There’s a Distinct Dearth of Wildlife on These Moorings. Also Those Moorings.

Here are a couple of Dearth-Ducks.

We’ve had a solitary swan, a brief moorhen, two boring ducks and that’s your lot. The wildlife has been limited to towpath Hoomans, and they’re not my favourite by any measure. Joggers (who wouldn’t jog at all on the towpath if they knew how much they sound to people on the boats like lone wildebeest thundering back to the herd); some regular numpty on a 40mph wide-tyred electric bicycle; the usual near-a-town march of dog-emptiers (love the dogs, wouldn’t miss the Hoomans even if aliens beamed them up for “to-destruction” anal probing). Someone cycled past at 0300 hundred hours o’clock this morning.

The breezes are with us again, and here they would appear to be making Mr Stove produce the full spectrum of sounds used in the production of The Stone Tape – television from the days when Aunty Beeb still had time and resources to make great drama (instead of just being a poor and tacky drama themselves). At least, I hope that it’s just the wind. The sound makes opening the stove door to give him a re-stoke and tickle in the dead of night something of its own sub-woofer production.

I shall have to dig out the DVD and watch it again.

Her Majestic Wotsit’s Met Office has been performing a few minor dramas of its own.

Few people realise quite the precision with which the sky must be laid out by the Council workers each morning. They use set-squares and everything, there’s chalk marks everywhere.

Some aeroprunes leave condensation trails, others do not. Spot the teeny weeny (electric?!) aeropain in the photomagraph below. I watched it to the horizon, and it wasn’t pooping visible H2O at all. Perhaps they’d warmed up the enjamins properly before take-off, perhaps it wam a turbo-prop not a jetski (my visual acuity isn’t up to the 5,000ft task).

The field on the offside here (we always play by strict F.A. rules) has one of those peculiar and disconcerting depressions. I often wonder what’s beneath them, if anything other than some bottomless void*.

*’Bottomless Void’ was what the kitchen staff at most schools I attended used to call me. That, and ‘Oh look – little bastard’s back in the queue for pudding again’.

Perhaps tis not the wind making Mr Stove imitate critters from all nine Circles of Hell, but merely the genuine article, leaking out of this poorly-bunged hole that leads straight down to The Hot Place?

Hmm.

There’s a splendid supermarket nearby, some sort of offshoot undershoot or side-line of Tescoids, and it has my kind of prices. I’ve made a couple of expeditions. The place, while splendid, brings back memories of vast warehouse shops in East Germany before The Wall was knocked downen by Fink Ployd – more aisle space than shelf or freezer; lighting so dim that the whole place looks slightly grey; stock being whatever can be got wholesale from disparate sources. I love it.

The only thing that I don’t love about it are the self-service checkouts; being ordered about by some Kommissariat Komputer terminal telling me that there’s an unexpected yak or small Icelandic pony in the bagging area, that sort of thing. That said, a chap really can’t argue with 65p for a litre of Orangensaft Nicht Aus Konzentrat and wotnot. Surprisingly the customers are far and few between, but unsurprisingly those that there are all sport old, heavy, grey wool coats, white ankle socks and headscarves.

Even the men.

Well, it is Middlewich.

I must have looked like some sort of sartorial god to them.

No, but seriously.

When enstrollinating to the shops along the towpath joggerradfahrerbahnen I generally attempt to judge the haul to two shopping bags – tis heavier, but much easier to carry two, balanced, than one. Strung from the pole across my shoulders they often get in other people’s way or cause serious or fatal injury but hey – who cares, it’s only other people.

The Sun shone for a while earlier this morning, but he’s gone home again now.

Dullth.

Drear and dullth and wind.

Outside is even more depressing, which brings us back to that dip in the field.

Today is a Saturday, so the once-a-week staggerers (I won’t call them “joggers”) are out in force. Wheeze-thump, wheeze-thump. A yoghurt pot has just cruised past, which is quite an adventurous thing on a day with breezes such as today. Finally – a cormorant has just surfaced alongside. Add that to the Swan, the Dearth Ducks and the Moorhen and we’ve got a Clarissa Dickson Wright multi-roast. Not me of course. I have ‘Richmond’ No Meat Beef-Free Beef Burgers.

Two quid. One of the highest priced comestibles in Jack’s.

Chin-chin for the mo, chaps, and wherever you are, do please keep on keeping on &etc.

Ian H.