The bench opposite our house is perfect for observing what the public get up to. The lot in the picture carefully removed some rubbish off the seat before they sat down (which you can see under the bench on the right side). When they left, they left their rubbish on the bench for the next people who came along.

But I don’t get this at all. The steps down to the street are just a few metres, you have to go down them to get away, and there is a large rubbish bin each side of the steps. So why not simply deposit their chip wrappers in the bin on the way past? Is it laziness, fecklessness, a complete lack of caring, or is it something else?

You decide!

My suspicion is that it’s the creeping “Somebody Else’s Problem” syndrome that is rampant across the UK now. People lack personal responsibility for their own actions. If you make a mess, you should clear it up yourself.

Cheers, Tom.

The picture above shows one. I apologise for the low quality of the picture, but I didn’t have long and it was through the rainy kitchen window - by the time I got outside it had gone. The sun was high in the sky, but there was very thick cloud high up and none low down, with the result being a narrow band of sunshine near the horizon and lots of rain. Hence this rather peculiar low, flat rainbow.

I’ve never seen anything like this before. Have you? Click the picture to enlarge it.

Cheers, Tom.

There wasn’t much entertainment specifically for children at this weekend’s festival, so I hope the organizers took notes.

I mentioned the band Circus Of Invention yesterday. This is they, almost obscured by happy people dancing along:

Cheers, Tom.

This picture shows what it’s like to be at a little festival like the one over the weekend: a man in colourful trousers juggling with a hat, music, and people sitting around drinking and chatting in the sunshine.

The picture below shows Stephanie Finegan with a young fan. She was an excellent singer and guitarist, very alternative, a bit Tori Amos, a bit P J Harvey and with a great sense of humour. I guarantee that she will be famous one day. This is she:

http://www.myspace.com/stephaniefinegan

Alabama 3 are probably the biggest band who will ever come to Borth. And, of course, we missed most of their set. It was the fault of the Drum And Bass tent. Drumsound played a blistering session, and their MC really gets people involved.

All in all a good festival and if it’s on I’ll be going again next year. It made a small profit, so there’s no reason why it shouldn’t.

Cheers, Tom.

The first day of The Square Festival here in Borth went off very well. The security people were a little on the zealous side and there wasn’t too much entertainment provided specifically for children, but apart from that it was all you could want from a small festival. Great music, friendly people, fine atmosphere, good weather and lashings of good quality food and drink.

Three bands stood out on the first day. The Anomalies were brilliant (picture below). They had a very strong 80s hip hop sound, rather like early to middle period Beastie Boys, with a great deal of energy, and mixed rock sounds and some dance music in with it too. In addition to their own excellent material they also covered Daft Punk, The Prodigy and ended up with an amazing cover of Fatboy Slim’s Rockafeller Skank, complete with turntable effects duplicated live with instruments, voices and the best beat-boxer I’ve ever seen.

Fuod (pic below) are a local band from Aberystwyth and they are apparently well known in the area, although I’d never heard of them before. I thought at first that “fuod” was a Welsh word I didn’t know, but it turns out to stand for “F****d Up On Drugs”. They are a great festival band, with a huge mix of sounds all linked by very heavy bass. Music to jump up and down to.

Circus of Invention were really quite unusual. There was a very low-fi feel about them and I thought they had a bit of a punk ethic, which was confirmed by the keyboard player who I chatted to afterwards. The music was guitar, bass, drums and keyboards all played in a loose post-punk sort of way and completely without histrionics. Great fun.

Let’s hope day 2 works just as well.

Cheers, Tom.

I’ve been looking forward to this weekend, because there is a music festival on 10 minutes walk away from home:

http://www.thesquarefestival.com/The_Square_Festival/Home.html

How handy is THAT?! All the visitors have the beach to go to afterwards (or during) too.

All the fun of the festival and we can walk home whenever we want. There’s lots of good music on, with everything from the quietest folk to the loudest rock and Drum and Bass, oodles of Ska and Reggae and upcoming local bands too. 3 hours to go as I write this.

Lots of what look like festival goers can be seen wandering up and down the village. Last night, we heard a police siren - I wonder if that’s connected?

Cheers, Tom.

If an ant walks across sand on the beach, it wakes me up. So, our cat Molly isn’t allowed in the bedroom when it’s bed time because her purring and/or moving around would wake me up. We can’t even leave her in the main part of the house as she would scratch on the door to come in and that would wake me up as well. She is therefore banished to the porch where she has a comfortable box, food, a dirt-tray and a window to spy on all the birds outside from (cat television).

But even that doesn’t work because she scratches on the porch door to come in. So, we have to put a cardboard box in front of the porch door to prevent that. Last night she learned how to get past the box to scratch at the door anyway…at 5AM. The only thing to be done was to get up and throw her outside. And that may be what happens from now on: outside she goes at bedtime.

But one benefit of being up at 5AM was the glorious colours in the sky that I quickly snapped before going back to bed again. Here is the green-eyed little monster:

Cheers, Tom

All he needs is his ball and me to throw it for him.

This is what happens when he loses his ball, which was floating off downstream:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJVCgFwHdws

He could only search for so long before getting tired. I love the moment where he disappears for a few seconds and then pops up on the bank.

Cheers, Tom.

Borth where I live is a truly special location. It’s built on a natural shingle bank and has been within a designated nature reserve since 1969. There are three distinct sections to the Dyfi Reserve:

Ynyslas sand dunes which I wrote about 2 days ago
The Dyfi Estuary mudflats
Cors Fochno

Cors Fochno is the only UNESCO biosphere reserve in Wales. It is a lowland raised peat bog (or mire) and is home to rare species of mosses, plants and birds. There are even three types of carnivorous plants, so beware! There are otters, Welsh Mountain Ponies, Peregrine Falcons, Red Kites, Marsh Harriers, ducks, geese, and many other types of bird. It’s no surprise that there is an RSPB observation hut close by.

In 2004, an archaeological dig was carried out to uncover an ancient timber track that had been covered for at least 1000 years. The results of the dig are on display in Aberystwyth museum.

The three pictures on this blog are all on the edge of the bog rather than on the bog itself as a day pass is needed and I hadn’t remembered to get one. The picture at the top is taken about half a mile from the sea with my back to it looking across the bog towards the mountains. The middle picture is the river that bounds it (note the high banks) and the 3rd picture is some rather nice Canada Geese that Dan my dog was very interested in.

Cheers, Tom.

http://www.forestry.gov.uk/website/Recreation.nsf/LUWebDocsByKey/WalesCeredigionNoForestNantyrArianBwlchNantyrArianForestVisitorCentre

On Sunday, we went on a trip to Nant Yr Arian (picture above) near Aberystwyth to see the Red Kites being fed. It’s a Forestry Commission site and is dedicated to the welfare of birds, particularly the magnificent Red Kites that were in serious risk of disappearing completely a couple of decades ago. These stunning birds can have a wingspan of up to two metres and there are more of them here than anywhere else in the country. I was expecting a fair number of them, but nothing like this:

At 3PM on the dot, buckets of food were thrown and they swooped and circled while we watched and took pictures along with about 50 other people around the lake. It was a truly wonderful sight and I recommend it if you happen to be in the area. I was hoping to get a good picture of one of them, but whether my photography skills were too poor, it was the wrong light or my camera wasn’t up to the task I don’t know, but I failed miserably. This is what I was hoping for:

http://tinyplanetblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/red_kite800.jpg

And this is the sort of equipment that I’d probably have needed to get that picture:

Cheers, Tom.

Yesterday, Helen, my mum and I went to the sand dunes at Ynyslas and to see the Red Kites being fed. Both were great outings, but today I’m focussing on Ynyslas. It’s an absolutely gorgeous spot, situated at the point where the estuary of the river Dyfi meets Cardigan Bay. The dunes are full of fascinating wildlife including rare birds, mammals, lizards, butterflies and orchids. The views across the estuary, across the dunes and back along the coast to Borth are all breathtakingly beautiful.

I’m not really happy with any of these pictures so I intend to return soon to do better, but I hope these are sufficient to give the flavour of the place.

Cheers, Tom.

The sun that is, not the song by The Stranglers from 1982:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIHBUGvAUMo

There was a “humorous” version of this used in the telly series “The League of Gentlemen” using the lyric “Gordon Brown taxes the poor”.

And another Golden Brown thing is a sand-dune, and by no coincidence at all that’s exactly what we’re going to do now. A short drive up the coast to Ynys Las and a walk round the sand dunes and the RSPB site. Lovely :- )

Cheers, Tom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LNt5J0Cesc

Smokestack Lightning
The train I ride on
Shinin', just like gold
Why don't ya hear me cryin'?
Ah whoo hoo

Tell me, baby what's the, matter with you?
Why don't ya hear me cryin'?
Oh, tell me, baby Where did ya stay last night?
Why don't ya hear me cryin'?

Stop your train let her go for a ride
Why don't ya hear me cryin'?
Fare ya well, never see you no more
Why don't ya hear me cryin'?

Who been here baby since I been gone
A little, bitty boy?
Girl, be on

-----------------

"We used to sit out in the country and see the trains go by, watch the sparks come out of the smokestack. That was smokestack lightning" - Howlin’ Wolf

All of the blues is present in this one track. Absolute genius by a total master. This song was incredibly influential and has been covered by pretty much every musician with a blues bent since it came out in 1956. Led Zeppelin, Captain Beefheart, The Yardbirds, The Doors, Cream and Creedence Clearwater Revival in particular all owe a debt to this and his other huge hits Spoonful and Back Door Man.

This record only just failed to make it into my recent Desert Island Discs list - it was one of the very last ones to be eliminated.

Cheers, Tom.

Almost every time someone comes to visit us, down comes the rain. My mum is staying for 4 days, and the forecast is rain, rain, sunny spells with rain, and rain. How is this possible? The BBC should tie me into their forecasts: Anyone visiting Tom this weekend? Yes. OK, let’s scrap the sunny forecast and announce rain, it’s bound to be right.

But we don’t mind. We’ve just watched an utterly hilarious episode of “One Foot In The Grave” that came free with a newspaper and the world seems like a great place. Victor Meldrew is so utterly British it’s astonishing. He’s everything we detest and everything we admire all rolled into one.

The above picture is an old one from December as yesterday was the first day for a very long time when I took almost no pictures.

Cheers, Tom.

Have you ever seen anything like this creature before? Someone commented yesterday that the so-called “last frontier” is space, but parts of the sea are equally unknown.

The thing in the photograph is about 3cm across, and I found it floating in a tide pool. It appeared to be dead, so I scooped it out and put it on a breakwater to take pictures of it (but I did put it back in the pool when I’d finished).

The strangest thing is that it appears to have a sail on top as I hope you can see from the picture. If anyone knows what this is, please tell me as I’m most intrigued.

Cheers, Tom.

Is there really anything nicer than a big bag of chips by the seaside for your tea? Well probably yes, but the chips are most excellent!

We get many troupes of schoolchildren trooping past our house, because we are between the youth hostel and the train station.

The train station was what made Borth a tourist attraction in the first place, and it is very handy indeed. 10 minutes to Aberystwyth, or 3 hours direct to Birmingham. We’ve only used it a few times, but it’s nice knowing it’s there. My mum is coming to visit on Thursday, and she is using it.

Click the picture to enlarge it.

Cheers, Tom.

Weird looking things, aren’t they? The above two pictures are very close up, the whole thing is below. Would you have known the top 2 pics were of a jellyfish if you hadn’t been told? These get washed up by the thousand sometimes, but today I only saw this one. They only have a very mild sting, thankfully.

Click the pictures to enlarge them.

Cheers, Tom.

I was challenged by Frankofyle, so my list is below. These aren’t my 8 favourite pieces of music, they are 8 that I think I could listen to again and again…and again. I’ve deliberately gone for a broad range of genres, and a maximum of one piece per artiste. There is a wide spread of mood as well. I’ve numbered them, but they aren’t really in order.

This was difficult. No AC/DC or Led Zeppelin, no Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen, no Schubert or Beethoven, no Michael Nyman or Philip Glass, no Zappa or Beefheart, no Hawkwind or Motorhead, no Robert Johnson or Blind Lemon Jefferson, no Richard Strauss or Stravinsky, no Joni Mitchell or Neil Young, no Massive Attack or Portishead, no reggae, hip hop or jazz, no symphonies.

1. Bach suites for solo Cello, played by Rostropovich. If I have to narrow it down, I’ll go for suite 6:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuM8SAyy4E0

2. Iggy Pop - Lust for Life

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXVJusdhhLo&feature=related

3. Underworld - Juanita

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5fZawx5SoU

4. Cocteau Twins - Aikea Guinea

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEpeZm_f1Zk

5. Mississippi John Hurt - Walk That Lonesome Valley

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8KrEinPi7M&feature=related

6. Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsa_xWLOghg

7. Brian Eno and David Byrne - The Jezebel Spirit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkGAltttzFc

8. PIL - Albatross

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuu_P8_xQxU

Helen and I thought we’d have a wander to our local pub last night and luckily I remembered to take along my camera. The sky looked really quite peculiar, as I hope the above 2 pictures show. They were taken about 100 metres and about 5 minutes apart.

I think the front of a weather system must have been just passing over us.

I had some rather nice bitter called Butty Back.

Cheers, Tom.

Another new word is added to the language. A kitemare is what happens when you are kite surfing, or kiteboarding, and a nightmare scenario happens: you are smashed into rocks or the side of a boat, or lifted high into the air and smashed down onto the sand. One strong gust of wind and you’re flying, probably in a direction you’d rather not be flying in.

But for all the dangers it looks like great fun, and is a very fast-growing sport. The kiteboarders seem to be centred at Ynys Las a couple of miles north of here, but they frequently go whizzing past. I wonder if someone drives down the coast to collect them again?

I apologise for the low quality of the photograph. I had to use a digital zoom and that is death to quality photography.

Cheers, Tom.

When Dan sees another dog in the distance, he goes completely still and just stares at it, and I suspect he’s trying to decide if it really is a dog or not. Once he’s sure it is a dog, he tries to get closer. If he’s on the lead he pulls hard and if he isn’t, he starts trotting over. A sharp “Dan!” makes him come back or stop pulling…but only until we get close. Once the other dog gets within 30 metres or so, he just bolts for it, or if he’s on the lead he strains and quivers to get further forwards.

This is a distinct improvement. 7 months ago when we moved here, he would just bolt off into the wild blue yonder as soon as another dog appeared, no matter how far away it was. The right combination of carrot and stick has made the difference. The moment he runs off, he goes back on his lead, and if he behaves well he gets a treat from my pocket.

I will win in the end!

Cheers, Tom.

I’m originally from the fenlands of Lincolnshire, and one thing that shares with a sea view is flatness. No hills, few trees, nothing to get in the way of the horizon. That’s why the sky looks so massive at the seaside. It’s hard to photograph the sky because of it‘s dimensions, but when it’s as dramatic as the above sky, it does make things a little easier.

Here is Kate Bush’s rather peculiar video for “The Big Sky”. I haven’t a clue what it’s supposed to be about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C88yb-OVNmw

Cheers, Tom.

There is a certain serenity about the gentle curvature of nature. Towns and cities are full of straight lines and edges. There are curves, as in nature there are some straight lines, but fewer.

Cheers, Tom.