An interesting sunday

I saw a comment on a friend’s Facebook recently about a market at Morton Abbey Mills. So that is where The Man and I set off for today.

According to the blurb I discovered courtesy of Mr Google

Merton Abbey Mills

This craft village on the river Wandle is housed in the former Liberty silk- printing works, by the restored waterwheel which is in motion every weekend powering a pottery wheel in the Wheelhouse. There’s a bustling weekend market, pretty shops, a riverside pub and a wide range of food outlets including Caribbean, Thai, Italian, Brazilian and also a traditional carvery, threaded throughout the craft village.

The reality was somewhat different to what we thought. I guess when my friend went it was a much busier day. There were quite a few empty spaces where stall should have been perhaps. Don’t get me wrong, there were several stalls and a few crafty shops open, as well as a couple of eateries. I did buy a little handmade ornament decorated with a damselfly, appropriate as we saw lots of them in the reeds on the river bank.

After a stop for refreshments we did our usual thing and had a bit of a wander, letting our feet take us where they would.
And that was towards Mordon Hall Park. We have been here before, but it was a very pleasant place to visit.
The rose garden, though past its best showed off some very pretty blooms and I had the opportunity to take a few snaps of wildlife as you will see a bit later. 

There is a very nice café here and we had a very pleasant interlude watching the kids play in the garden while we had our lattes and coffee cake. We also had a look about the very well stocked garden and crafty shop there. And no I didn’t buy anything at all. 

As is our usual practice The Man and I looked for a different way to come back to Crystal Palace, and after a walk in the direction of the traffic noise we found a main road and not long after a bus stop where buses back left from.

While we were munching our coffee cake we heard a couple of sirens scream past and on the bus ride back we drove past  a couple of fire engines, lights a-blinking and kitted up crewmen all around. When the bus drew level we saw a ladder up to a first floor window. The Man said that he thought it must have been the heating that was causing a problem as he saw a fireman with the hose down the pipe into the boiler.
Initially there weren’t many other passengers on the top deck of the bus, and things were nice and quiet until that is a couple of loud mouthed young women got on. You’d have thought that they were talking to each other from a very long distance instead of just across the other side of the bus. Rough wasn’t the word for them, though if they had kept their mouths shut we would have thought they were pretty ordinary. They were in my mother words ,common as muck’

Wild life in the garden...

Yup that’s right here we are again at the end of another week.

The weeks are flying by and we are on the countdown to Christmas. I know it seems way too early to be even saying the word.

One of the things I like to do when we get in each evening is to watch the wildlife down in our backyard. Well I call it our backyard but it belongs to the building and is cared for by contractors so all we need do is admire it, which we do.

Last summer we were entertained by the antics of four foxes play and mock fight, often screaming as they chased each other astound the trees.

Then there are the crows, they are such ugly and menacing looking birds. We throw food scraps out onto the back lawn and we were initially surprised to see these large birds burying food scraps. I doubt that much would be left if the birds came looking for their booty. I think it would either rot away or the wily foxes might sniff it out.

This summer we have only seen two foxes and one of those looked like it had hurt one of its front paws as for a few weeks it wasn’t walking it. When we saw in earlier in the week it was walking on it but with a bit of a limp.

There is also small group of pigeons, hmmm Hey Mr Google what do you call a group of these cooing feathered critters? A flock, or flight, or even a kit.

Occasionally we see a few blackbirds, but no thrushes and certainly no sparrows.With the help of a CD of birdcalls I think I can hear robins and blue tits. 

Then yesterday after The Man threw out some leftovers we spotted a largish birth with bright blue patches. Aha I thought and scramble for the bird ID book and sure enough it was Jay. The very first one I’ve seen.

A bit of this and that...

The Man and I  spotted a baby grebe and its mum, or was it its dad paddling around Canary Wharf when we were on way to the station after work this evening. Whichever parent it was they were doing a great job of feeding the chick. As we watched it dived and returned with a silvery fish five times.

While I don’t condone tax avoidance, if a company reduces its tax bill by legally using the tax rules created by the self-same country then that country shouldn’t grumble. They should work to closing the loophole in the law. You might well ask why I make the comment. It’s because in this evenings paper is a little article deriding Starbucks for voluntarily offering to pay £20 million tot the tax man.

Another article in the paper is about primary schools not having enough classrooms or teachers for the expected influx of new entrant after the long summer holidays. So has London had a sudden population boom? I doubt it. I think it is the same head in the sand thinking that is struggling with the aging population.  Don’t the statistics gathered from censuses tell the powers that be something about population trends? And not just here in the UK, it is the same back in New Zealand

Now if you are thinking of coming shopping in London’s fashionable Oxford Street you had better bring your gas masks. Apparently this street has some of the highest levels of dangerous diesel fumes in London. Oxford Street was the 8^th worst for, 12^th worst for nitrogen dioxide, more than twice the legal limit. Other ‘black spots’ in London include Piccadilly, Strand and Victoria Streets.

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is one of a group of gases called nitrogen oxides. Road transport is estimated to be responsible for about 50% of total emissions of nitrogen oxides, which means that nitrogen dioxide levels are highest close to busy roads and in large urban areas. Gas boilers in buildings are also a source of nitrogen oxides.

There is good evidence that nitrogen is harmful to health. The most common outcomes are respiratory symptoms such as shortness of breath and cough. Nitrogen dioxide inflames the lining of the lung and reduces immunity to lung infections such as bronchitis. Studies also suggest that the health effects are more pronounced in people with asthma compared to healthly individuals.

In recent years the average level of nitrogen dioxide within London has not fallen as quickly as predicted. This largely appears to be the result of diesel cars creating more nitrogen dioxide than was anticipated.

Nitrogen dioxide also reacts with hydrocarbons in the presence of sunlight to create ozone, and contributes to the formation of particles..

saturday thoughts....

The Man and I had an interesting day out today.

No, not doing touristy things.

So where did we go?

One of The Man’s work colleagues had recommended a particular campervan and caravan yard that has a very good selection of the particular brand we are interested in. It’s called Bailey. No not the yard the brand.

The Man had some very specific questions about specs that only a face to face chat would answer.

And was he satisfied with the answers? Yes he was. So we are even more settled on the type we will ultimately wind up with.

Later this evening we watched a very sobering documentary about the South Pacific. It made me never ever want to buy another can of tuna fish again, regardless of how sustainably it has been caught. Not that I buy a lot anyway, but I won’t buy anymore.

So why.

Well after having just about fished out the Atlantic Ocean those greedy take everything commercial boats are now gobbling up the fish stocks in the Pacific. The most sobering footage was shot within a purse-seine net that took an entire school of thousands of skipjack tuna. As the net was tightened around the ever panicking fish many were caught in the mesh of the net causing them to bleed. This created a huge oily bloody slick that you would have though would have attracted hungry sharks.

And did it?

No it did not.

Why…?

Because, according to the programme, shark numbers have been dramatically reduced in numbers potentially by as much as 90%!

The Man and I were shocked speechless.

And it seems that the Asian hunger for sharkfin soup is the culprit. Many unscrupulous fishing boats catch the sharks, cut off the fins and throw the now helpless and still very much alive fish back to drown.

So how tasty is the sharkfin in the soup. Apparently all the aforesaid fin provides to the soup is gelatinous tasteless texture the flavour comes from the other ingredients.  

I think one of the most horrifying things about the programme was that it had been made in 2009, so the situation can only have become worse since then.