Thursday 21 June 2012

Birds and bees

When we got our first office, last November, I viewed it with my friend and business mentor, Ian (charming, a bit posh, soft inside, professional) and one of the first things I noticed was that there were lots of blue and great tits that lived in the bushes outside. This excited me because I'm an unashamed twitcher. If you're unfamiliar with the term, it means birdwatcher. I used to be embarrassed about that, but now I don't care.

This is the view from my office. 



I was on holiday in Portugal with an old boyfriend once and as we were walking around a market we heard a familiar voice behind us speaking English. We turned around and there he was.....Bill Oddie. My absolute hero. The problem was, that the boyfriend, (who is still my friend) is a real cool kid. Just naturally cool - he loves cool music and cool clothes, cool things to do and has cool friends. I remember feeling really excited at the fact that there was Bill Oddie standing in front of me, but having to suppress the screams that come with being star struck because it would make me seem so very uncool in front of the very cool boyfriend.

Anyway, it turns out that Bill Oddie is a knob. He was really rude and it put me off twitching for a little while. Fully back on it now, though after three recent events.

The first is discovering EcoExplore, a company in Cardiff that is run by a group of very clever, (and cool) conservationists and animal lovers that set up tours for people to experience their local nature.

The second is finding an office that provides ample birdwatching space.

The third is when Math, (brother in law, amazing, funny, cool but not too cool that I can only talk about cool things with him), took me up to the Newport Wetlands last month and I felt like weeping the whole time. There were Shelducks, Pochards, Greenfinches and so many more things to get excited about. It made me wonder whether twitching was so called because you watch things that twitch or because when you see something exciting you get all twitchy. I do, anyway. Going in the hide was the best bit, and looking through my new binoculars. The best, BEST bit was the fact that Math didn't laugh at me.

It feels liberating to be able to admit to all the things that I like to do now that I'm not so young and I don't have to care about being cool. Like, I have always been a rambler. Walking is a real big thing for me and I have always done it. Tried a bit of Nordic walking, too, which was fun. We used to have rambling club, about four or five years ago and it was pretty much a secret in case it wasn't cool enough to talk about with other groups of friends. Now everyone is doing it. I know plenty of people who walk or have joined rambling clubs. So I can talk about it without having to pretend that I go home and smoke drugs after a ramble.

I'm now really aware of the fact that the title of this post is called 'Birds and bees', but that I haven't mentioned bees. I do love them, and I'm concerned about their protection, but I can't really talk about them as I can do with birds. I don't even know if you have species of bees? Are they all the same or do you have different breeds? Can you breed bees? Do they all sting? Are any of their stings poisonous or deadly? I really couldn't tell you.

The other thing that I'm really aware of is that I said yesterday that I was going to talk about how I believe that myself and my twin experience quantum entaglement in the real world every day. However, I'm not. It's the kind of thing that I have to double check with some science websites that I've said the right thing before I publish it because I don't want to look stupid. Looking uncool is fine these days, but looking stupid, I still haven't been able to accept yet. Maybe I'll leave the science post until I've got some more time to research and rip of some intelligent sentences from a journal or a PhD paper.

So, yeah..um..birds. Pretty cool things.


Urm....bye!

1 comment:

  1. Hey Luce!
    Bees are amazing we had a Bee Lady come and talk to us at WI last week. She totally rocked and it's incredible what bees can do and how they interact with each other. She had gorgeous honey for sale as well and runs a Honey Club where you can sign up and she'll send you some every month! I'm signing up with a pal so we can have a jar every other month :)
    Her website is either crap or under development but it does have one page where she says why she started bee keeping http://www.fieldsandhedgerows.co.uk/ The email is info@fieldsandhedgerows.co.uk just in case you wanted to know more!!
    Bees were also the focus of the WI resolution 3 years ago!!
    Enough of me hijacking your page and bleating on about bees and the WI!!
    LOVING the blog. Love you. Ems x x

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