Things that cheer you up

[ReturnOfTheMack]

I love how short my commute is, means I'm home quick.

It's 1 Careless Whisper, and 24 seconds of Ass Boys. If you wondered.

[BomberPat]

Foxes are amazing. I grew up in the countryside, knew people who had chickens or rabbits taken by foxes (though just as often, more likely taken by people and blamed on foxes), and there were hunts that went on near us, but I never saw one. Then I moved to Jersey, and there aren't any foxes there. The first time I ever saw a fox, it was shivering in an alleyway near London Bridge station when I was down for a weekend, and it was a real "does not compute" moment. 

Now, living in London, I see them every few days - there's always a few knocking about on my walk home from the pub, sometimes see them around work, and there's a couple around the estate. I get excited about seeing them every single time, and I don't think that will ever change. I can understand people getting annoyed at them if they're messing up your garden, or knocking your bins over, but given that I live in a third-floor flat with no outdoor space, I don't have to worry about that and just to see it as a bit of a privilege that, in the middle of a massive city, I get to share some space with these guys. 

In general, wildlife in London has been a real unexpected treat for me. Living around farms meant that a lot of where I grew up was all fields, so not great for biodiversity, then living on an island meant that, birdlife-wise, it was all seagulls all the time, and having them nesting on the roof of my building during the first lockdown was a fucking nightmare. Now, in the middle of a city, I see foxes and squirrels all the time, have wood pigeons nesting in front of my window, get woodpeckers in the trees behind the flat, blue tits, sparrows, wagtails and gold-finches at my bird feeders, and just across the road there's a river, and ten minutes away a pond, with swans, ducks, geese, coots, moorhens and herons, and even a couple of terrapins. We even once saw a mink on the river. There's meant to be kingfishers in our nearest park, though I haven't seen one yet. My Mum's a big birdwatcher, and she was amazed when I told her we sometimes get a Jay in our tree, as she's never seen one. We also get feral parakeets around us a lot, and I love them - they're noisy buggers, but nothing compared to living with seagulls for years. All of that stuff cheers me up. 

[Carbomb]

16 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Foxes are amazing. I grew up in the countryside, knew people who had chickens or rabbits taken by foxes (though just as often, more likely taken by people and blamed on foxes), and there were hunts that went on near us, but I never saw one. Then I moved to Jersey, and there aren't any foxes there. The first time I ever saw a fox, it was shivering in an alleyway near London Bridge station when I was down for a weekend, and it was a real "does not compute" moment. 

A friend from Devon said to me she'd never seen foxes until she came to London - I didn't realise that foxes in the countryside tend to be more difficult to spot, because there's just lots of space for them to move unseen in, and, because they don't have to get used to being at close quarters with people on a regular basis like city foxes, they're much more likely to keep away and be stealthy.

16 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Now, living in London, I see them every few days - there's always a few knocking about on my walk home from the pub, sometimes see them around work, and there's a couple around the estate. I get excited about seeing them every single time, and I don't think that will ever change. I can understand people getting annoyed at them if they're messing up your garden, or knocking your bins over, but given that I live in a third-floor flat with no outdoor space, I don't have to worry about that and just to see it as a bit of a privilege that, in the middle of a massive city, I get to share some space with these guys. 

When possible, we leave food for them in our garden - they've got stomachs of iron, and I think I remember someone telling me once that they quite like rotten meat, so they're a great way of getting rid of meat that's gone off in our fridge. But we also buy very cheap dog food and give them that semi-regularly - because the manufacturers add stuff like vitamins to it, the foxes we feed end up looking really healthy with big bushy tails.

16 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

In general, wildlife in London has been a real unexpected treat for me. Living around farms meant that a lot of where I grew up was all fields, so not great for biodiversity, then living on an island meant that, birdlife-wise, it was all seagulls all the time, and having them nesting on the roof of my building during the first lockdown was a fucking nightmare. Now, in the middle of a city, I see foxes and squirrels all the time, have wood pigeons nesting in front of my window, get woodpeckers in the trees behind the flat, blue tits, sparrows, wagtails and gold-finches at my bird feeders, and just across the road there's a river, and ten minutes away a pond, with swans, ducks, geese, coots, moorhens and herons, and even a couple of terrapins. We even once saw a mink on the river. There's meant to be kingfishers in our nearest park, though I haven't seen one yet. My Mum's a big birdwatcher, and she was amazed when I told her we sometimes get a Jay in our tree, as she's never seen one. We also get feral parakeets around us a lot, and I love them - they're noisy buggers, but nothing compared to living with seagulls for years. All of that stuff cheers me up. 

That's actually cheered me up this morning, thanks for that. Never occurred to me that a massive great conurbation like London might actually be more bio-diverse than a lot of the UK countryside. Mind you, surely the countryside has a lot of diversity that we just don't see?

But yeh - we've seen a lot of birds in our garden alone. My sister printed out that list from the RSPB of birds you can see in London, and the only one that it took us a while to see was the dunnock. We've seen all kinds of tit (that's one for out of context), sparrows, crows, magpies, goldfinches, chaffinches, wrens, thrushes, blackbirds, robins, starlings (a whole flock of the bastards), a woodpecker, and even, once, a greater-spotted green woodpecker (sadly, it's not been back). We also have a nice little flock of collared doves thriving nearby - beautiful birds. The wood pigeons, probably down to our efforts, are REALLY fat - they look like mediaeval merchants strolling around the marketplace.

One bit of wildlife that shocked us was when we got back home, and saw a fucking sparrowhawk chowing down on some unfortunate bird we couldn't identify - either a collared dove or pigeon, it was too big for him to fly off with. He's been back since, knacking a sparrow and carrying the poor thing off.

[BomberPat]

26 minutes ago, Carbomb said:

That's actually cheered me up this morning, thanks for that. Never occurred to me that a massive great conurbation like London might actually be more bio-diverse than a lot of the UK countryside. Mind you, surely the countryside has a lot of diversity that we just don't see?

It really depends on what you consider "countryside"; a lot of what we tend to think of as countryside in this country is just fields and fields of single crops, separated by a couple of hedges or a few trees. I grew up in a part of East Yorkshire that's actually fairly depressing when you start seeing those fields as just as much a sign of industrialisation and habitat destruction as a tower block or a car park. Obviously once you get into proper woodlands or areas that have been allowed to maintain any kind of undergrowth, you get a far greater degree of biodiversity, but if all you've got is fields and fields of pesticide-covered crops, then you're not getting insects, so you're not getting birds, and so on. If a country in Africa or South America had undergone the kind of habitat destruction and depletion of biodiversity that England has, you'd have conservation charities calling for their heads, but we have such a skewed idea of the baseline of what's "natural" here.

It's a weird fact that, by one UN definition, London can be considered technically a forest, based on the number of trees per person within whatever is considered London's total square mileage. I consider myself lucky to live in South-East London in particular, which has a ton of accessible green space, woodland walks, and so on. It was a godsend when moving here during the pandemic! 

I mentioned my Mum earlier - she grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere, is very outdoorsy, and doesn't really like living anywhere bigger than a large village; we lived on a small council estate in Jersey for a while, and that was too busy for her and we moved elsewhere when we could afford to. I don't think she's ever been to London, and I could tell she was a bit anxious about the idea of me moving here, because she had all these mental images of a big crowded city, so every time I speak to her on the phone I make sure to bring up birds that we've seen and walks we've been on, so that she can relate a little more, and feels more comfortable with the idea of me being here. 

 

And literally as I'm writing this, just got the first look at one of the baby wood pigeons reaching up to be fed!

[Carbomb]

1 minute ago, BomberPat said:

It really depends on what you consider "countryside"; a lot of what we tend to think of as countryside in this country is just fields and fields of single crops, separated by a couple of hedges or a few trees. I grew up in a part of East Yorkshire that's actually fairly depressing when you start seeing those fields as just as much a sign of industrialisation and habitat destruction as a tower block or a car park. Obviously once you get into proper woodlands or areas that have been allowed to maintain any kind of undergrowth, you get a far greater degree of biodiversity, but if all you've got is fields and fields of pesticide-covered crops, then you're not getting insects, so you're not getting birds, and so on. If a country in Africa or South America had undergone the kind of habitat destruction and depletion of biodiversity that England has, you'd have conservation charities calling for their heads, but we have such a skewed idea of the baseline of what's "natural" here.

Fair enough - it occurs that one thing I suppose we should take into account is that England started the Industrial Revolution; in short, we've been at it longer than most other countries, and, in the case of places like the areas that now comprise South Africa and South American countries, we'd been at it for at least a couple of centuries, having destroyed most of our natural ecologies way before we and the rest of Europe ever introduced industrial farming to them (not to mention that local resistances would've made it difficult to implement it on the scale we did in England).

Anyway, this is about things that cheer us up, and one of those is the fact that we're reintroducing species to the UK that were previously lost, like beavers and wolves. Although, in the case of the latter, I wonder how we'll deal with the reintroduction of a predator to our ecology centuries after we wiped out all our native bears and wolves. Countries like Canada have that all the time, so they know, but this is something we're not used to yet. I'm interested to see how this plays out (obviously in the hope that no casualties are sustained).

[Chest Rockwell]

I spooked some kind of hawk off its meal when walking in the woods a while back (don't know what kind; not good with bird names). It left a headless pigeon behind, which was delightful.

Saw a woodpecker on my neighbour's front lawn this morning from my office window which was nice. I hear them a lot but don't see them that often.

I'm really lucky for the variety of flora and fauna we get here. About once or twice a year I'll see a deer in the woods where I walk. It's amazing to me what a small patch it is, surrounded by houses on all sides in a very residential area, yet this family of deer lives there and are almost completely invisible most of the time.

[Loki]

On 8/25/2022 at 1:18 PM, CAREBEAR LUVVA said:

Wait til you find out there's a 20-disc box set being released next month...

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Eurotrash-DVD-Antoine-Caunes/dp/B0B7QDV8CP

This really feels like something @Astro Hollywood should write a book about.

 

 

[Merzbow]

Charity shop finds, I got a Sony boombox for 6 quid today.

[Keith Houchen]

13 minutes ago, Merzbow said:

Charity shop finds, I got a Sony boombox for 6 quid today.

There’s a thread for this. Finding something ace in a Charity shop is well skill. 

 

[Keith Houchen]

Was driving on the M6 and approached a bridge. There was about 15 kids on there sticking their Vs up and doing wanker signs at everyone passing. I returned the gestures with a beaming smile on my face. It’s lovely and heartwarming to know some of the old ways and traditions live on in the digital age. 

[Fatty Facesitter]

Played some crazy golf in glorious 'Sunny Hunny' (Hunstanton in Norfolk) over the weekend for the first time in a long while - delighted to say I finished under par on both the 'Blackbeard' and 'Aztec' trails - the latter is absolutely menacing and must have been designed by Davy Jones himself. Bastard hard. The 'greens', though carpeted, are meticulously maintained. The speakers also let out a delightful jingle that had me singing along all day "Yo ho yo ho, it's a pirate's life for me! Yo ho yo ho, it's all I want to be!"

I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed a bit of putting and if the weather holds for a little longer I'll hope to get some more in. The benefits are infinite - you get a huge mix of people including families that are a delight to converse with (we were behind a family of six who asked if we wanted to go ahead of them, but we were enjoying ourselves so said no need. We took great delight in cheering on Brenda against her unruly offspring), it's a great way to build up your step-counter for the day (I reached 10,000 steps during the Aztec course...probably because I had to keep going back down the hill to retrieve a ball on hole 8 that I just couldn't get past an errant rock), it's out in the fresh air, it's light-hearted, spirited competition and above all else, it's just innocent fun.

On a crazy golf course your mind switches to a more practical, puzzle-solving mode and any thoughts of work, bills, drama or captaining the wrong player in FPL leaves your noggin completely. The best exercise for the body, mind and soul. 

Edited August 29, 2022 by Fatty Facesitter

[Surf Digby]

As a child I played crazy golf in Hunstanton, where my older sister's "enthusiastic" swinging technique resulted in me getting smacked right in the chops with the putter.

It's not put me off the place though. We holidayed there two years running when I was young so I have a lot of good memories of the place, and I took the boy for a visit about 3 weeks ago.
Somehow, even though I played on that beach beneath the red cliffs, I have no memory of there being a dirty great shipwreck there, and so didn't think to take him to see what's left.

[Carbomb]

I just came to the realisation that, as of a few days ago, I've been keeping a journal for two years now.

This may not seem a big deal, but to give it context: throughout my life, I've never been able to keep focused on anything very long - it made my school years miserable, as I never got the grades I should have just because I kept getting distracted, and holding focus was like trying to hold on to a wet bar of soap: grip too much or too little, and it slips out of your hand (outofcontext.gif). 

I did, on occasion, try to keep a journal, and I could never get it past a couple of entries at most.

Then, during lockdown, I decided to start "internal stocktaking" - I ordered some nice notebooks, dug out a really nice fountain pen I'd had for years but never used*, got a bottle of Waterman's Mystic Blue ink, and got to writing. It was kind of difficult to lose the habit in lockdown, and that was what I was counting on. Before I knew it, I'd kept a journal every day for a year. In itself, it's a habit that's helped me get past some long-seated and detrimental emotional issues in my life, and I now feel like I'm at a good place, moving along and making progress like I'd long hoped for but never achieved.

So, for me, this is a big deal. I never thought it would ever be possible for my ADHD-riddled mind to ever let me do something as simple yet disciplined as keep a journal ever, and to know I've kept one for two years, cheers me up massively. I'm going to go out and treat myself to a nice meal - probably a massive yogurt-and-butter sauced adana kebab from the chef's specials menu at one of the local Turkish restaurants.

 

*It's a DS9-style Schaeffer, complete with converter - I got it in the 90s through the Star Trek "Latinum Exchange", where you got tokens every time you bought a Star Trek VHS; I never got enough to get the Defiant-design CD player, but the pen is lush.

[Carbomb]

3 hours ago, johnnyboy said:

I worked on the assembly line making a load of the point of sale stuff for the Star Trek VHS releases in the mid-late 90s which had the bonus of being allowed to take home a load of the Star Trek in the DS9 typeface stickers that were left at the end of the production run.

Oh, schweet! Jealous as fuck here. I don't think I got any of those in the VHS.

Here are pics of the fountain pen:

[Fatty Facesitter]

On 9/4/2022 at 1:09 PM, Carbomb said:

I just came to the realisation that, as of a few days ago, I've been keeping a journal for two years now.

This may not seem a big deal, but to give it context: throughout my life, I've never been able to keep focused on anything very long - it made my school years miserable, as I never got the grades I should have just because I kept getting distracted, and holding focus was like trying to hold on to a wet bar of soap: grip too much or too little, and it slips out of your hand (outofcontext.gif). 

I started doing this for the first time on New Year's Day - I downloaded an app at first paid for a premium subscription so I could add some photos as well and for the first couple of months or so I pretty much stuck with it every day. Even on busier days or tougher days at work when the odd client would mess with your mood, the end of day reflection and just getting some thoughts on 'paper' (the app in this case) was incredibly therapeutic. 

I don't use that app now, but rather I just use the notes app on the iPhone and I quite like the tick feature - I now use to both plan the following day, then when everything's checked off I then add that to the journal section and and some thoughts on the day overall. Then at the end of the week I look back on it from the start to the end. 

It's amazing how much you forget when you're doing the daily grind - I'm in one of those jobs where everything moves quite fast and rather than clock-watching waiting for the end of your shift, you're sometimes watching the clock hoping it will slow down and wondering where all the hours in the day have gone. So using this formula helps me to recap - 

- How much I actually achieved at work that week, how many items I got over the line, etc. 
- Any funny interactions that week.
- Any heartwarming things I saw that week. 

Definitely a positive addition to my routine this year - some days will always be better than others but it works really well for me as a system.