Music and Missing Badgers

In one of the web Logs that I read, the lucky writer had been to the Proms. If I was not already green, I think I could turn that colour.

Reading this brought to mind an experience that I had. For me classical music was not part of my up-dragging, and I had to suffer a relentless diet of pop music. It was not really until I left home that I started to discover the music that I really liked.

Anyway, one day after having been working until midnight I returned home and on the radio the presenter played the Spring movement from Vivaldi's Four Seasons.. The following day I went to the specialist music Shop in Great Marlborough Street in Soho London, I have no idea if its still there, and bought the Album. This was pre CD days. I still have it, as I still have an original vinyl of Queen a Night at the Opera, my tastes are very eclectic.

What made the experience memorable though was that the snobbish nature of the first person that served me. He was rude and condescending, as I did not know much about the music, I was not sure of what I needed to ask for. He told me, not suggested, that I should buy a recording that had been played on original instruments and not one of the rubbish ones played on modern ones. His college overhearing his condescending tone intervened and as it turned out I did buy that recording, but they nearly lost the sale by looking down on me.

I had an equally offensive experience when working for an employer, one evening in the studio he put on a Leonard Cohen tape, when I said that I also liked his music he was completely rude and said that he had come to him through Jazz and not Rock. An odd thing to say, and I ended up calling him a pretentious male appendage. I left that job a few weeks latter, I just don't do forelock tugging.

But in both cases these people have made assumptions based upon stereotyping. The problem of stereotyping is something that I keep on witnessing. When ever there are problems in my local wood, it is always people who live in my village that get blamed or where the blame is assumed to lay. Today I was out looking for the Badgers, when I met someone I know from one of the other villages. This person live in one of the former mining cottages but the place has become gentrified through incomers, and there is a real snobbish attitude by some there.

When I said I was searching for the Badgers, before I could even explain why I was searching for them, the assumption was that someone from my village must have done something. I put this person straight, as while there have been problems in the wood, it comes from their village just as much as mine. Further, it is only because of the flooding that I am needing to look for where the Badgers have gone. Two of the main setts have been flooded out and I suspect that the badgers have moved to other satellite setts. Not from anything that humans have done.

While I know that there are a few rouges in my village, the assumption that the badgers have abandoned the setts due to human action, let alone human action by people from my village was completely out of order. While we are all shaped by our experiences, I cant get over the levels of prejudice I keep on encountering from people that I would have expected to have more sense.

The Badgers seem to have moved to the several satellite setts, and two of the main setts, that I watch, are flooded. I don't know if any Badgers have drowned, but I did find tracks around the smaller setts, so it looks likely that they just relocated. I will have to take a closer look later. The last thing I want to do at the moment is cause the badgers any stress by disturbing them by looking. Also until the risk of any further flooding is over, I will not be wandering around in the dark.

That puddle could be deeper than it looks. Also I don't think that all that mud does my complexion any good as I still look like a warthog. Well at least it is not tar or I would have another of my readers chasing after me to clean it off.