be protected and educated, rather than having their noses rubbed into things.  On the other hand, the tactics of Gay Liberation in the 60s onward has lead to far greater acceptance of gays -or LGBT as they are now known.  I don't know what the answer is, I'm just unhappy with the conduct of the argument.

Gay marriage continued

Part of me thinks the government has thrown up this issue to distract everyone from the really bad stuff that they are doing.  What I said about it before stands, but I am being put into a little dilemma, since people have started sending me pro gay marriage petitions to sign and circulate and I feel what I believe is too nuanced to do either.  I think if gay civil marriage comes in - and I would be very happy for that to happen - it will not take long before some vicar is hauled over to the European Court to answer Human Rights charges.   And I doubt if the vicar would win in the current climate.  I think this would be unfair - you cannot expect to overturn cultural practices that have lasted centuries in less than a decade.   There was massive opposition to civil partnerships ten years ago, why do they think those people will have changed their minds?  It takes longer than 10 years - for some people, they will never change their minds.

What upsets me is the thought of people deliberately asking clergy to marry them so that they can bring a test case.  I much dislike homophobic people - but the definition of homophobic has broadened so massively in the last few years that probably this blog entry would be categorised as homophobic by some people.  This seems to be a reflection of an immature political situation/level of awareness.   It's rather like a black person dodging any disagreement with "you're racist" - which used to happen a bit  (the answer to the "you're saying that because your're racist" is of course "no, I'm saying it because I don't agree with you"...  or "it's not that, it's because yu're an idiot" - I'm sure that would calm the situation down - not.

Ned said "if you were gay, why would you want a homophobic person to marry you?"   This is the crux of the matter - if all sides would accept each other's positions, however benighted, then we might get somewhere, but as usual the whole thing has become savagely polarised so that it looks like evil Christians vs. saintly gays.... I haven't heard much about Muslims and gay marriage yet... I remember when the Sexual Equality legislation came in in 1975? that private clubs were excluded from admitting women equally - and there are still gents' clubs (and perhaps working men's clubs) that exclude women from membership...presumably churches could be excluded from this legislation.  It might seem unfair to outsiders, but really the churches need to work this one out on their own - without external pressure from people who have nothing to do with them.