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Yesterday, I had the need to go into Consett to do some shopping and I was just leaving the village when I spotted one of the Red Kites. As there are roadworks being undertaken, the bus had to halt at the right spot so that I was able to observe the Kite for three minutes as it circled in its search for food. In the low winter sun the Red Kite was beautifully illuminated. A delight that made the job of doing the shopping much more pleasant.
Then today while writing the previous post, I saw a pair of Red Kites on the horizon. I stopped to drink in the spectacle and my delight was increased as further Kites appeared. A small group of five Red Kites were out foraging together. I was able to watch for more than two minutes as they came closer and flew almost overhead in their search for food.
While there are many problems associated with living here, it is the wildlife and the natural history that really makes it worthwhile.
As I started writing this posting I don't know when I will be able to post it. As this morning, Sunday, I was taking my better half to the bus stop so she could catch the bus home. On the route walking to the Bus stop we pass the Telecoms switching box that handles most if not all the telecoms traffic for the village. It had been vandalised and was covered with a protective canvas cover and police tape. As we had approached the location, a telecoms van was just pulling away and obviously all work that could be done to restore service had been carried out, but it still took another couple of hours before I had telephone or Internet.
As an act of mindless vandalism this really does stand out as being particularly stupid, as it disabled the telephone system for a number of people. In my village there are a number of elderly residents who need the telephone for their safety and security. It is not infrequent that I see an ambulance speeding to the locations where the elderly folks live. Therefore this mindless action could have seriously endangered life.
While there are some things that happen in life that I can get into the mind of the people that do stupid things, there are other times when I just really can not. This is one of the latter. Why anyone would want to destroy such a vital part of the infrastructure is just beyond my comprehension. There has to be a serious cancer at the heart of our society for this to happen. At least from the enquires I have made so far, no one was harmed by this, but who knows what hidden harm has happened as a result of this mindless act.
Had it not been for the wonderful, informed and insightful response to my posting on the Tawny Owls and my wish to follow up on that, I would have been posting on this issue yesterday. As the first news story that I found on the BBC news website was this issue of a BBC News Photographer who was stopped from taking pictures.
As I recounted, when watching the Owls I had probably been seen by the police, and they had started to look for me. As they saw the Fox and possibly assumed that was the movement they saw, I did not suffer the interference that can happen. While I have recounted a couple of the instances where I have been stopped by the police while out watching wildlife, I get stopped on a depressingly regular basis.
While I realise that anyone roaming about in unusual places and at strange times could be suspicious and needs to be checked, it has reached the stage were I feel as though I am living in a police state akin to Eastern Europe of twenty years ago. In fact I was considering posting on this very issue for the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
There is crime and criminal behaviour that the police need to prevent and detect crime, but police are abusing their powers under the anti terrorist act. If they have no other reasonable excuse they will cite section 44 and stop you anyway. Often the rational for the police stopping me is simply that I am on foot and carrying photographic equipment. It seems that if I had been in a car I would not have been harassed
However, the issue goes far wider than my inconveniences. While I realise that the terrorist threat is real, there is no sense in stopping and harrying people who are going about their lawful business. The most disturbing aspect of the way the government have reacted to the terrorist threat is the way the very freedoms the terrorists want to deprive us of, the government has taken away.
There is a culture that has developed in the police that treats the general public as, if not the enemy, something to be controlled. In interviews with senior police and politicians about policing issues, the answers that the authorities give create images in my minds eye of the footage we see of places like North Korea.
There is a lack of logic behind the police actions in stopping people from taking photographs. As in the press reports of terrorist trials, often one of the supporting aspects of the evidence is the film and photographs of the intended target. Therefore by stopping people from taking pictures the police will reduce the evidence base that can be used to convict these thugs.
Fortunately we don't yet live in a police state. No matter how much the police may think this would solve crime, it did not stop crime in Eastern Europe where there were police states. Also the more the police alienate themselves with the public, the less support and help the police will get. Just yesterday something happened that illustrates this.
My better half and I had been able to spend the day together. As part of this we went into Consett to do a little shopping. I really know how to treat a girl! Just as we were getting ready to get the bus back, I wanted to have a smoke. I was standing around outside the covered shopping market while my better half went back into a shop we had previously been in. While I was waiting I witnessed a child of about 11 or 12 dealing drugs. With the first transaction I was not totally sure that I had really seen what I knew I had seen. But the second one was blatant and clear.
I did consider calling the police but as I was concerned for my safety and that of my GF, I did not. Could I or should I have called the police latter? I don't know, I did not call or inform the police. I can justify this in my own mind as even if I had informed the police latter it was likely that I would have been identified by the dealers as the likely informant.
As much as I detest drugs and the harm they cause, I feel so dissatisfied with the police that I don't want to have contact with them if I can avoid it. It is the way the police are abusing their powers that is creating this situation, and in the past I would have considered it my civic duty to help prevent crime.
A link to the BBC Story
This is where the Inter-Web thing is so amazing, following my posting on the owls I have a real expert responding. Thanks Romillyh.
The behaviour that I witnessed is unusual, not least because Tawny Owls do have a strong pair bond and the normally mate for life and more importantly hunt together as a pair. While out watching Badgers I have seen this in action where if one bird fails to make contact with the hunted prey, the second bird has made the kill. The first time I saw this I thought it was competition for prey, so it shows how careful an observer has to be basing interpretation upon one or a few observations.
This is why I recounted my observations as well as adding my speculations. As the new juvenile is not banded or marked, I can not know for sure that the “new” female is not one of the offspring of the established pair. However, as normally the parent birds do drive off all their brood, it is a reasonable assumption to make.
That said I also voiced some of my speculations as to what is happening. Is the new bird an insurance for a hard winter? The honest answer is I do not know, yet when I was much younger and talking to senior birders in the past this was an observed occurrence. It appeared to decrease as winters in Britain became less severe. Therefore while it may not have been recorded scientifically, older amateur observers recounted this happening. While this may be behaviour that was lost in the populations in the South East of England, it could be that in areas like the North East where winters are harder, this aspect of behaviour is retained. I fully realise that at the moment I am speculating. However based upon anecdotes and others observations and some educated guess work, it could be that I have seen something rare and seen only in populations where conditions create this behaviour.
Also while I have not heard reports of a male mating with more than one female in Tawny Owls, I have heard of Barn Owls. Also there are many species of birds that do this. It would only be likely if there is sufficient resources to keep two families. Again I am speculating and trying to ask questions that could explain the behaviour, but it could be that local conditions have ensured plentiful prey. This in turn may make it possible for the male to support two females.
It is one of the delights of observing wildlife that there is always something new to learn. In time further observations may help answer some of the questions I have. Other peoples observations also help in gaining a clear picture too. It may be that time will show that my speculations are incorrect, but at the very least the observations have sparked my curiosity and I may be able to answer some or all of my questions in time. Equally I may never get to know or understand what was happening. Either way these Owls provided a wonderful night of wildlife watching.
While talking to my neighbour on Saturday, I heard that a Tawny Owl was perched on the roof line a few days before. A couple of days earlier I too had briefly seen a Tawny Owl sitting perched on the crosspiece of my back gate. I had rushed to grab the camera but it was gone when I got back. It appeared to have been hunting a Robin that was hiding in the yard.
Well the Wood Mouse being the adventuresome sort, you can read that as being mad, set out on Saturday night to track where the Tawny Owl was ranging. In the Autumn it is often easier to find them as the young raised this year will be looking for their own territories and while this brings them into conflict with existing territory holders and resident pairs, by tracking the calls it is possible to discover where the residents are as well as track the juveniles as they look for suitable hunting grounds.
So that is what I did, or at least set out to do. It was just that Owls don't like flying in rain and when it really stared raining all three of the owls were caught out away from their perches and roosts. Two were females with one being a juvenile and the male who is the established territory holder. In the natural world it is normally the territory holder that retains a territory. Therefore had the juvenile been a male it would have been driven off. This juvenile female was obviously not one of their offspring as the male appeared to be encouraging her to stay. At one point even bringing her a mouse or a vole. All this in sight of the established female. This feeding of the juvenile female prompted some intense calling by the established female. Was this jealousy? Was the male likely to have been in the owls equivalent of the dog house? To be honest I could not tell. Its far to easy to project human emotions onto this but the behaviour was extraordinary.
The rain may have played its part in calming the situation, as soon after the male had fed the new female and there had been the intense fifteen minutes of calling by the old female, the heavens opened and all the owls hunkered down to escape the torrent. All the while, this Wood Mouse acted like a sponge.
Eventually in a gap in the rain the new female flew off and while I think I know where she went to roost I could not be sure. Not least because I stayed with the established pair and tracked them back to their roost.
If in the spring the other female is still around will the male be trying to mate with her too, only time will tell. It may be that the male goes off with the new female. It may be that the male is ensuring that he has the choice of two mates should one not make it through the winter. A rather damp night of observations has raised more questions than provided answers. I had set out to discover the roost site and I did find it. But this little interaction has provided a rather unique glimpse into the behaviour of owls.
While watching the owls was the main reason I was out, three times I a fox, I think it was a dog fox, out patrolling and hunting. Because of a knick in his left ear I was sure it was the same one. What ever he had found, he was returning to take more of this food. Each time he would eat some and then carry off some of what ever it was he had scavenged or killed. At the distance and in the dark I could not see what it was, but while I think it was scavenged, each time he dove onto the food as though he was hunting. This is rather typical fox behaviour as they do this as if they are trying to say I am a proper hunter! It was during the foxes last visit that I noticed a police car stop and the officer used a torch to scan the area. I had seen it go past twice and I did wonder if the officer(s) had seen me from the road. I was about one hundred and fifty or so yards from it, and while I was keeping concealed from the wildlife, I had no reason to keep out of the view of people. Well the beam of the torch found the fox and he scampered, but I did wonder if the police officer had seen me and had thought I was up to no good. It would not be the first time that has happened, nor I doubt will it be the last, but the intense beam of the torch did disturb the fox and the owls too. The dominant pair moved from their sheltering spots and I did think I was going to loose contact with them. But fortunately the rain was so intense they returned as soon as the police car moved off.
While it did not happen this time, people with flash lights are a real bane and bug bare of mine. My night vision is quite good and better than most folks, but this can be ruined by the careless use of a torch. Police officers are the worst offenders for this. Instead of directing the beam towards the ground, they will always direct the beam into the face. This the police are trained to do as it destroys the night vision and it will take several hours to regain. While I can understand that it can be a useful tool when dealing with a suspect, the intentional incapacitating of a persons night vision is extremely annoying.
I was rather tired and wet when I got back home, but a warm cat and a hot cup of tea works wonders. It was getting light before I got to bed and I was looking forward to a good few hours sleep. However, at about ten I heard the phone ring, I ignored it. Big mistake as it was my better half and the mobile rang. She must have thought that I was being very lazy still being in bed. I explained that I had been up and out all night. Well I had warned her that I kept odd hours sometimes and it has caused some minor tensions as there are times when I really can not be disturbed. But as we just laugh it off latter, it never really becomes a problem. I need to educate her to avoid calling the cell unless it is essential. While I could turn it off at times, there are occasions when I need it for emergencies.
It is a shame that on three occasions that I have had to call the fire brigade out to fires that people have started in the woods, unlawfully I should point out. Also I have several times needed to call the police to deal with poaching or some other act of stupidity.
In the main though it is nights like this that make all those minor hassles become insignificant and the delights of seeing and discovering new and unusual behaviour of the wildlife that secretly share our space.
Last week when out on a supermarket run, something happened that made me feel that people really do care once they have the information. My better half really loves fish, as do I. However because of issues of sustainability I am really careful about what I buy. Not just the species but how its caught and often the company involved.
Therefore when I was looking at the frozen fish in the supermarket, I was looking carefully at what was there. One of my fellow villagers made a comment along the lines of you wont find any bargains there. Then she said that a particular product from Youngs, the biggest fish processor in Britain, was reasonable. I explained that I would not buy from them as a few years ago they closed a factory in Scotland and started shipping the Scampi (also known as Dublin Bay Prawns or Langenstein's) to Thailand to be peeled then shipped back to the UK. Well her reaction was to put back what she was going to buy and she chose another brand.
A small victory, but once armed with information people will make ethical and environmental choices. While one person will not effect much change, yesterday (Saturday) I learnt that several of the senior shoppers have stopped buying the fish from this brand as well. How many are doing this I don't know, nor how long this will happen I can not tell either, but it shows that people don't like the way that multi national companies operate.
For older folks it must be difficult to realise that brands that you previously trusted are not the ethical or trusted company you thought them to be. Also it is actually quite hard work to source foods that are sustainably sourced or from ethical companies. However, part of this problem of misleading food labels may change. In European Parliament MEPs and the commission will be looking at the problem in the coming week.
While the food labelling rules stem from an European agreement and rules, in Britain, Europe (the EU) is frequently blamed for rules that appear silly or stupid. But the reality is that Britain was at the forefront of getting these rules implemented in the way that the food industry wanted.
The purpose of these rules was supposed to make it simpler, easier and for food producers to use ingredients from across the single market of the European Union without having have a complex country of origin label on the packet. However, food processors and the major retailers realised that they could abuse these rules and mislead the public.
The problem is most prevalent with meat sold in packages in the supermarkets, where meat reared in another country can be imported into Britain and just cutting the carcase into joints in a British processing plant entitles it to be labelled as British. Therefore people think they are buying British but in fact the meat comes from anywhere in the EU.
As frequently Britain has adopted higher welfare standards for the care of livestock, these (deliberately) misleadingly labelled packs fool the public into buying meat (or other products) that is not of the welfare standard or sustainability that the consumer thinks it is. Even I who is aware of the scams the supermarkets are playing, have been fooled on occasion.
In the supermarkets defence, they say that most of their customers buy based upon price and I can understand that and consumers do and should have that choice. However, if they (the supermarkets) were to label the products with the actual country of origin rather than the deliberately hiding this, would they sell as much?
That question is quite important as the supermarkets make a greater margin on meat and other products that are imported, especially where they can obfuscate the real country of origin.
As my regular reader will know, I have been talking about this issue for several years now, and while looking into the matter I had an informal chat with a trading standards officer. I was told that in many examples of misleading labels from all the major supermarkets could well be more than misleading but illegal. The problem is that even if the local authorities were to prosecute, the cost is prohibitive (about a quarter a million pounds) and the fines are so small that it would do little or nothing to stop the supermarkets from repeating the offence.
People do want to support British farming, and often think they are in the choices they make. The supermarkets know this and it is why they do this. Yet this issue is not just a question of allowing people to make ethical choices, deliberately misleading labels are a public health issue.
If there was a problem with meat becoming contaminated in some part of Europe so that it was unsafe to eat, unless people can look at the label and check the country of origin clearly, people could end up consuming that meat unknowingly. I could see this happening and it seriously damaging the business reputation of one or more of the supermarkets.
This is what I don't understand about the shareholders, who are the owners, of the major retailers. As unethical practices like this may increase profits in the short term, whenever these practices emerge they damage the profitability of the business. Add to this potential for a food scare as a result of this particular immorality and the investors, the shareholders, the owners could loose their money.
While it will take a while for the labelling rule to be changed to ensure that this deception ends, the majority of the supermarkets customers want the major retailers to start being honest with them. So why not give the customers what they want as you say you do?
It was revealed this week that during the banking crisis when the banks were collapsing that the Bank of England, the British central bank, secretly loaned two of the worse banks sixty two billion pounds. This was all done in secret and this is what most disturbs me.
At the time, I was reluctantly agreeing and accepting that this had to be done not to save the banks but to save the economy. However, as more details and facts have become disclosed the less in favour of the actions that governments and the central banks took.
As Lloyd's bank took over one of these banks, in what was effectively a shotgun wedding with the government holding the shotgun, if I had been a shareholder (owner) of Lloyd's then I would be very peeved to discover this as HBOS (Halifax Bank of Scotland) was in such a poor state and the shareholders were being asked to buy a “Pig and a Poke”
Taking just an economic prospective, asking shareholders to buy an asset or a business when there has not been full disclosure of the poor financial state of that business is unethical to say the least and may well be unlawful. However, it was the rational behind the governments actions that really needs to be questioned.
In Britain before the collapse of the banking system house prices were on steep upward trajectory. I know that in the US house prices had already started to fall, as was happening in other parts of the world, but here property prices were still rising, even though it was clear that they were already overvalued. Further as the government here in Britain were reaping substantial tax revenues from property sales. As were the estate agents garnering greater and greater fees from sales, plus this over heated housing market was supporting a major part of the retail sector as well as all the builders that were re-refurbishing these homes. Finally it was in the banks interest to keep the illusion that property prices would never fall. As simply all the loans provided would have looked stupid if house prices fell.
It was this rather cosy system that governments were trying to save. The illusion that the economy was doing well was only made possible by everyone pretending that property prices were reasonable and justified. Even before the recession started, I was pointing out that house prices were extremely overvalued, so I am not jumping on some band wagon here. But while high property values may appear to be a good thing, especially for those that already own their home, but any form of inflation damages the economy.
However, the real problem was and is that the British government via the central bank made massive loans to support two failing and bankrupt banks with the aim of maintaining the over inflated property market. For more than ten years government ministers have made statements that there is a shortage of housing stock. In most cases this has been untrue as there are more than one million empty homes in Britain. So we now have the situation where via government loans to the banks and equity stakes in some banks, the state is now extremely over borrowed.
Had the banks and the government been honest about the true state of the banks and the banking system the global economy would by now have been in a much better condition. This matters as there needs to be a massive investment into de-carbonising the global economy. But the worlds governments have bailed out the very institutions and businesses that created the banking crisis and the recession and whose unethical business practices are destroying the bio-dome of plant earth.
The future needed to change and we have allowed governments to maintain the status quo of allowing and encouraging greed, when we could have used the situation to genuinely save the world and not just save the bankers.
I just wonder what else the government has done in our name without telling us?
There are times when people do stupid things and when the details emerge, you can account for this stupidity because of low intellect. However when a government does it, you are left wondering about the sanity of the people who control our lives. Fortunately we live in a democracy and while democracy has its failings, it means that we have a free press and the ability to call our leaders idiots when they do dumb things.
This case of silliness did not even last a day but if it had been in some act of fiction it would have been rightly seen as beyond belief. But it actually happened. What I can hear you shouting. Well the a report in the medical journal “The Lancet” suggested that if we culled a third of all ruminants in Britain that we would create two main benefits. First that it would reduce methane emissions and slow down Climate Change, and that with less meat available, people would have healthier diets, reducing heart disease and obesity.
Now there are reasons why this is a stupid plan, not least because it is extremely over simplistic. First is the issue of methane emissions. While it is true that methane is a more potent green house gas than Carbon Dioxide, twenty four times to be exact, it also only has an atmospheric life of twenty one years. That means that it only lasts in the atmosphere for twenty one years before it vents into space. That is why it is used by scientists looking for extraterrestrial life as it is short lived and only exists where there is life. Further while it is true that there are now more domesticated livestock, in the past there were vast herd's of wild Bison and other ruminants across the globe and if methane emissions from animals was having an impact upon our climate, it would have been much hotter two centuries ago. Where methane effecting climate is a problem is were it is being released from permafrost as a result of Carbon Dioxide induced warming in the Arctic Tundra .
Equally while eating less animal protein could well have health benefits, and it may well help towards reducing the carbon footprint of the nation if consumption were to fall by a third, this would only be the case if we did not have a free market and international trade. If Britain killed off one in every three of our cattle and sheep all it would do is increase imports of meat from Europe and the rest of the world.
Now how The Lancet were rather silly in not looking at the implications of their report, and I am amazed that it should ever have been published. Yet it really was, but what really amazed and shocked me was that government departments started endorsing the report. I say started as it quickly emerged that no one had spoken to DEFRA The Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, who incidentally are nominally in charge of cows. That would be the government department responsible for carrying out such a cull, so at the very least should have been consulted before endorsing such a daft report.
When the flaws were pointed out, the government rapidly retreated from endorsing and adopting this as a policy.
Here is the report as it appeared on the BBC.
However, there is a much more serious aspect to this. While frequently adopting good environmental practices will create other benefits, these policies need to be well thought through. But this was never a good environmental model. As a medical journal its focus was on the health benefits of eating less meat. However the knock one benefits would only be there if this was voluntary. Trying to force this to happen would never work. Doctors should know that as people on diets would all loose weight if they only followed the dietary advice. But as all doctors know beating obesity is no simple task. Further, as a medical journal, “The Lancet” lacks the specialist knowledge regarding climate and pollution, thus they should have sought specialist advice regarding the effects of methane upon the climate. Had they done so, they would have realised that it is a myth that Farting and Burping cows are adding to climate change. I can understand politicos jumping upon that popular myth, but Doctors and medical specialists are supposed to be scientists and should have known or been able to find out that, current biological methane has little or no effect upon the climate, while ancient methane that the changing climate is releasing is.
The problem is simply that there is still an assumption that there can be a simple and simplistic solution to climate change. The reality is that as Carbon Dioxide has an atmospheric life of one hundred years and the effects of the increase in carbon dioxide in biosphere earth are the result of the CO2 released fifty years ago. Therefore, it is no longer a question of reducing carbon emissions but reversing them.
The simplistic view that we can continue to pollute, but maybe just a bit less, is a false one. As our whole economic model is based upon growth, expansion, using and consuming more, all the current efforts will fail. While having a laugh at silly ideas can make life interesting, what will happen to our world when someone does something really stupid like pumping sulphur into the atmosphere or seeding the oceans with iron? Both suggested as solutions to climate change.
The effects of a Changing Climate are here as demonstrated in Cumbria last week and it will not be until the global devastation of the seas rising will we finally accept that we have to change the whole nature of human society.
Saturday was an important day for my better half. It was the final night of her performing in the play. Also I would be getting to meet her mother for the first time, it was important for my GF that this went well. Therefore I had to be on my best behaviour. Well the meeting seemed to go well and it was interesting meeting my better half's American Mother.
I got to see where my better half was doing most of her work, as she initially was just doing stuff back stage. However, she then then asked to perform as the original cast member was unable to fulfil the role, so my GF was then acting in the play too. Well as I said in a previous posting regarding the opening night, I was very impressed with the play, the performances and the company. While an Amateur group, there was nothing amateur about their performances or dedication. Even if my GF had not been in the play, I would have been happy to have gone and seen it.
As my Better half was in it though, there is a greater enjoyment especially as the whole show went so well. One unexpected aspect was I was roped in to helping dismantling the set and clearing up after the final performance. It is not often that I have to pay to then do some work! But many hands really do make light work.
Following the play though, was an after show party. As I am still relatively new in my Gfs life and circle of friends, there was no one there that I knew. However as a friendly lot, they made me feel welcome, and I was happy to be able to genuinely compliment folks on their individual performances. It was rather pleasing to be around a real spirit of creativity. I can see how some people can become star struck. But as I used to specialise in doing theatrical photography, I never have been star struck. I can appreciate other peoples talents and respect them for that.
Following the party my better half and I had a long taxi ride home and we both had a wonderfully relaxing day just lazing about.
When I first met my better half, I told her that there are some activities that she enjoys that I would not be sharing with her. Things like going to clubs, even when I was younger I really did not enjoy visiting clubs. But I have no problem with her going out and enjoying herself and this she has done. Although I have been tempted to put up a notice on the door for her, as a joke, saying: What Time do you call this.
Equally there are activities that she is involved in that I am more than willing to share with her. Not least is her interest in theatre. In my distant past I specialised in doing theatrical photography so I do have an interest in culture and arts myself, but it seems that some men will pretend to be interested. Thus, even when I was with her on Tuesday and she needed to go to the theatre to check on some last minute adjustments my better half was concerned I was bored by this, but I was not.
I explain this as last night I went to the opening night performance of The Darling Buds of May that my GF was performing in. I had not told her that I was going, as I was not sure that I could make it to the opening night, also I would not be able to hang around, not least because of the transport connections I needed to make to get back home. But I made it to the theatre and I saw her performing for the first time. Well the first time I have seen her in performance.
While I had to dash off to catch the train back I loved the performance and while at the station she called me and was in tears as previous BFs would not have made the effort or supported her in this way. But as I have constantly said, I am interested in what she is doing and that I would always try and support her in her endeavours. And I think that she has talent too.
While her part was a relatively small part, it was important to the story and I was impressed by her acting. I was equally impressed by the acting of the other participants too and even if my better half had not been in the play I would have enjoyed going to see the play anyway.
I will be going again as I will be meeting her mother. So if I start typing in falsetto you will know why. Next time though I will have the time to stay behind and properly share in her triumph and celebrate with her.
While I knew that her Exs had not been that supportive of her and her dreams, I was a little taken aback by the tearful, all be it happy tears, when I spoke to my better half while at the station. I realise that it may not always be possible for folks to be their to offer support, but I would have thought that if you care about a person you should also take an interest in what they do too. But it seems that is not the way some men think. This was illustrated by the rather crass comments of two young men who were on the platform with me when I was talking to K. As you can imagine we do have our sugary bits in our chat. This was overheard by them and they were taking the mickey out of me for this. Personally I just ignored this. Then while on the train I could here them talking, and their attitude towards women seemed like something from the dark ages.
Had it just been them talking together, I would have just ignored them but they were also calling out and making comments to other women on the train. And it was clear that these were upsetting other passengers as well. On woman even moved her seat to get away from them. It reached a point where I could not tolerate the behaviour any more and I stood up and said firmly but politely “How would they feel if someone spoke to their Sister or Mother in the way they were?”
While the reaction from them was not unexpected, what was that five other men also stood up and in a less than polite way told them to shut up. They did remain quiet for the rest of the journey. When I got off the train a young woman who got off at the same station thanked me for making her feel safe. We chatted as we walked to the bus station, and as she asked what I was doing on the train, I told her that I had been to Hexham to see my better half in a play. Dam, why are all the good ones taken? She said.
Well while its nice to be called a good one, I am just happy that I have found a woman who likes me for who I am and I can support and nurture to be herself. Then to round off a great night when I got off the bus and was walking towards home I heard a female Tawny Owl call. While I could not see her, when she called again the male answered. What a perfect end yo the day, not only have I found love, but the owls have too.
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