The rites of spring

Toad orgies. Sparrowhawks. Weird medieval guys

As I turn the knob the detector crackles into life; an immediate recognisable burbling that quickly fades. A false signal or, I think poetically, a memory that has been trapped inside since I last used the bat detector, waiting through the cold months to be released. There is silence. The mornings are still frosty, and the bats are still torporous, but I still feel a change, a pull, and I head out into the dark, carefully picking my way along the path.

This is the album cover for their difficult second album. They split up after it’s released.

You must be careful because of the toads. I did not have to feel a special pull to know about the toads, because several people have told me. That’s the sort of information I get. ‘Oystercatcher flying over the golf course’ and ‘frogs, frogs everywhere. Or maybe toads, I dunno’. That is what people think I want to know, and they are right. No one asks me about the popular TV shows or anything about sports. I am only intrested in sport if there is some reason golf has been stopped, and I can have free run of the golf course.

I try and challenge assumptions when considering toads; for instance, it would be easy to assume that all toads walk neatly along the footpath, because I only see toads along the footpath. This is because I only ever look on the foot path where I walk. There might be thousands of toads in the long grass, but it’s dark and I might squash one if I walked there, so I don’t. It doesn’t mean that toads like footpaths, though they might, because it is easier to walk along them than in long grass. But you can’t assume. It’s easier to get squashed or eaten out in the open, too.

It would also be easy to assume that toads spend all thier time sitting on the path. When I shine the torch at them, they remain frozen, hoping I have the sort of vision that only detects motion. When I point it away, I see them move off along on thier journeys and I wonder how long it takes a toad to walk from my garden to the lake. It takes me 10 minutes. I stick my hand out and allow him to crawl on, enjoying the cool clammy touch of toad belly. You must always offer, never grab; I was adult before I realised if most people offer, the toad does not want to ride with humans, which thinking of it carefully, is sensible, but a shame. I place him carefully back and allow him on his way. I have missed my summertime friends. I like to hold toads, which another way I am apparently weird.

The toad concentration increases the closer to the lake I get. The lake is where it’s all happening; the detector crackles into life and a single soprano pipistrelle flitters about my head. I find two newts. The young tawny owl is making an absolute dog’s ear of hooting. I cannot imagine why people decided that halloween was the witchy time of the year. I mean, I know why because of the origins of halloween and the veil thinning, but all these animals are going offline at halloween and witches are a year round affair, so it just shows how silly normal people are really.

I circumamblate the lake, and discover an unholy toad all orgy on the bridge. The ball freezes, a mass of disjointed conjoined toad flesh indistinguishable as individuals and as I take my time trying to count how many toads I’m looking at, the large female underneath grows legs and walks slowly of in a dignified manner, dragging her suitors with her. As I crouch down to enter their world, I hear the quiet croaks rippling through the rough, the creaking of toad love. I wish them a bountiful year.

Workings

I have done some work this week.

You can see in the sketch the wing asymmetry uncertainly in action. I prefer symmetry but asymmetry works better for the composition of the entire piece and also seems to honour the memory of the original garden sparrowhawk because she injured her wing and it seemed sort of right. I felt kind of worried if wing could do that in real life- I feel like I’ve seen in but then birds are fast.

At the end of the day it’s my picture and I can put in weird wings if I want. It also means there’s no wing feathers around the face. Which is aesthetically pleasing.

I also carved an alphabet. It wasn’t work, but it was incredibly soothing.

Weird medieval guys

I used to follow weird medieval guys on twitter before .. before you know who. So I was pleased to see them on substack, plus their logo is a weird medieval toad so it’s fitting to mention them. Here’s the listing for this absolutely bizarre print (a copy of a woodcut of a planetary diagram designed to show which planets/star signs controlled which organs) I can’t imagine there will be a stampede of people wanting this on their wall but if you do, this is a very affordable way because you don’t have to buy a later medieval book of days, which is probably outside your means.

There are also less weird things for sale.

Or if you wanted to give me money for my epic contribution to you week (this publication, which is free to all because I cannot see why anyone would pay for it) but not have to live with weird shit on your house, then there’s always KoFi.

Findings

I do not live right out in the countryside, I live on the edge of town, but you would think that I lived in the wilderness the way Royal Mail deliver. Periodically workmen will block off the cycle path, which is the only access I have to my house, because they can’t seem to understand why anyone would like to come up here. Why would anyone ever want to leave town? Without a car? Madness.

There are two houses up here and we get forgotten, and mostly like that because I do not like people, but last week a worker found two leaking taps and thought since they were leaking, the simplest solution to the problem was just to switch them off. That’s why I spent the day without a water supply (incidentally, when the water supply or electric goes off, no one else will report it because they are not affected. Just the two houses). The lass that came out to fix it was a bit bemused how easy it was to sort, or rather, how easy it would have been to not have to come out if anyone had thought ‘will that cut off anyone’s water supply though?’

During the time my water was off, when I knew it was off, I turned the tap on about 2300 times. It was incredibly annoying. I am here thinking I am a conscious being with free will when I am actually a mindless slave to habit. No wonder my screentime is high. I pick up my phone because it’s there and I’m used to picking it up.

If I am honest, I expected this anecdote to lead to some life changing meditations on behaviour that would lead to lasting change but that requires more thought and research than I’m capable of this week. I really did think I would look at a book on habit formation and pull out some amazing fact. I did manage to halve my screentime but that is entirely offset by my iPad developing a bug in the system update that means it thinks that all the time it was switched off counted as 100% leading to a screentime of 18hours a day.

The same update also means every email I receive has a little summary, so last week whenever someone liked my post it said ‘username apologises to squirrels’ underneath which delighted me greatly.

Anyway, I’ve made it to a small but milestone number of subscribers which means it’s time to scare everyone off with this video of a snurli snurrlson having a poo while a shrimp eats the poo and then has a little poo itself. Having an aquarium is wonderfully soothing. Apart from there are four different sets of babies in there now of varying sizes, and neocaradina shrimp can have up to 60 babies each time, which means I have more shrimp than I can count and I’m only on the second generation and that a little stressful now I owe to think of it.