Exhausted

I know I'm supposed to be resting up before my marathon, but I think I took it a bit too literally today by not getting up until 230pm!

The truth is I am so tired. As you may have worked out, I work 4 on 4 off shifts, each day being 7am to 630pm. All the early 550am stars rather gets to you, as well as the 5km cycle I have to make to get there.

It was a freezing slog yesterday morning, subzero, riding into a biting wind.

So despite the fact I was full of plans today for some nice long walking and photography, it never came about. When I did get up, I just headed into town, looking for curios to photograph, and generally enjoying walking in the cold.

The biggest oddity I found I was sadly unable to photograph with the necessary discretion. It was a man outside his little terraced cottage near Morrisons, splitting sticks with an axe while wearing what it appeared to be a "Spot the Dog" onesie, complete with ears and tail.

I would love to have a wooden stove to heat my flat, but I draw the line at dressing as a dog.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 22.11.15

The cotoneasters on the park are rather short of berries this year

Carrion crow protecting the sheltered accomadation

Metal bird on the windowsill

Metal birds having a drink!

There's a cat in this window!

Whatever this metal bit of roof is, it appears to belong to James Newell

St Mary's Church is a controlled zone, apparently

I  love this little spike on the church porch

Victorious woodpigeon after battle with previous lamp-post occupier

The lights are going up

Church through the light

Miniature violin making studio

A rather Cronenberg nest box

Spot the cannon hole in the church spire!

Upon the Mantlepiece of Curiosities

In what I laughably term my office, or perhaps study would be a better word, there is a mantlepiece. It mainly acts as a storage area for odd bits of junk, but I like to refer to it as my "mantlepiece of curiosities".

And amongst the foreign coins, wooden rhinoceros, sofa of cats and a furry magnolia pod, sit these two folk.

They were both turned up at different times in my parent's roof.

The larger one is definitely a blackbird, they used to nest in an opening overlooking the garden many years ago, when I was studying for my GCSEs out in the sun. The smaller one I'm not sure about. It has a finch, or possibly spuggy beak, a relatively larger eye socket, and a less pronounced breastbone-keel.

They are so lightweight, and ephemeral, it is unreal. They can be virtually blown along my mantlepiece museum, and feel more like they are made of dried grass rather than bone. How on earth they can support musculature powerful enough to enable them to fly is a mystery, if my muscles were strong enough for me to fly my shoulders would shatter and I'm rather sturdier than a tiny ball of feathers.

I used to be frightened of all skeletons as a child, I still remember a nightmare I had when I was 5 or 6 featuring test tube eggs and girls opening up their shins to show me their bones. Even now, I'm not a huge fan of skulls...

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 21.11.15

Philosophizing at the Death of the Universe

I've just completed the fourth week of my excellent and highly thought provoking Futurelearn course "Gravity", and we've been discussing the supremely headscratchy topics of dark matter - matter that we wouldn't notice if we walked into a room stuffed with it despite the fact there's 5 times more of it than normal matter in the universe - and also dark energy, energy that drives the expansion of the universe, and forms nearly 70% of the Universe despite the fact we've never detected it.

Dark energy in particular is a concept to put your brain through a blender. It corresponds, it is theorised, to the vacuum energy permanently blazing away in space time, an energy produced when a particle and its anti matter equivalent are produced FROM NOTHING and then annihilate each other back into nothingness so fast that we can never possibly detect them.

At the quantum level, creating matter and energy from nothing is allowed. Providing it goes back into nothingness faster than fast can be, this is allowed. Whereas light and gravity act as a brake on the expansion of the universe, vacuum energy does the opposite. It sucks space-time away from itself. And it is doing so at a faster and faster rate.

The expansion of the Universe is accelerating. It will never stop, contract, fall back on itself in a big crunch. The Universe will go on forever.

This sounds fabulous, but it isn't really. It doesn't mean that life will go on forever. Space-time will expand forever, but the Universe will die. Fundamental particles like protons will all decay; the atoms that make up you and me, many of which were around at the time of the big bang, will all splutter out into massless ghosts. As the Universe expands faster and faster, we will see less and less of it as it disappears over a kind of cosmic horizon provided by the speed of light. The longest living stars, red dwarves, will eventually peter out and the universe will be dark and cold, apart from black holes spinning silently in the blackness. And even they too will waft away bit by bit, trillions upon trillions of years hence. No life. No light.

I find it distressing, from a philosophical point of view. In a sense, it means that life is pointless, no matter it does anywhere in the universe to improve itself, it is doomed to fail. There's no point to anything. We cannot defy the laws of particle decay.

Yet I still wonder what hope there could be for life? The only hope that I can see would be to start another universe, a universe with renewed matter and vigour, and leave our ageing protons behind and transfer to a new vessel, within the new universe. Shades of "Being John Malkovich", I realise! Anyone who knows how to start a Universe, your Nobel prize awaits.

Or we could hope that the multiverse theory of everything is correct, that our Universe is merely one of many universes floating around within an 11 dimensional membrane, occasionally triggering new Big Bangs when they brush up against themselves. Here, life could find a way of tunnelling from one universe into an other, or a newly created one, and continue to do so as energy potential runs out in each Universe it colonises on a timescale that makes eternity look like the blink of an eye.

For I do no want life to fizzle out, in a cold sweep of darkness' cloak.

Si

All text copyright CreamCrackeredNature 19.11.15

My Longest Longest Longest Ever Run

As my regular readers may remember, I've been supposedly training for a marathon to take place here on the 28th November, but have been struggling with various niggling injuries for months.

Well, with the big day so close, today was going to be last chance I had to get a really long, final training run in. My longest one so far has been 25km, with a few 16km runs thrown in as well, but this isn't really the kind of mileage - well you can't say "kilometerage" - the training plans are suggesting.

Even with the weather forecast as bad as it was, there was no chance I could give this a miss. Had to do it, had to know I was capable of the distance on the day. I was hoping to get out and back before the storm arrived in the afternoon.

Wanting to avoid any upset stomach, I didn't eat anything in the morning before I left, but took along with me a bag of jelly beans, which really helped despite the fact that eating them on the run is actually a rather tricky business, it rather obstructing your breathing and there bring a risk of choking on the gelatinous mass in your mouth as well. But without that energy boost, I might have struggled.

For I ran 30.4 km in 3 hours 46 minutes, the furthest I've ever run. It was slow going, and the rain did lash down on me for the last hour, but I survived to get my cup of tea at the end, having run from home, to Bowbridge, to Hawton, to Cotham, to Thorpe, to Fanrdon, and then onto Rumbles coffee shop for a cup of tea, by which time I was pretty much on my last legs.

I was wearing my new trail running shoes, a pair of Kalenji Kapteren Explorers from Decathlon, which have basically been bought specifically for the marathon given that the route is largely off road and the weather has been, hey guess what, really wet lately. They feel rather stiff on the road, and with the deep tread it's actually rather like running in football studs on concrete, but off road they are comfortable and stable.

At £12.99 they aren't really designed for long runs, according to the website, but they handled the distance fine and I've only got a small blister that you would expect anyway running this kind of distance.

When I finished, I felt the urge to eat all things, and ended up eating two meals in two hours. According to MapMyRun, I'd burned the small matter of 3000 calories, so that's no surprise.

Especially as I'm an oinker when it comes to food, even without 30km in my legs.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 17.11.15 - I have received nothing from Decathlon for reviewing their trainers. In fact I've never received anything at all, not one tiny little thing, from anyone. If anyone from Decathlon reads this, feel free to lob me some stuff. Same goes for anyone else with running, walking, astronomy, photography or birdwatching gear. Oh yes, and rum as well. 

30 kilometres of ache

Endless Photographic Disasters

Well, today has been a trying day in my continuing attempts to be the new Simon King.

This morning I headed off on my 30km cycling trip to RSPB Langford Lowfields hopeful of getting some shots of winter ducks. As soon as I arrived however, as well as there being plenty of ducks on the water, there was a kestrel hovering motionless in the strong breeze barely 25 metres away.

By golly gee, I snapped away at it, taking at least thirty pictures, and really hopeful of getting at least one jaw dropper out of the set, a picture to make me feel I'd really arrived as a nature photographer. I then turned my attention to the ducks, and shot tufted ducks, wigeon and possibly a goldeneye as well, off in the distance.

Then the camera decided to beam unfriendly red letters into my eyes. "Memory Card Failure."

Well that was the end of the photography, but I was hopeful I'd still be able to retrieve the pictures. Well, plugging the SD card into my computer soon put paid to that dim hope.

So, I bought a new memory card and trotted off into town to take some pictures around the river; if I was lucky I might have encountered a grey wagtail down on the castle wall. I didn't, but I got some nice shots of the lowering sun over the river.

I then got home to find that the battery going flat had meant that I'd lost most of those shots.

I don't think I'll be on the Countryfile Calendar any time soon.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackeredNature 16.11.15

I spend a lot of time waiting at level crossings

Sun over Langford reed bed

I put myself in the picture

Spot the cormorant

Barge pub

Mallard

Church

Golden reflections

"Siiiiii-siiiiii-siiii" said the Tiny Bird

The weather is as nauseatic grey today as it was yesterday, but at least it has been far drier. The wind howled, but my feeders stayed on the tree, and I was able to cycle to the park without being blown to Doncaster, as it turned out.

Although it was still a struggle.

I've enjoyed walking around the park, camera at the ready, but I haven't really found anything much to photograph apart from the very fat squirrels that rampage around the trees of the old wood like furry vandals. Today was different. There were blackbirds ransacking berries from the bushes, plenty of gulls and magpies overhead, and great tits and robins teased the camera before defiantly deciding they weren't going to be photographed.

The treat, however, was heard before it was seen. I had divested my ears of Nicola Sturgeon on Desert Island Discs and was listening to a scolding robin somewhere in the undergrowth when superimposed was a much higher and persistent little "Siiiii-siii-siii" call coming from somewhere over my head.

At first I thought it was a long tailed tit, but when the culprits flitted into view it was clear that this was not the case. The culprits were a pair of goldcrests, the first I'd seen in a while, doing their hummingbird thing about three metres up.

They are too restless to be an easy target, but I got one good shot of these pretty little birds who charm me with their great fearlessness.

Mission accomplished! I was allowed my cup of tea now.

Si

All images and text copyright CreamCrackeredNature 15.11.15

Here's a drey. Wonder who lives there?

Probably this chap

Podgy little thing, isn't he?

GOALBALL! As US Soccer Guy on Twitter would say.

First winter blackbird??? Looks like a gape there.

Agreeably posing

Lots of berries to feed on!

Goldcrest!

I've Had Visitors!

I was so tired today after my shift, it was well after midday before I emerged into a wet world full of soggy leaves being blown around in the wind. I was amazed that my feeder had stayed on the tree in that wind, and then delighted to see that it had very evidently had some visitors nibbling away at the fat balls!

I haven't seen anyone on the tree yet, but I shall have a good sit out with my camera tomorrow and see who's been dropping by. My guess is great tits.

The weather has been terrible, but I was determined to go to the park, enjoy the day, and see what I could see. As should we all, wherever we are. Because that's how we beat the murderers of all those Parisiens.

By showing we enjoy life more than they do, and will never stop.

Si

All text and images copyright CreamCrackered 14.11.15

See the nibbles?

Damp park

Squelchy soccer

Wetter river

The rain refills the drained Trent

Otters are loving it