My other animals... part 3

A few weeks ago I was writing about one of my favourite books "My Family and Other Animlas" - so here is the second of a series of posts about my "other animals".

Pigeons are a huge part of our garden community. Half a dozen years ago we had a couple of feral pigeons (nicknamed by MiL as Anthony and Cleopatra) they were easy to spot with very distinctive plumage. Over time we have now collected a huge community.

We have a couple (they are a couple as well) of coloured doves. We also have a few extremely large wood pigeons (they are really rather large birds) and an absolute gang of pigeons. Some of these are kept by a neighbour at the bottom of our garden, some of these are feral, some of these are rock pigeons and some even now are the brown feral pigeons often seen over in the City of London.

This is part of the pigeon tribe (mostly the rock pigeons) waiting for feeding time sitting on top our bedroom roof; you can hear them inside doing war dances (!)

This is one of the over-large wood pigeons. The are the absolute epitome of bird-brains! I have watched on walk up to the peanut feeder, wander around, work out that to reach he needs to climb on the brick, get a peanut, go back to the ground to eat the peanut... and then start the whole process of how to reach the peanut over again!



The collared doves are always hanging out as a couple, they look our for each other and raise their families together



My mother has a delightful family of collared doves, they bought up their brood in a rather precarious nest behind the satellite dish on the house next door, and used to leave the babies on the patio table whilst they were off hunting.




Babies resting in the sun and parent keeping an eye on the rest of the world.

#ChallengeMS - 2nd Monday

#ChallengeMS - 2nd Monday! One of my colleagues returned from his holidays and noticed the orange hair!

I took a stroll along Piccadilly at lunch to visit the RAF Bomber Command memorial. I've driven past it quite a lot but this was my first visit. My grandfather flew bombers for the RAF so it is a lovely spot to sit down and remember him.

On the way to work

Taking calls

At Bomber Command

We will remember them

Through adversity to the stars

Sunshine in Green Park (just before it rained again!)

If you can please make a donation to the MS Society to help fund their continuing research.

#ChallegeMS - how MS feels

First off, MS is a very individual experience. Everyone's symptoms are different, and, even when they are similar they effect everyone very differently.

Should you wish, here are some suggestions that you could try (a la "ice bucket challenge") to experience some common symptoms

1. Optic Neuritis

The visual disturbances that come with optic neuritis can range from mild and slightly irritating to sever and difficult to deal with. For me they are characterised by general desaturation (just play with the filters on your favourite photo editing programme) and a specific loss of the colour red (very noticeable in London with all the red buses!). There is also quite often a general visual disturbance which makes it hard to see detail - choose a fairly grey day and walk around with your sunglasses on.

2. Numb legs and feet

I don't have much feeling in my legs below the knee, certainly pretty much none in my feet - I have to look to check if I have socks and shoes on or not, and to make sure where they are in relation to the rest of my body - they have their own pathway in time and space (!).  What does it feel like? Put on a couple of pairs of really thick socks.

3. Numb hands

My fingers are all pretty numb too. It makes touch typing quite amusing if I happen to miss placing my fingers on the home keys! It makes it difficult to put in earrings, do up necklaces and buttons and generally anything that requires mine motor skills. How does it feel? Trying putting on a couple of pairs of snug-fitting rubber gloves.

4. Balance problems

I can walk a few steps without losing my balance; it is safest to use walking aids (or make sure that there is some furniture to grab on to). To replicate this you could either try spinning around really fast until you get dizzy (you know how much fun that was when you were a kid!). To make you more conscious of your balance and walking get a nice heavy book, balance it on your head, and go about your day.

5. Fatigue

Fatigue is one of the difficult symptoms people deal with. It is invisible and misunderstood. It goes deeper than just being tired and needing a nap (although that should never be turned down). Fatigue is crushing. It comes on suddenly. I'll be walking, or standing, or just going about my day when I hit the wall. Then I have to stop. Immediately. I have to sit down. Immediately. Fatigue can be managed, you can plan your activities to make sure you don't run out of spoons. At the end of the day though, when fatigue hits that is it. Difficult to replicate this one, but a little way towards it would be getting some of those strap on weights and attaching them around your ankles and wrists and strenuously going about your day.

There are many more symptoms than the handful above; the best way to understand them, really, is to talk to people who have MS and find out what their personal experiences are.

#ChallengeMS 2015

Why #ChallengeMS - My Story

If you go to their website the MS Society summarise quite neatly why #ChallengeMS is so important.

For me, it's personal; so I thought I'd share a bit of my story and experiences.

There is no cure for MS, there are disease modifying therapies available, but there is no cure. Let's face it, science isn't even sure what causes it. Is it genetic? Is it triggered by an innocuous disease? Is it lack of Vitamin D? Could it be a combination of some and/or all of these things?

I was diagnosed with MS back around 2001/2002. I'd had several bouts of Optic Neuritis (I still suffer this and have just finished a combative course of steroids). Optic Neuritis is an inflammation of the optic nerve. It sometimes causes pain behind the affected eye, but more obviously causes visual disturbances. 

The next problems were pins and needles in my hands and legs; always exacerbated by activity and not enough rest. The pins and needles were joined by general muscle weakness which made gripping things, picking things up and writing harder.

The sensory disturbances developed into balance difficulties. Sometimes I had vertigo, most often I just wobbled. My legs didn't have as much strength. I worked through using a walking stick to crutches and now my wheelie-walker.

All of this happened quite gradually over the last dozen years, which means if nothing else I can adapt to the way my body does (or doesn't) work.

#ChallengeMS 2014 

My other animals... part 2

A few weeks ago I was writing about one of my favourite books "My Family and Other Animlas" - so here is the second of a series of posts about my "other animals".

Recently voted as Britain's National Bird in an RSPB poll, we have a delightful family of robins living in our garden. From slim birds to little round birds their cheery red breasts are a common sight in the garden. They are quite happy to share the garden with all comers - especially the human gardeners!

As Husband or MiL (or even sometimes me) make our way around the garden trimming and weeding and even moving the lawn the little robins will follow on behind to see what is turned up from our activities hoping for scuttling buts, or maybe a worm, or just some handy nesting bits. They often sit on the edge of the compost bin to make sure "waste not, want not" nothing good gets by them!




This is one of the little round red-breasted tennis balls on wings! Making to most of the seed dropped by the pigeons (who are very messy eaters!),

911 Remembered

For one generation it was the assassination of JFK...

For another generation it was man landing on the moon...

There is a moment in the global consciousness that people of a certain age can recall with total clarity years, now decades after the event.

For people of my age it was 9th September 2001.

It was early on a Tuesday morning in the United States, it was lunch time in London.

It is hard to recollect the Information Age that was around has at the beginning of the 21st Century. The Internet was not as prevalent, not the instant resource for news, and certainly not as fast and all-seeing and all-knowing as it is now.

We were sitting at out desks, eating lunch and catching up with the morning. I worked in a Regency style building in Central London at the time, lots of small interconnecting rooms over three or four floors of office. I remember one of my colleagues coming back from the shops and saying that they'd heard some people in the street saying that a plane had hit a building in New York. The instant verification from websites and Twitter wasn't the next call then. A few more colleagues came back from the shops, with bits of further reports - the World Trade Centre, a 747 plane... 

Surely 747 couldn't be right? That would be a jumbo-jet, surely they meant a light aircraft?

News was slow to emerge. Websites crashed under traffic requests. We all got back to work, but the afternoon was constantly interrupted with updates and further new snippets. 

My brother worked over in Canary Wharf and the buildings there were evacuated; several high profile London buildings were.

The evening papers were almost impossible to get hold of that night, everyone needed to know what had happened; although it wasn't until the following day that the full horror became apparent.

#ChallengeMS - Bonus Wig Out (Friday)

I took a trip over to Rotherhithe this morning. The original plan was to seek Tsar Peter the Great in Deptford, by I didn't quite make it back there today.

Waiting for a bus

I took the tube from North Greenwich to Canada Water where I took my first trip on the London Overground to Rotherhithe. 

Rotherhithe is famous for the tunnel, constructed between 1904 and 1908 using tunnelling shield and cut-and-cover.

Passing on the way to the river I saw St Mary's Rotherhithe, and took a look inside (memories of visiting the churches last September!).

Christopher Jones, Captain of the Mayflower is buried (unknown location) in the Churchyard of St Mary's. Also buried in the churchyard is Prince Lee Boo, born on a Pacific Island.

St Mary's Rotherhithe

Down by the river is the delightful looking Mayflower pub; a trip to the Brunel Museum and lunch at the Mayflower are definitely planned in the future.

This pub was built in the 16th Century and originally called the Spread Eagle. Rumour has it (couldn't be verified as the pub was closed when I was there) that you can by US postage stamps inside!

Down by the Thames

Outside The Mayflower

Feeling the heat!

The tide was out down by the Thames. Delightful river-scapes. Stay tuned for more adventures with me in the wig!

#ChallengeMS - Wig Out (later that day!)

    Lunchtime outside the Royal Academy

    A Monday post-box 

    Phone box opposite the Ritz

    Taking the wig off!

    Ready for next week!

#ChallengeMS 2015 - Wig Out!

Every Monday throughout September I'll be wearing my fabulous orange wig to support the MS Society and the #ChallengeMS campaign. It is all about raising awareness about MS, and more importantly raising money for MS research (there is a link to my JustGiving page at the end of this post).

This is Monday morning; the commute to work, answering the phone, compiling submissions

In the car on the way to work

Answering the phone at work

Taking a breath of air

Going up!

My other animals... part 1

A few weeks ago I was writing about one of my favourite books "My Family and Other Animlas" - so here is the first of a series of posts about my "other animals".

First up the Parakeets. Until I lived in the London suburbs I'd always assumed that the parakeets were an urban legend, or at least strongly exaggerated. Turns out not to be the case. There are anywhere between three and seven of them knocking around in our corner of South East London. They are social, noisy, argumentative and (quite honestly) usually referred to me as the Green Feather Hooligans.

They do behave delightfully like the parrots and tropical birds you see in aviaries. Shown here with one hanging upside down to attack the coconut fat ball and the other waiting his turn patiently (ish).




You can see three of them here sitting in a tree in our garden. Three seems to be about the most that will share a tree at once. The preferred roosting patterns involve sitting in trees that are several gardens removed, two or three in a tree, and squawking loudly and enthusiastically. Then all the squawking fails they take to the wing and chase each other around the trees. So sort of game of tag on the wing (!)

My Family and Other Animals

When I was around ten years old I got to the age where I would go and stay the night at friends' houses. This was when I discovered that I didn't like being away from home overnight. I didn't really overcome this fear until I went on the an exchange programme when I was fifteen (and even then I took one of my mum's cardigans to wear at bedtime!).

My constant companion, whenever I went away overnight, was Gerald Durrell's "My Family and Other Animals". The copy below isn't that copy, that was a Penguin orange and cream version, I think it is still at my Mum's house being held together by cellotape.

I read this book so many times that Gerry, Larry, Leslie, Margo, Mother, Spiro and the animals and birds were an extended family to me that I could fall asleep accompanied by in strange beds.

A family friend who spent a lot of time in Jersey used to give my brother and I membership to the children's club attached to Gerald Durrell's zoo on the island. Occasional magazines which had a pen-friend page gave me an early taste of making friends in other countries; I had pen-friends in France, Spain and Turkey. When I was about 16 we visited Jersey and went to the zoo, to see our adopted Canada Goose (amongst other birds and animals).

Reading this book so many times helped to develop my love of animals, both my pets and the wildlife in our garden and visiting wildlife reserves, zoos and more.

 

There will be a series of posts on the theme of "...other animals" introducing the animals and wildlife in my life.

My week on Instagram

First week back at work after my summer holidays - we are now into full on office move panic mode (!)

MY purrson!

A photo posted by Nat (@themrsnatg) on Jul 18, 2015 at 9:45am PDT

The pure joy of a fabulous new book!

A photo posted by Nat (@themrsnatg) on Jul 19, 2015 at 1:09pm PDT

Good morning London

A photo posted by Nat (@themrsnatg) on Jul 20, 2015 at 11:55pm PDT

Sunshine on Blackheath

A photo posted by Nat (@themrsnatg) on Jul 21, 2015 at 11:06pm PDT

Wedding Belle #maybeldner

A photo posted by Nat (@themrsnatg) on Jul 23, 2015 at 12:04am PDT

Happy Friday!

A photo posted by Nat (@themrsnatg) on Jul 24, 2015 at 2:16am PDT

346 pieces! #Lego

A photo posted by Nat (@themrsnatg) on Jul 25, 2015 at 3:59am PDT

Do come and follow me on Instagram or come back for next week's highlights.

#MySundayPhoto

The weather has been all over the place this week. There have been sunny blue skies to dismal overcast grey skies to persistent and even torrential rain.

On Friday I had to go to surgical appliances to get my shoe orthotics looked at. The problem, it turned out, was that I had the on not only upside down but also back to front. Getting this sorted out was such a relief, not least because of the walking that Friday seemed to accrue. The bus stop down the road was shut (a sink hole apparently) and there was no replacement so I had to shuffle all the way to the next stop (down and back up the hill).  

After the hospital I stopped at the Co-Op in the Village, didn't find what I was looking for so walked off to the bus stop to go down to the Riverside Sainsbury's. Warren Walk (like a lot of the bus stops you hear announced as you go by) seems an odd name, When you walk to it you discover that like many it is named after an actual street (or in this case a passageway). Warren Walk disappears of down a hill and endless steps between walls and fences and under trees. Quite charming in its own urban way.

7/7 - Remembered

The morning of July 7th 2005 for Londoners is a seminal moment for those living and working in London. Like the moon landings or the assassination of JFK everyone remembers where they were, whether out in London or hearing the news at home or at work.

It was around nine o'clock on a Thursday morning. I was out of the office over in the Brick Lane area for a breakfast meeting, accompanying my boss. The meeting had started about 8am and we were heading back to our office just before 9am. As we left the offices we were visiting the receptionist wished us luck with our journey, she'd heard that there was a power outage or similar affecting the tube service.

You have to remember for a moment what the world was like back a decade ago. We didn't have smart phones, barely used the internet on cell phones. Mobile communications were very much about calls and text messages. 

We left the offices and started walking back to Aldgate station, where we'd arrived an hour earlier, to take the Circle line back to Westminster. It became apparent almost immediately that what had happened was more than a power outage, it was abnormally quiet out on the streets. I think we must have managed to get through on the phone to our office to find out what had happened that morning. 

My most overriding memory of the morning is that I was terrified. Terrorist events had always been in the background of my consciousness, my Mum worked in the City and there was an awareness of disruption through my childhood of IRA bombs and security alerts. I had never been so directly affected before. I remember standing on the street trying to get through on cell phones to let family know we were OK, and my legs were shaking. We gave up our travel efforts and went for a cup of coffee.

In the end our plan of action was to walk back to my boss's flat in Docklands from where he could give me a lift by car back to South East London. I measured the route later, it was a four mile walk (I was a lot more mobile a decade ago).

It was a surreal experience, walking through the streets (with occasional rain showers). It was quiet apart from other people similarly undertaking treks back homewards. Stoicism was the overriding mood that prevailed - a huge juxtaposition to the celebration of the previous day and the announcement of London being awarded the 2012 Olympics.

Sitting back at my boss's flat we were finally able to find out what had taken place that morning, with news cycles constantly evolving as more information came to light. It was, in the end, a short hop through the Tunnel home. We didn't open the office again until the following week, although it was over a year until I ventured back on the Tube.

7/7 Memorial in Hyde Park

I'm Back!

It has been rather a long time since I last posted. There is no good reason for this other than the pace of life. I had a bit of a health wobble back at Easter, but that only lasted about a week. 

The problem has been the pressures of work. We're moving offices in the Autumn, we're also short staffed. This means that I've been working four days a week so the work/rest balance is a bit skewed. Then there has been the whole sulky laptop issue which means my home computer time has been minimised. 

Now it is holiday time (yay!) so I have more leisure time, and I'm going to sort out my IT issues too.

Casper is pleased to be back too!

National Pride

Flag of St George

There was a time when one of the most defining identities people had was their nationality. For king, for country. Under the flag.

This island, Great Britain, has been a melting pot of identities as far back as history is recorded.

Angles, Saxons, Romans, Vikings, French and many more besides.

After the Battle of Hastings in 1066 national identities began to coalesce and merge. Wales became part of the United Kingdom first in 1536, then Scotland in 1707, and finally Northern Ireland in 1922 (although previously the Kingdom of Ireland had been part of the Union since 1800).

Union Flag

We fly the Union Flag; which combines the flags of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland; at the time of the design Wales had been unified with England for long enough that St David didn't get a look in.

The Sovereign nation (which issues our passports) is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The Dragon

Nationality seems to undergo waves of expansion and contraction. There are distinct trends of coming together (Nineteenth/Twentieth Centuries) and pulling apart (Twentieth/Twenty-first Centuries).

St George

The bigger the world gets with fast, efficient transportation and free flow of information the  less national identity seems to matter to most people.

Once a year we still celebrate our national identity. For sovereign nations that is often the Country's saints day and for Republics it is the anniversary of the independence (either from Monarch or Empire) of that Country.

So in England we celebrate St George; installed as the Patron Saint of the Nation by Edward III St George isn't English (born in Palestine) and he never killed a dragon (he was a Roman soldier who was martyred).

Gin Festival

Yesterday I took a trip to Milton Keynes to go to a Gin Festival. Anyone who is fond of particular tipples may have been to one of these festivals. 

Having bought your ticket you arrive at the venue and buy tokens which enable you to try different brands at various bars around the room. There were also some sponsors/exhibitors giving talks (and free samples) and an off licence selling gin and souvenirs ("Life's too short for single gins").

I went with a similarly gin inclined friend and we had huge fun trying different gins and planning our future excursion to Sipsmiths London distillery!

Tone of the day for public transport

Street art caught my eye

Start the day with great coffee

Gin #1 (Rock Rose)

Gin #2 (Batch Premium)

@GinFestival

Sipsmith's Swan (Graham?)

Unusual hygiene notice!

Time to shop?

Fever-tree tonic (lots of it - Elderflower & Mediterranean are great) 

So much gin, so little time

Gin #3 (Steam Punk)

Gin #4 (Elderflower Warner Edwards)

Gin #5 (Sipsmith V.J.O.P)

Lecture Theatre (really!)

Shopping time!

Walt behaving himself on the train

My gin collection (middle bottle bought yesterday)

Attendance badge

Tote to bring home swag

Gin literature

I had a fantastic day out, tried some really great gin (and one that I didn't like so much) and even learned a few things about both gin and tonic.

I'd go again, although possibly be more organised and not go all the way to Milton Keynes!