Deer, Butterflies and Village Life.

Well the last week has been rather busy, tiring and stressful for me. By Friday last week I was tired but hearing that I had obtained my IR camera, a farmer friend asked if I was willing to help him discover the numbers of Deer that were on his land. Near part of his farm are a small number of houses, and they have been complaining about the plants in their gardens getting eaten. Initially they blamed the cattle, but as he had to stop dairy farming when Foot and Mouth happened, (that's when I first met him) that clearly was not the cause. Then the owner of the majority of these homes, they are owned as holiday lets, realised that it was deer that were getting into the gardens and nibbling the plants.

However the owner(s) were not willing to put up deer fencing as it would spoil the view and reduce the holiday letting income. Thus the owners of the cottages wanted to have the deer culled. This has been on going for a number of years. The farmer doesn't feel that there is a problem, and when I have looked I cant see what the problem is either, what damage there is is minimal. The reality is that the owner of the holiday lets gets more money by keeping the gardens pristine and he wants them to look picture perfect all the time.

So I was asked to see if I could count the number of deer that are going into the gardens from the farmers land. No matter what is said about farmers in general, there are more that care about the land the wildlife and landscape than don't. Anyway the farmer set up in a copses of trees a hide for me. It was raised of the round so that my scent was not detectable, but once there I was stuck there all night.

Now as anyone will know, it poured with rain last Friday night. And I was in danger of evolving gills. I got the information required and I saw fourteen deer, five Roe and nine fallow. As well as many other animals, including a fox that found shelter under the hide and did not leave until morning when I was released from my wet prison.

Now I must say with all this effort being put into warming the climate, for us to be having all this rain someone is not trying hard enough! I am sure that there is some one that can switch on another appliance or drive around aimlessly in a bigger car so we can get the Mediterranean climate we all seem to be seeking.

Flippancy over, exhausted I went to bed, satisfied that the Farmer now had independent proof that the Deer numbers were no where as high as the Holiday cottage owner was implying. Further, only two of the Deer had gone into the gardens and they were the gardens of the residents who are not worried or complaining about the deer anyway.

When I woke up though, I was feverish and not feeling well at all. So I thought that I would take a few days off, let my body heal its self. And this was going to plan, until on Sunday just as I was getting out of the bath, the phone goes. Now in my own house there are times when I don't bother with clothes, so I was not self concious of my state of undress. I had dried myself and as the call had come on the mobile I was expecting it to be a short one. I was wrong.

Since last year I have been helping a volunteer group put together a proposal for turn some derelict land into some allotments and a wildlife area. I was initially contacted by the group via my old 360 blog as they had gotten a grant to pay a consultant to put together the proposal and grant bids. But through delays they missed out on two important grants they were hoping for. Therefore they asked me to act as a mediator and advisor between them and the consultant.

What I first found looked to be a bit of a mess as the plans drawn up by the consultant were incoherent to say the least. And the vision the community had wanted appeared to have been ignored. So with a series of site visits I got the people involved to work out what they had in terms of species living there, and we worked out what work needed to be done as well as what species could be attracted if certain plants were introduced. The main emphasise being upon attracting butterflies and moths.

Well all this had been worked out and sent off to the consultant by email. The call on Sunday was from one of the women involved in the group. As there was a strike by Local Government Workers on Wednesday and Thursday this week, the meeting that had been planned for the Wednesday had been cancelled However that was not the problem, the consultant had gone off on holiday, and knowing that the Wednesday strike had cancelled the meeting had not submitted the detailed document to the council. The problem was the local authority had offered them a new meeting on Monday or Friday.

So this community group were desperately trying to get a plan, a document together. The problem was some people had information on one computer other information was on another computer, and as no one had the same software it was all becoming a mess.

The problem was exacerbated by the fact that there were holes in the information, little details that mattered. So I spent an hour looking things up in books and on my electronic library all while on the phone. When I had finished, I look up and there are three children trying to peek into my living room. I quickly shut the curtain, I have a voile up as well but I am no exhibitionist either.

The following day, still feeling grotty from getting wet and chilled, I get another call from the community group while they had gone to the local council meeting on the Monday, the council were not happy with the presentation document. So I was being asked if I could re type it and put it into the format that the council needs. Plus I only have three days to do it in.

Realising how important this all was, I agreed to do it. When I saw the document I realised why the council were not willing to accept it. Even though I have dyslexia myself (I don't suffer from it other people suffer from my dyslexia), I could spot many spelling mistakes and the grammar and punctuation made it difficult to read. Now I am now typist so I got all the content emailed to me from the different contributors. Another aspect had been the number of different fonts and sizes used. That way I could edit it and use DTP to make it all look presentable.

With many telephone calls and emails latter I was able to get it looking good, and clarify parts that seemed to contradict each other. I even had to go and get the ink to print the documents out, and yes they will be paying me for that.

Then on Friday they called and told me that the council had accepted their plan and the council will be giving them a lease for the land. So that was a brilliant result. I suggested that they write to complain about the consultant who has let them down so often, something that the officer from the council also said they should think about doing. However, with the land secured they can get cracking with some of the work, as I know they are doing this weekend, While they await their grant applications. But even if that grant money doesn't come through, there is still a lot they can get done. I was just happy that I was able to help guide them along the way.

However, there is a twist to this as when I went to get the inks for the printer, I was stopped in town by a fellow villager and relatively near neighbour. I say relatively near as she doesn't live that close, but had the cheek to complain about my curtains previously and was questioning my movement when she had obviously seen me wandering about at “odd hours” as she put it.

Well she had heard that I had been seen wandering about naked. I told her that if I was seen I was in my own home and remaining very polite I did tell her that it really was none of her business. She then told me that there was a tale going round the village that there was a convicted pervert living in the village. Now I too had heard this and about the time I first moved to the village. I have no way of knowing if its true, but while people need to careful about who their children associate with, there is a nasty atmosphere developing here. One of the aspects of this village that makes it endearing is that it always has had a fair smattering of eccentrics living here. But of late it seems that anyone who doesn't fit into some stereotyped box is seen with suspicion. This suspicion is being generated by a minority who seem to have their own agenda.

This village has suffered from drug problems, alcohol problems and crime for many years. While those problems are still here they are far fewer incidents that was happening even three years ago. Yet when I first moved here I was told that all the problems were from people who moved to the village, from outsiders, but I have lived here long enough to have seen for myself that more of the problems here are as a result of indigenous wrong doers than from outsiders.

I told this woman quite clearly that I was not the convicted pervert, as I have had to undergo “Criminal Records Office” checks I have documents to prove that, and what ever her problem was with me she needed to get over it.

When I told the woman who lives next door, she was shocked that this near neighbour had said anything. As previously the same woman had said I must be Gay as I don't have a girl friend, my ex wife could quickly disprove that one. Further, this woman is apparently telling every one that I am a peeping tom, why else do I always seem to have a camera. Also she is apparently anxious to know who all my visitors are.

Now I know that my lifestyle is not a conventional nine to five one, but I can not understand why this woman has so taken against me. I have done nothing nor said nothing to harm her. But some people seem to just want to be nasty. Well I just have to continue to ignore people like that as I have better things to do with my time.