Glow Wild 2024
Dec. 17th, 2025 11:31 pmI realised earlier today that I never actually got around to uploading photos from last year's Glow Wild. Since we'll be going to this year's on Friday, now seems like a good time to remedy that...
( +6 )
Between one thing and another we wound up having a semi-impromptu mini-break in Chester, including a few hours at Chester Zoo.
... where we went into the bats enclosure and were transfixed for about an hour, basically from the moment we walked in until chucking-out time.
It's a big dark room, artificially crepuscular, with lots of trees (dead) for roosts, and somewhere in the vicinity of 350 bats (Seba's short-tailed and Rodrigues fruit bats). THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. THEY WILL COME SO CLOSE TO YOU. They were flying well within a foot of our faces. You could FEEL THE WIND FROM THEIR WINGBEATS.
And A was greatly honoured by one LANDING ON THEIR TROUSERS.
There were many other Excellent Creatures -- the Humboldt penguins in particular were very excited by the rain (so much porpoising), and the giant otters were indeed giant, and there was an enormous dragonfly, and the flamingos went from almost entirely asleep (including one baby that had not yet got the hang of the whole one-leg trick) to YELLING INCESSANTLY after being buzzed by the scarlet ibis.
Extremely good afternoon out, 13/10, would recommend.
today we went to the ZOO
Apr. 4th, 2025 11:57 pmWe could not go to site and get me a weekend sorting out lost property in advance of the event, because potential site weekend got cancelled on account of All The Vehicles Broke so Nothing Is Where It Needs To Be, but we'd made arrangements to collect a new gazebo from near site on our way there. And they didn't want to keep it hanging around even longer before we picked the damn thing up.
... site is also near Whipsnade.
We got off to a fairly late start so only managed about 90 minutes in the zoo, but while there WE SAW: a tiger! Visayan warty piglets! the elephants, including a wee elephant, who was wearing a bracelet, because they're preparing to move two of the herd to a different zoo! to this end, some impressively reinforced ISO shipping containers! new-to-us: a magpie goose! a lesser rhea! AND THEN, having paused to change which mobility aids I was using: glimpsed a Grévy's zebra and also a bison. The Bears, outdoors, eating grass and fighting newspaper and generally looking extremely huggable! BOTH wolverines, one of which was extremely asleep on a log and the other of which was extremely bouncy! the penguins feat. A ROCKHOPPER EGG as well of course as the eider. the various free-roaming small mammals. the bongo in all its fantastic glacé icing-striped glory. the white rhinos, including A VERY SLEEPY BABY who, while we were watching, roused itself sufficient to resume suckling Complete With Sound Effects, and also some very sleepy adults, one of whom was Extremely Snoring. brief swing by the giraffe house just to poke our heads around the door; three adults and The Baby busy browsing. the OTTERS were actually out and visible!
Absolutely delightful bonus outing.
tiny adventure: Bonnington Square
Aug. 3rd, 2024 11:55 pmFor reasons, I spent a fair chunk of this afternoon in and around Bonnington Square, of which I'd previously been totally unaware but which has been entirely reasonably described as "Vauxhall's secret jungle neighbourhood".
Most of it I spent in the Pleasure Garden, but I was also directed a short way up the road to the Harleyford Road Community Garden -- featuring, among other delights, a lot of mosaics. Herewith one such example:
Today has been for Errands, including the errand of Getting A Full CO2 Canister, which requires driving most of the way to Whipsnade Zoo on a weekday.
So we did that (via returning a library book, and dropping things off at a charity shop, and buying vitamins, and stopping at the pharmacy, and visiting the tip where I maybe slightly acquired another cookbook) and then, obviously, visited The Zoo.
Highlights included:
- BABY ELEPHANT. POKING HER LITTLE NOSE OUT BETWEEN THE BARS TO PICK UP THE HAY THE BIG ELEPHANTS HAD DROPPED ON THE FLOOR.
- also she yelled. ... at the forklift.
- also we watched a Big Elephant roll a log ponderously across the enclosure so they could put their feets on it so as to reach the suspended haynet with their face
- baby langur!!!
- Saw The Pygmy Hippo
- saw the CHEETAHS who are not normally quite that obliging
- goldfinches
- PENGUINS WITH EGGS
- flamingoes doing a BIZARRE vibratey thing with their faces
- babirusa, which have ridiculous fancy tusks
- Visayan warty pigs gruntling away to themselves
... and then we came home and played more Filament. Good day.
vital functions
Dec. 31st, 2023 11:19 pmReading. ( Heston Blumenthal, Aliette de Bodard, Lois Oliver, Ursula Vernon )
Oh! And some academic writing by a sibling, for feedback.
Eating. Winterval fruit cake courtesy of my mother! Who also made us an extremely tasty butternut squash wellington, which I found far more convincing than the cauliflower variant I made lo these several years ago and will at least contemplate recreating. Many other good food also in that context.
Exploring. Had a lovely time poking around St Peter's Church in Coton -- excellent mediaeval architecture, smells properly of church, etc. ALAS we did not get to go up the TINY spiral staircase. Elsewise poking around in Coton and environs: found a medlar tree! And was very good and did not grab a carrier bag and help myself (largely because we wanted to get home sooner than would have been compatible with same...)
And! Glow Wild at Wakehurst Place! With GASTROPODS. It's an annual lantern trail, which has just concluded its tenth year; in contrast to previous visits we got a much stronger sense of narrative and theme this time. (Watch this space; I'm about to edit in a bunch of photos...)
( Read more... )
Growing. Faffed about with repotting various things I'm overwintering.
Observing and celebrating: happy Gregorian new year. <3
A month or several ago, while we were wandering around talking about something or other, A somewhat sheepishly said that he thought Animal Experiences were a Really Good Present Idea but he was concerned it was Cheating in some fashion to get me animal experiences for my birthdays because I'd Thought Of It First.
While I am absolutely a fan of saying "look at this ridiculous(ly expensive) fountain pen! wanna buy it for me?" and indeed "hey, want to buy us afternoon tea at Ruby Violet?" I am also very much on board with Surprise Animals, and that is why this time last week we were settling down to sleep in a tiny two-person cabin overlooking the Chilterns having thoroughly worn ourselves out with Keeper for a Day at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo.
[ID: one wall of a light-coloured wooden cabin, with a print on canvas of a photograph of two lions. to the lower left, pillows in white pillowcases are visible. to the right is a chest of drawers, on top of which there are a cube-shaped box of tissues and a clear glass vase containing red and yellow roses, and purple and red-and-yellow tulips.]
This had entailed getting up early enough to Be At Whipsnade for 0830, which was made all the more painful by making a surprise late-night wheelchair delivery the previous evening, but nevertheless we had an excellent time of it.
( Keeper for a Day, in detail )
... and then it was time to fetch the car from the main car park and head up to the lodges for the Zoo Sleepover.
( Lookout Lodge, in bullet points, to be expanded upon at a time that is not bedtime. )
- mucked out the interior portion of a greater one-horned rhino's enclosure
- posted cabbage into a greater one-horned rhino including Stroking Its Nose and Discovering Its Upper Lip (which is prehensile in a way that is very similar to elephants' much longer trunk)
- pretended to be a tree for giraffes, including a BABY GIRAFFE, whose snoot was SO SOFT (as also was the nose of at least one adult giraffe) -- I did not touch these intentionally but contact was made in passing (and I had never previously observed how deliberate and intentional giraffes are about how they eat!)
- TWO DIFFERENT SPECIES OF PENGUIN EGGS
- holding a Very Endangered Hornbill
- ... going to sleep in a zoo
Discovery of the day (courtesy of A)
May. 17th, 2023 11:53 pmToday's Extended Celebrations began with London Zoo, avec friends and their toddler, and were followed by Afternoon Tea At Ruby Violet.
We finished at Ruby Violet at about ten past five. Rather than head straight into rush hour traffic, we decided to go for a short walk along the canal, because we'd not get home any later and we'd enjoy ourselves a lot more...
... but we never made it as far as the canal, because A spotted that the building that used to contain the House of Illustration is now Queer Britain: alas their website is not great at imparting information, so have (oh the irony) a Graun article instead.
It's tiny. It's fantastic. A got me one of those ridiculous colour-changing umbrellas from the gift shop as a(nother) present, because he'd never seen them before, and I said "ooh, I've never been able to justify getting one of those!"
Right next door to Ruby Violet (i.e. a five-minute walk from King's Cross), free with donations encouraged, and totally worth it.
Highlights:
- seeing
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cesy and alexwlchan :) - A spotted a jay!
- A also spotted a jackdaw going into a tree; we both watched it come back out
- PARAKEETS. doing lots of excellent bouncing around and flaring their tails so we got to appreciate the yellow on the underside!
- GOSLINGS (Egyptian; seven)
- went up to the walkway in the Temperate House
- excellent trumpet-y flowers in the Temperate House, the name of which I singularly failed to obtain (Brugmansia sanguinea, I think)
- tiiiiiiny hot pink pine cones, on a tree near the Araucaria and the Wollemi, whose name I also failed to obtain
- Euphorbia candelabrum! ... although none of the images I can find online look like the (clearly-labelled) thing I took a photo of, so perhaps I will see if I can tweak the photograph to the point of usefulness rather than simply aide memoire
- spring springing all over the place: the carpets of crocuses and scilla, and the various trees covered in flowers, the green in the process of bursting forth. :)
[migraine] swings, roundabouts
Nov. 13th, 2021 10:46 pmOn the upside: A came with me; there was actual effective treatment (I think, though let's see how I feel when I wake up in the morning), and we got takeaway pizza on the way home.
Macabre humour: ( Read more... )
Further comment [cn someone having a Very Bad Day, no details]: ( Read more... )
vital functions
Nov. 7th, 2021 11:52 pmPlaying. In addition to my terrible phone games: three rounds of Scrabble! A, my mother and I won one each, which was very pleasing. Alas I did not actually manage to get in around of Splendor with A.
Cooking. So much food. Apple & mint jelly (~7 340g jars); Apfelmus (4 ~600g jars). A variant sea-spicy aubergine recipe, which I am going to be trying again tomorrow.
Eating. Courtesy of my mother: stroganoff; Apfelstrudel; a variety of other treats. Courtesy of vendors various: a vegetable pasty (Rowes); a cheese and vegetable pasty (Ann's Pasties); and a curried vegetable pasty (the National Trust, on our way back upcountry). Courtesy of the village chippy: chips! And nibbles of Adam's bits and pieces.
Exploring. We bimbled down to the beach, and also around Trelissick briefly, and also Kynance Cove. A drove the Tramper all the way down to Cornwall, and I was delighted to actually explore some with it.
(On the way back upcountry, we stopped at Castle Drogo, but didn't actually get beyond the café.)
Creating. A house sign! Chalk marker, one of the roof slates retrieved from a stack in the vegetable patch, and some poking around Art Deco fonts. We will see how it holds up to the elements before fixing it to the wall -- it might yet find itself in need of varnishing or similar...
Growing. I took the basils down to Cornwall, and then snapped one of the stems this morning while packing up. That's currently sat in a container of water to see if I can persuade it to root -- cuttings do theoretically work...
I was relieved when we got home to find that both the squash and the chilli had survived a week or so's drought.
Observing. MANY THINGS. Lots of plants, obviously, including a lot of sloes -- BUT in particular and especially, we were amazingly lucky at Kynance. We saw both a pair of choughs (screeching! doing aerobatics! displaying their wee pink feet beautifully on their way in and out of one of the less-human-accessible caves!) and A SEAL bobbing around with its nose, and occasionally the rest of its head, out of the water.
(A & my mother also saw they're-pretty-sure three choughs around the fields behind the house -- these I did not see but am Very Excited About.)
Elsewise: lots of wild snails (some white-and-black striped; some CONICAL), plus plenty of Antics inside our tank; lots of amazing sunsets; fluid dynamics in action at the beach. ETA: OH! AND! On the beach at home! A very pretty blue-and-purple-and- fragment of a Portuguese man-o-war!
I have had a really lovely week. <3
- WOOLLY PIGS
- we still didn't see any pygmy hippos, but these information boards used the verb "trundle" to describe their locomotion on land and I was delighted
- Grevy's zebra have white bellies!!! (see also wikipedia)
- baby flamingoes are grey they don't! know how! to be pink yet!
- the penguin enclosure is particularly amazing (astonishing views) AND the two types of penguin are DIFFERENTLY SHIT and it is GREAT. (Rockhoppers use their beaks to pull themselves up the banks, and also flop into the water face first. The Black-footed penguins instead sort of... wabble.)
- excellent free-range wallabies & Chinese water deer
- very much enjoyed the ridiculous pelicans also
(Adam who else was especially good?)
( An academic tangent... )
And then we went to the zoo. Because we enjoyed Shepreth Wildlife Park a lot, the week of the viva, and Regent's Park (and thus London Zoo) is actually right on the driving route between "home" and "work" for me, and: AMINALS. We got incredibly lucky with the weather -- it was pouring on the drive down (to the extent that A discovered that the windscreen wipers will automatically put themselves up to "high" given sufficient provocation, rather than needing to be manually wrangled into that setting), and it started raining a bit again shortly after we got in the car, but the entire time we were wandering around the zoo it... was dry! Sunny, in patches!
... we absolutely did not manage to see everything we wanted to and will therefore be going back, probably via converting today's ticket price into part of an annual membership, which we can do at any point for the next two weeks.
( Plague logistics. )
Highlights: African Hunting Dogs, which were excellently spotted and long of leg and elegant of trot; the pile of warthogs that were mostly asleep but occasionally snuffled their noses around in their pile of straw; the stripes on the okapi and also on the zebra, which I got to admire much more close-up than I recall having ever managed before; the PYGMY HIPPOS (not that we managed more than a glimpse, because they were very much Wallowing in their Warm Indoor Pool); red-footed tortoises; the bokiboky, a Madagascan mongoose that looks much more like a pointy squirrel than I'd realised mongeese did; the two! toed! sloth!; in the Nightlife section, the elephant shrew and a warren of naked mole rats in a variety of sizes and competencies (so small); the red river hogs with their RIDICULOUS ear tufts; colobus monkeys, with pampas-grass-tuft tails and SMOL BABS that get CARRIED AROUND; the scarlet ibis and also the northern bald ibis (there were also sacred ibis and flamingoes but I have my priorities, and they are the ones that are COLOURS); pretty much everything in the Tiny Giants exhibit, which we sped through at the end and definitely want to spend more time in; the various BRIGHT BLUE things; and the RARE TADPOLES in the SEX TANK with the VARIABLE EXTENTS OF FEET.
... as you can tell from the length of this shortlist of highlights, I had a great time. And then! Then we headed back home, via Ruby Violet (Tuffnell Park), where I tried new-to-me Malted Milk and had an actual serving of old-familiar-friends strawberry sorbet and hazelnut & hazelnut brittle ice cream, and when we made it home we flomped on the sofa and listened to the bats (though did not actually manage to see them) and admired the very dramatic and very beautiful crescent moon.
It has been lovely.
aminals of the day
Aug. 27th, 2021 11:59 pm
Two baby capybara plus Several Adults at Shepreth Wildlife Park. One of the babies sneezed in its sleep. A Truly Excellent Adventure.
The Kew orchid festival, in brief
Mar. 10th, 2020 10:43 pmAnd I am so glad I did, because it turns out that this year KEW BUILT ME AN ORCHID VOLCANO.
This does not do it justice but you'll just have to trust me, okay. It's on the waterlily pond in the Princess of Wales glasshouse, and words are insufficient to express my glee: it's a dark base, some sort of sculpting material over chicken wire, only they left some of it unsurfaced so that they could arrange plants through it. They've got a riot of red and pink and orange orchids and bromeliads and lilies and various fascinating foliage plants cascading down the sides evoking lava flows; they've got amazing structural white bits coming out top as an ash plume. The reason for this is that this year their focus is on Indonesian orchids and other flora and fauna and, well, Indonesia has a lot of volcanoes, but just -- they could have made this JUST FOR ME, PERSONALLY, and I had NO IDEA it was a thing and I am DELIGHTED BEYOND WORDS.
( +10 )
The run's been extended to the 15th and I very much enjoyed pootling around (being as I'm already a Friend of the gardens so it was functionally free); lovely and quiet on a Monday afternoon. I didn't buy a Vanilla planifolia from the gift shop because they're twenty-five quid and there's no way I'll be able to keep one functionally alive, but Adam's deeply curious about the concept so I might see if they're reduced next week -- when hopefully both the camellia (in bud, starting to blossom, not yet spectacular) and the wisteria (likewise in bud) might be slightly further advanced.
vital functions
Nov. 10th, 2019 10:34 pmLots of fic bits. <3
Exploring. A & I headed out, today, to the London Transport Museum, specifically to spend some time in the Hidden London exhibition, though en route we also took in the early history of the London transport network: I hadn't realised that the first passenger railway was horse-drawn! They correctly attributed to the steam engine to Trevithick! I'm deeply amused that, on a very little digging, it looks like they had the etymology for hackney carriage precisely backward (in that the LTM claim it's from the French haquenée). I was charmed by some of the your-next-station-is-... displays. A had not known about Leinster Gardens!
My other absolute favourite thing from the early-history-of-the-tube section was a letter to The Times, dated 13th January 164, captioned by LTM "Nothing changes." My only quibble is, having read rather more letters sent to The Times in modernity than is entirely good for me, that this particular specimen might feel itself a little out of place in any current edition because it's calling for nationalisation of the railways. Text reproduced below the cut because I was charmed and delighted. ( Read more... )
From Hidden London: the Exhibition itself, I learned a bunch more about the politics etc around sheltering in stations during air raids; about icons of St Barbara (patron of artillery & mines) still being stationed at the entrance to major TfL works; about distances on the tube network all being measured relative to Ongar, a station long-since abandoned. (I was also, of course, delighted by the Highgate bat tunnel.)
By this point we were a little tired and overwrought, having not really had a proper lunch, so we retreated to the café with the firm intention of going back to Do The Ground Floor Properly at some time when we're not both autistic-overwhelm, since our tickets are good for a year's entry to the premises.
Creating. I'm a bit sulky about not being able to reproduce the precise shade of unappealing purple on the petals on the thing I'm currently chiefly working on Lewisia rediviva, though I am also slowly adding bits and pieces to a partially-coloured-in-when-I-got-it Lilium auratum & am much more pleased with that.
I am getting some more of a sense of how pigments blend and layer, or don't, as the case may be, and have consequently started very cautiously applying small quantities of the Fancy Pencils to this colouring book also. I am Learning Things about the differences in how they handle.
Growing. ( Read more... )
Playing. ( Games. )
In another sense: Bizet Jeux d'Enfants, Dvorak violin concerto and Tchaikovsky Suite No. 1 for orchestra (Opus 43), all as second horn. I'm a little frustrated by how much of a gap there is between where I am now and where I was when I was doing best in terms of practice, but I was making some actually lovely noises and remembering to enjoy the performance some, which is always nice, and I am going to Make Another Attempt to keep practising out of term.
Adventure of the day
Oct. 5th, 2019 09:48 pmThe cases are organised primarily by time period and secondarily by location; the earlier cases talk a fair bit about function but relatively little about decorative techniques, which seems to reverse as you get closer to the present through history. We were a little sad about the lack of Functional And Process information, and A was pretty surprised that the Coca-Cola bottle didn't feature at all.
I have two new faves: one a stunning enamel-and-gilt drinking glass designed to resemble a crocus (which alas I did not take a good photograph of because I expected it to be in the online catalogue, but if it is I'm not turning it up), and Dafna Kaffeman's Tactual Stimulation.
Techniques I have now had explained to me: ice glass (plunge glass you're in the process of working into cold water, such that the surface freezes and cracks; heat back up and expand it by doing more glass-blowing, to create clear sections in between the crackled ones); filigree glass (see e.g. the V&A's A-Z); a bit more of a sense of How Cut Glass Is Made, though I want to follow that up; ruby glass is coloured with gold impurities.
I ended up with much more of a sense for the history & context for Chihuly's work (they do, of course, have another several Chihuly pieces), especially the Persians, and now am rather tempted to revisit Kew again before the exhibition ends with that background.
V pleasing would stay til chucking-out time again.
