The Water Meadows

A lady stops me before I’ve even left the road.
“Just enough time to get a little walk in before it gets dark.”
She smiles as if I know her. How does she know I’m going for a walk? I’m dressed the same as if I were going to the shop or the train station. What is it that labels me as walking, rather than doing something normal? The train blares its horn where there used to be a foot crossing, the driver pointlessly obeying the command to whistle, despite there being nobody to whistle at. It might fulfil a childhood dream to blow the horn on his very own train, and he does so enthusiastically, making local residents jump in their kitchens all the way to Weymouth.

I take the footpath through the caravan site. Blackbirds, four of them, pick around the fallen leaves, hoping to surprise something tasty. Two of them leave, not pleased with my presence. The others don’t care as long as I don’t steal their dinner. I assure them I won’t. Most of the caravans are empty, but I startle an old man filling up his water container before it starts to rain. The sky has taken on the colour of dirty sheep. It’s not as grumpy as it was during last night’s storm, but the branches still have some energy in them. The real dirty sheep are over by Woolbridge Manor today, and alongside the path I want to follow across the water meadows. Heads bob up as the guards watch me pass, but after a second’s contemplation they return to their grass. They look up as my welly boot slides on the mud and I find myself apologising as I try to keep my balance. They scatter as my clumsy suction noises leave messy footprints along the river bank. It’s quiet on the water, but I manage to terrify a mallard whilst stopping to put on my hat. I feel like I’m messing up their evening with my nature walk.

I’m relieved for a moment to hear voices ahead, so at least it’s not only me disturbing the peace. We exchange polite hellos as they pass with a brown dog which I suspect started off white. They move on and I stop to scan the rushes on the other side of the river. Two tiny birds fly down into them before one re-emerges, fluttering up and down, slowly gaining height, then disappearing, the black spot erasing itself with increasing distance.

Angry hiccups from a moorhen float my way as I move into another field. I pick what may be my last blackberry this year, judging by the state of its friends. There’s a small bridge over the water that I want to investigate, but I’m not equipped to be out after dark today. I curse having to cut my loop short as the mud becomes tarmac again, edged with thatched cottages that nobody lives in all winter, reserved for holiday rather than home makers.

Two gunshots take me out of my thoughts. Is that the army practicing wargames on the range at Lulworth? Or is somebody hunting this evening? Neither thought is pleasant. I make one final diversion to look back over the river before going home. I’m glad I do as a kestrel hovers over the bank scanning for supper. The water is starting to lose its reflection as evening approaches and the first drops of rain merge with its surface. Just as I turn to leave something darts through the water, a tantalising splosh being the only evidence by the time my senses process the message to turn around and look. It seems the wildlife don’t want to be watched tonight.

Dogservations in Corsham

Following its canine inhabitants, writing student Rachel Henson explores Corsham on foot, and discovers parts of the village most tourists never get to see.

A wobbly dog and two ladies walk past the Deli. I jump up and follow them past Boots and left at Co-op. They enter a café that my cheese sandwich forbids me to enter. I’m in a graveyard waiting for another dog to come along. A stone cross declares it’s sacred to the memory of the Reverend William Green, died in 1904, aged 46. Now surrounded by flowers on a thoroughfare to the supermarket. The owners reappear with sandwiches and tea. The dog is invited to join in with neither and lies panting in the sunshine as they sit down to eat. I awkwardly try to feign an interest in the lone tree in the old churchyard, which I notice is fluttering unnaturally. A closer inspection reveals mesh ribbons and bows tied to its branches, and luggage tags twisting in the breeze. I stop one spinning:
“Be strong and never give up”.

The headstones haven’t been tended to in a long time. But there are other more recent additions besides the ribbons. High up on a wall, between a security light and the metal torture spikes set out for homeless birds, is a sign:
“Pigeons. Please don’t feed them. We love them but there are just too many and they do cause problems. We want to avoid culling.” I’d love to know what sort of problems pigeons can cause in a ruined churchyard between a carpark and a supermarket. The sign annoys me because it’s lying. I doubt that its composer really loves pigeons. I really love my nan, and she certainly knows how to cause problems, but I wouldn’t put spikes on her favourite chair or advise not feeding her as the only alternative to culling.

A man walks past carrying a sack of compost, and cigarette smoke drifts over from a chap staring at me from inside a hi-vis jacket. I feel despairingly dog-less and walk around to the rear of the café, noticing a fellow writer in a hedge as I do so. The gate is open to the rear of the café. There are gravestones here too, but sombre sounds of reflection and mourning have been replaced by a clattering of plates entering the dishwasher. Wiltshire Waste Recycling blue skips sit amongst the tombstones. A ladder lays painfully across a child’s last resting place. “Annie, beloved daughter of Arthur and Jane Holder who died September 1st 1890. Aged 14 years.”

I doubt they wanted her buried in a rubbish tip. I pick up a Fruit Shoot bottle tossed onto someone’s grave and put it in one of the skips, which is itself positioned without respect. The best I can do is tidy up a bit, then I remember I’m meant to be looking for dogs. Yellow lines on the road seem like a plausible thing to follow whilst lacking in dogs, but eight steps later they run out underneath a silver Transit van which is parked over both them and the pavement. They turn up again after an unexplained break where I suspect the painter gave up trying to work around a parked car. This new pair of lines is smattered with white paint, which somebody has driven through before also parking up on the double yellows. Corsham’s traffic warden must be on holiday this week.

A peacock yells at me from a wall on the far side of the car park in which I find myself. It peers haughtily from an elevated position above a Biffa bin, scratches its head with its foot then stares at me until I retreat from the carpark. Back on the high street I finally have one. A rat-sized dog attached by its lead to a mobility scooter. I can’t catch up. I speed up and the woman stops, without warning, to allow the dog to sniff some fallen leaves. I accidentally overtake and kick myself for ending up in front. I have to walk painstakingly slowly, whilst trying to look interested in in the parkland view, until correct order is restored and I’m behind my subject once more. The woman stops again, spinning her tiny buzzing motor around to glare at me over her glasses. I’ve been rumbled.

“This way, Peggy”, she demands, and scoops up the dog, depositing it into a basket before scooting off at a speed I can’t match. A corvid laughs at me from the tree above. I’m not sure whether it’s an angry crow or a grumpy rook, but they seem to find my inability to keep up with a pensioner in the sunshine most amusing.

The Great Dorset Steam Fair at 50

Each August, The Great Dorset Steam Fair takes over the fields of Tarrant Hinton. Attracted by the largest collection of steam engines in the world, 200,000 people swarm amongst the exhibits; wellies on feet, hotdogs in hand.

The collapsed crops are faded by sun and mud, trampled by the public, rolled flat by tyres and steam rollers. In the shadow of fairground rides is an area cordoned off by an ellipse of metal barriers. Spectators perch on hay bales, cameras dangling from necks, waiting for the classic car parade. Strings of light bulbs struggle for attention in the daylight, high up on poles above the fences. Alongside the ring is a silver caravan which stands unnoticed until words begin to leave the speakers paired up on its roof.
“Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the Great Dorset Steam Fair.”

A threshing machine continues to work, oblivious to the more modern display. Sun-hatted men stand confidently on top of the shaking wooden box, feeding straw in to the chute that begins the process of separating the grain from the chaff. A steam engine works hard to one side, the belt lazily wandering over the fast-paced flywheel. It rocks against its chocks, as eager to work now as it had been when new, when Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles took in this new technology for the first time in the Wessex countryside, over a century ago.

The phut-phut of the engine is out of time with the ABBA mega-mix exploding from a gold and red organ, adorned with angelic statuettes playing Dutch-made castanets. The exhaust of a proudly polished Austin A40 blows its heady petrol scent towards a cocktail of sausages and onion, coal smoke and dust.

“Now we move on to Number 13 in the programme, this lovely Morris Cowley 12/4 coupé, restored by the current owners and used again since 2005…” A man in a checked shirt stumbles into the crowd, drawn over to look at the car. His vision is tunnelled by multiple tankards of farm-house cider, served up in a green-canvas tent held fast by ropes that flaw its customers on the way out. He leans on the fence as the Morris purrs past, completing its lap to a wave of applause before parking up amongst the crowds of curious holiday makers, enthusiasts and eyes that light up as they exclaim in delight, “My Grandad had one of those!”

Snow in Vermont

It's good to see that weather in New England is as changeable as it is back in 'Old' England. Fall still hasn't finished doing its thing and already we're having dustings of snow in the hills. For these parts, it's only very little, but if we had this in Dorset right now there would be people out there trying to build snowmen. It still has a novelty value for me, and it gives me an excuse to get the Cookie Monster hat out.

These were taken down at Texas Falls in the Green Mountain National Forest. I only had time for a quick potter today, but it's made me want a slightly longer expedition later in the trip. If possible, on the Long Trail. Watch this space.

Fall Foliage in Burlington, Vermont

I arrived in Burlington, Vermont on Thursday. We wanted to see the leaves changing colour, as it's meant to be spectacular over here, but we had been forewarned that we would be likely to miss it.

We were lucky this year though, fall has arrived later than normal. This was the scene in Battery Park at the weekend. Beautiful maples are decorating the floor everywhere we look, and some of the later trees are yet to turn. There are plenty of oaks that are still green in the hills.

So for now, I'm just exploring the city, and appreciating the subtle, and not so subtle differences between my expectations and Vermont in the flesh. I'm relieved to see, at least, that they really do have yellow school buses over here.

13 FEB 09

After a tense 48 hours last week wondering whether or not the snow would lift enough for Heathrow to begin operating like a normal airport again, Mum and Dad walked into the Arrivals Lounge of Kota Kinabalu airport.

The last eight days have been so busy that I've not had time to write anything, but I'll highlight a couple of our momentous points before the cafe who's internet we're using closes. It's just taken Dad over an hour to type three emails because he's not used to this laptop and has been repeatedly deleting and re-typing them. At least it's nice and warm outside; I imagine that sitting outside a shop at midnight typing an email in England is the last thing most people would be doing in the current weather situation.

Today we visited Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. For me this was the third trip in seven months, but orangutans never get old. Well, they obviously get old but not 'old'. Mum and Dad loved it (I think), and we watched several orangutans feeding on the specially built platform.
There was a young orangutan who seemed intent on winding up the adults in any way he could. This started with a mild pestering of his mother when he'd had his fill of bananas . Not getting anywhere he opted for swinging away from the platform along the rope, designed to protect the nearby saplings from the hungry mob twice a day, and bounding back onto the platform to stand over 'Mum' expectantly. Seeing that 'Mum' was still engrossed in her fruit-feast he chanced a tug at her fur, which resulted in an unimpressed look and Mum turning to face the other direction. The little one then turned to face Dad who was concentrating on a particularly juicy looking piece of lunch and climbed on top of him. Dad shook him off and gave him a very definite 'Do that again and I'll clock you one' stare. He went back to hang around on the rope for a while before getting fed up and swinging over to wind up a family of macaques who were patiently waiting for any leftovers from the great ape feeding session.
The next time I saw him swing into view he was holding a branch twice as long as he was tall in his left foot and trying to maneuvre back to the platform with his prize. I'm convinced he wasn't trying to be awkward, but like so many small children his intentions went misunderstood, and hitting his mother on the head with it whilst trying to drag it onto level ground didn't go down very well. She grabbed him by the arm and wrenched him back to a behaving, sitting position. Sulkily he snatched an entire bunch of bananas and retreated to the rope with the bunch grasped in his feet.
The 'eyes-bigger-than-stomach syndrome' soon set in though and he flumped down next to Dad in search of attention. None came his way, so he started poking his father. This, understandably, was as appreciated as accidentally hitting his mother on the head with a tree branch and resulted in a wrestling match with Dad, who must have been at least four times his size and weight. As we left, the little one stood up looking very proud of himself and probably would have been able to walk away with his head held high, but he chanced one last swipe at Dad and the fiasco recommenced, just as the park closed and we were ushered away from the feeding area.

The jungle's been flooded since the day Mum and Dad (human versions) arrived and it's been touch and go as to whether we'll be able to get there or not, but fingers crossed...

02 FEB 09

It's been over six months since I left Britain to come to Sabah. With five and a half left to go and an awful lot of work left uncompleted I'm starting to see my remaining time disappear faster than a chocolate bar in an ants nest. It doesn't seem possible that in the time I've been out here one friend has moved to work in Geneva, Christmas has come and gone without any mince pie consumption, friends are applying for 'proper jobs' and panicking about being an authentic grown-up and my little brother will have finished his first year at university before I so much as touch down at Heathrow Airport...

...however I'm still very much here and enjoying every second of it. Although we haven't spent a lot of time in the jungle recently, we have had time to get to know the charms of Kota Kinabalu. We've become semi regular attendees of Amir Yussof's open-mic evenings at the 'Office Pub' and invaded more than one game of badminton. Playing badminton on a real court rather than outside the field centre using the path as our net, and regularly tripping over tree roots and rocks, has been really good fun and I'm confident that less shuttlecocks will end up on the roof of the centre when we return. The fact that we're beaten by two thirteen year olds every time should probably be overlooked, but we're thankful that they let us play in the first place so Ellie and Nathan must get a mention!

After an extended deadline I've finally handed in my primate project from the July fieldcourse and sent off an article for our student newspaper 'gair rhydd'. Not very exciting stuff to tell you I'm afraid, but it's nice to have a sense of completing something without the mad rush that all too often accompanies that feeling back in Cardiff. Maybe it's the place, the lack of other things that 'have to be done' or maybe it's the weather, but had this week occured in Cardiff I would have ended up the coffee-fuelled, stressed-out, sleep-deprived wreck that multiple deadlines on the same day have a habit of creating out of otherwise average students. This time the only similarity is sleep deprivation, but that can be attributed to having the internet and trying to stay in sync with Europe on MSN and Facebook.

Rather bizarrely, on Thursday night I shall be picking up my parents from the airport. It's strange because it seems like a complete parent-child role reversal. Thinking back to all of the guide camps, school trips, cadet expeditions andthat adventure to Madagascar, the amount of times Mum asked whether I'd remembered *Insert useful/useless object here* and Dad quizzed me on drop-off times are uncountable. The last few days have been the complete opposite, with me sending emails to ask whether they've remembered things like a hat and suncream which probably seem ridiculous items to pack if you're sitting with frost on the windows and a cat that refuses to go outside because of the freezing temperatures. And however many times I tell myself when the plane gets in, I still have something in the back of my mind that asks whether I've got the right day/month/year/country. I have visions of Mum and Dad standing in arrivals at Kuala Lumpur airport wondering why I haven't turned up yet...
...but we'll see.

27 DEC 08

Well Christmas day seems a lifetime ago now, but in reality I suppose it's only been two days. The problem is that we've been up since 8am yesterday (It's now 8pm today!) in order to get ourselves across the Thai border. We finally managed it, after arriving in Kuala Lumpur to find that all train and bus tickets to Thailand had long sold out. We could however get a bus to Alor Setar in Malaysia where we were assured we could catch a connecting bus to Hatyai in Southern Thailand. That was a lie.
After being unceremoniously dumped an hour earlier than scheduled, at 4am, in what could only resemble a ghost town, we then had the challenge of finding any sort of transport to *somewhere* in Thailand... eventually we get a taxi to the border with two students from Singapore on a similar mission. It was only after we'd left Malaysian soil that Chloe and I realised that we'd completely forgotten to get any Thai currency. We'd spent the afternoon wandering the streets of Kuala Lumpur with our backpacks waiting for the 2300 bus, so there really was no excuse. We'd even had time to find a Starbucks and play snakes and ladders for two hours, so we really should have considered currency, but we didn't. It took 3 hours of standing in a queue to cross the sencond border-check into Thailand, and by some miracle we found a minibus that would take Malaysian Ringgitsto get us to Hatyai. Now we appear to be here, and we leave in the morning for the island of Koh Lipe which looks beautiful and much less stressful (one hopes) than the mammoth journey to get here!

Christmas Day itself was rather odd but very nice. We attended a Church service which turned out to be in English and Chinese. Straight translations we could have worked with, but the system was a little more complicated, with people given the option to respond and sing in either language (or both)!
As a result, some prayers and readings were in English, some in Chinese. The sermon was in both and hence took the best part of an hour. Everytime they returned to English we'd forgotten the previous sentence, which wasn't helpful in a particularly heavy-going speech. The most interesting part was the music though with a Christmas-carol-megamix performed by the choir and dancers with tamborines performing at the front of teh Church. The congregational carols were traditional, including 'O Come All Ye Faithful', but even that turned out to be complicated when everyone switched to Chinese in the second verse, leavign Chloe and I caught between bewilderment and hysterics.

Christmas dinner went remarkably well and we managed to cook chicken, rice, veggies and potatoes. The only hitch was getting into our precious bottle of wine without a corkscrew, which no-one could help us with as they'd not seen a cork in a bottle like that before!

In the evening we went ahead with our meal out (we'd assumed lunch would be a disaster!) and went to a hotel to have the weirdest concoction of foods imaginable. As a result I had chicken, lasagne, fried rice, meatballs, vegetables, noodles and a random bit of lamb. It was a buffet-style affair and we thought we should make the most of it!

I hope everyone's well, and I'm sorry I can't sit and write the anecdotes I'd like to share, but maybe another time... Although i shall mention that one slightly strange lady yesterday asked me for a piece of orange peel on the plane yesterday and spent the flight sniffing it before discarding it on the airfield on arrival. Any ideas as to what that was about on a postcard please!

Best wishes,
Rachel x