Harsh face of the countryside

I am walking the Coast-to-Coast path in May and have been doing a little (not enough) training to prepare myself.

I walked up Knarr Fen Road and back across the fen to Thorney on Monday morning and, if you add in Toneham, it's a six-and-a-half mile walk. I'm doing the walk with David Jones and he came with me on Monday.

As we came off the fen and back onto the higher ground of the village, we came across an old chap in a Land Rover Discovery. Amazingly, he had got stuck in mud on the track at the field edge.

There wasn't anything we could do to help and he'd called for a friend to come to tow him out, so we stood and had a chat for a while. He had a trailer, which he'd unhitched, containing a cage with a live magpie inside. David knew what he was up to and said: "I see you're out with the old Larsen traps."

The chap told us he was catching magpies and gave us a bit of a speech about saving songbirds and how many eggs and chicks a magpie would take during a season. I detected a whiff of bullshit and my suspicions were confirmed by David when we walked on.

David told me that Larsen traps were legal and that you didn't need a licence to catch and kill magpies or other corvids because they were classed as vermin. Quite why anyone would consider a fairly rare Jay to be vermin is anyone's guess, but that also gets caught up in the corvid group.

Of course, they're only vermin if you're running a shoot and releasing thousands of pheasant chicks and also trying to encourage pheasants to breed on your land so you have even more for the guns. Millions of pheasant chicks are released each year for the purpose of shooting and they certainly put the natural balance out of kilter.

A magpie will take eggs and (probably) pheasant chicks, so they're a target for gamekeepers and laws  back up their needs by classifying these birds as vermin. They do take eggs and young from songbirds, of course, but there's a natural balance to be struck there and songbirds are somewhat better at hiding their nests than pheasants.

A Larsen trap (and there are other variations) involves using a live bird as bait. A bird is taken from one area and placed in a trap in another territory. Resident birds will come down to challenge it and chase it away and the trap is constructed in such a way that they can get through the wire to challenge the rival, but can't get out again, so you end up with two magpies in the trap. The new bird might become bait itself, or simply have its neck wrung.

Larsen traps were invented by a Danish gamekeeper called Larsen, but are now illegal in Denmark. I think they should be illegal here as well.

I don't like the idea of a live bird being used as bait and even though legal use of the traps requires the gamekeeper to provide food and water for the trapped “bait” bird, you do have the situation where a wild creature is restrained for some period of time (at least 24 hours) in a state of massive stress.

Also, they should not be used while birds are nesting, so the chap setting traps on the edge of the village was certainly cutting it fine. I’d be very surprised if all the rules surrounding bait-bird welfare are obeyed. This chap said he hated magpies, so I can’t really see them getting a fair deal from him.

It’s a shame that the Labour Party saw fit to ban foxhunting, but was happy to leave these things as perfectly legal.

If you’re interested in knowing more about trapping of corvids and perhaps joining a campaign to get the traps banned, there’s a very good website here:

http://www.againstcorvidtraps.co.uk/corvid-traps/larsen-traps/

Julia is crawling, waving and has a tooth

I can't believe how quickly Julia is growing up. I haven't seen her for a couple of weeks, but in that time she has learned to crawl, she has grown a tooth and learned to wave.

I was down in Baldock on Wednesday doing a childcare stint while Lucy finishes her dissertation. It's a bit of a frantic last-minute rush as it has to be submitted by the end of May, but she's at first-draft stage and has just a few more books to read and add to the stew.

I went down by motorcycle to make parking easier (Tom had gone to Pisa for a couple of days on a press launch for a new Piaggio scooter). He'd flown from Stansted and had ridden to the airport on his motorcycle, which meant I could nip into his vacant slot. The bike slices 15 minutes off the journey by being able to filter through queues of cars at the rush-hour roundabouts - Eye, Parnwell, Buckden, Sandy and Biggleswade - and then the queue to get into Baldock itself.

Julia was up and awake when I arrived and greeted me with a frantically waving arm. I love the enthusiasm babies put into their first waves. She waves with her left arm, not her right, and will wave to "hola" and "adios" but not yet to "hello" and "goodbye". It was time for bed because Julia had not slept well the night before as she has a bit of a cold and Lucy was keeping her up until I arrived so she didn't hear me and wake up. She went straight to sleep. Normally Lucy would go to the library to work at 10am, but this morning she had an appointment at the dentist. A filling had fallen out of her tooth a couple of weeks earlier and she had arranged for it to be filled.

So at 10.30, Julia was wakened and she and I went off to her Heartbeeps club and Lucy headed for the dentist. I think I had the better deal.

Heartbeeps is a weekly club for pre-toddler babies and mums. It's an hour of music and sensual stimulation and is a lot more "in your face" than mothers’ and toddlers’ club that our children used to attend. About 15 mums (and one grandad) sit on the floor with their babies around a large mat of fake grass. It's a session devised by yoga mums, not grandads with creaky knees and sitting cross-legged for an hour was the hardest part. We started with a big golden cloth spread on the floor and sang "You are my Sunshine" helped by a backing track with a funky beat. I sang enthusiastically, as instructed by the session leader, who acted as if she'd drunk three cans of Red Bull before starting the session.

After the sunshine sheet had been rolled up, there was a visit from two sock puppets who bit your toes (if you didn't look like crying). Julia has found a ring with tassels (for waving during the singing) and was giving that a good chew, so the sock monsters passed by with barely any acknowledgement. It was then time for a drive - the leader handed round plastic plates and we were invited to sit babies on our knees and, using the plate as a steering wheel, we were to go for a drive (cue more music). This was great as it meant I could prise myself out of the lotus position and straighten my knees. Julia grabbed the steering wheel and gave it a good chew (I think there's another tooth on the way). She chewed when we turned left, chewed when we turned right and chewed when we went over the bumpy road. The experiences come thick and fast at Heartbeeps and no sooner was the car parked than baby dolls were being handed out with nappies and feeding bottles.

The leader, with some sensitivity to middle-class, breast-feeding mums, apologised for the bottles and said someone was knitting her some breasts. Thank goodness they were not ready yet, that's one role play session I hope Tom enjoys. Julia chewed the baby and the bottle while the leader told us about some recycle-able nappies that were available to buy that could be washed and used again and again (just like we used to use). They were available in lots of different colours and it seems they now come with Velcro strips to make it easier to put them on and off. Sponsor’s message over, it was back to business: we put the nappies on, fed baby, took the nappies off, put them in the washing machine (a big sheet spread on the floor) along with the babies (plastic and real) and they were sprinkled with plastic soap suds and bubbles from the bubble machine. Cue the washing song.

It was a quick-wash cycle and then it was time to peg up the nappies on a line strung around the seated mums. Julia chewed the pegs. Everything went back in baskets, including all the plastic soap suds which were picked up by diligent mums. Time for the lights to be dimmed and the goodbye song and that was it – Heartbeeps was done.

Time had flown by. I’m not sure what Julia thought of the whole thing. There were some interesting new things to chew and she was very interested in the other babies. I found it psychedelic, like an LSD trip. We were strolling home, enjoying the sun and not in a great hurry when we met Lucy coming the other way. Julia started waving frantically and wriggling with excitement. Lucy’s face was numb and she wasn’t very happy. She’d never had an injection at the dentist before (in Ecuador, you man up when you get your teeth drilled) and she felt a bit queer.

I suggested she came home and had an early lunch, so I played with Julia while Lucy skipped down to the butcher/deli to get us a sandwich. Julia and I enjoyed our lunch, but Lucy felt too weird to eat, so she put Julia to bed and went to the library. Julia was a bit out of sorts when she woke up, she’s had a cold and is clearly not 100 per cent. She now crawls happily and likes to pull herself into a kneeling or standing position. A particular pleasure is to hold your hands and walk. She takes a stride with her left foot and then brings her right foot up to the left. This, and the waving with the left hand only, suggests to me she will be left-handed like her mum.

When Lucy was back I said I would walk up to Tesco with Julia to get her a few things while she did some jobs in the house. We had a nice walk up there and a pleasant walk around the unfamiliar store, but as I was loading items into the pram, the check-out lady said hello to Julia and she didn’t like that at all. We paid and legged it with Julia crying all the way home and making me look very bad.

It’s nice to spend time with Julia and the rate of change in her this last month has been amazing.

Meeting my grandson for the first time

I have been over in Jersey meeting my new grandson, Arthur.

Margaret had already been across, but this was my first encounter. Arthur is now seven weeks old.

We flew from Gatwick via easyJet and Lucy was waiting for us at the airport with Arthur.

I've seen lots of pictures, so felt that I knew him quite well already. It was quite emotional seeing him for the first time, but being of strong stock, I managed to keep a stiff upper lip.

His photographs are an excellent likeness. Next to Julia, he seems very small. I remember how small Sam seemed in comparison to Tom when he came home from hospital.

He's a good baby, despite suffering a little with colic (certainly better than his dad) and has lots of very expressive facial expressions. There’s grumpy old man, where he looks just like his dad (and perhaps a little like his grandad Rayner), there’s also the very-interested face and the mildly-amused face.

When he wakes up he opens one eye first to have a check around and then the other one.

He loves a good sneeze and seems to mimic what you’re doing - so he will smile if you smile and if you put your tongue out he will do the same.

He likes to be carried belly down on your arm and can keep his head lifted for a long time. He’s very strong for such a new baby. He seemed happy to go to sleep on my arm with his legs draped over each side, while an arm was hooked underneath like a little monkey on a branch.

Arthur has sandy-coloured hair and will probably be blond, like his dad, while he’s little, getting darker with age. He sleeps quite well through the night and enjoys his food - a mixture of breastmilk and formula milk.

We arrived on Wednesday evening and were to head home on Saturday evening. On Thursday, Lucy drove us across to La Grève de Lecq, a nice little seaside village on the north coast. There’s a small, but sandy beach in a sheltered cove, but we were really there for breakfast at Colleen’s. Jersey has some good little cafes and snack shacks - The Hungry Man and Mad Mary’s spring to mind - but this is more like Bill’s (the UK chain of cool breakfast eateries).

I had an English breakfast, Margaret had burger, bacon, sausage and chips, Lucy had a bacon-and-egg bap on a Portuguese roll (which is a huge thing). Arthur had formula milk with some Gaviscon to help his colic. He was very well behaved and only needed some small walks around the restaurant to keep him amused. On the way back, we took a detour to buy some Jersey Royals from a particular place that grows them in the traditional way with seaweed. They were £3 a pound, but tasted beatutiful.

Sam and Lucy’s house is looking more like home. They have acquired a lot more furniture since I was there decorating earlier in the year. They have a couple of large settees, a big sideboard, a very large, gothic-looking dresser (which grew on me each time I saw it), some tables and chest of drawers. John, Lucy’s dad, has made them a very nice kitchen table from rescued wood. They have a patio table and chairs on order, also a parasol, so will be well set up once the warm weather arrives.

The VegTrug we bought them for Christmas has a couple of rows of radish, beetroot and lettuce coming through.

During the afternoon, we watched a TV show called Tipping Point, a quiz where players win coins to put in a Penny Falls machine to see if them can win tokens. Arthur had fallen asleep on my arm and after an hour I’d put him down in his chair. Amazingly, he remained asleep and stayed asleep while we had dinner (Jersey Royals and sausages). Having had such a long sleep, he wasn’t in any hurry to go to bed and still looked wide awake when I went to bed at 10.30pm. That’s the joy of being a grandparent, you can duck out when the going looks like getting tough.

We had a slow start on Friday and it was not until late morning that we headed out to Ransome’s, the garden centre in the north of the island past Trinity. We been there a couple of times before and it’s quite a good place. Lucy bought a dahlia tuber and also a pot for a fig tree they have been given. The plan is to have the tree on the patio at the back of their house, which is south facing and so very sunny.

Margaret was wheeling Arthur around, while Lucy and I browsed. Arthur likes to keep moving, so Margaret was covering a lot of ground and she spotted some plants that Marina (Inna’s mum) had given me last year. She didn’t know what they were called, but they had them in the garden centre as spectacular succulents with green/red leaves growing like huge rosettes. They are obviously a ‘thing’ this year because there were lots of them - priced at £20 per pot.

They are called Aeoniums or Tree Houseleek and they are native to the Canary Islands, with some also being found in Madeira, Morocco and the mountains of Ethiopia (I’ve been researching on the web now I know their name). The trick is to given them little water, keep them frost free and make sure the purple ones are in full sun. The green ones (we have one of those as well) are happy with some shade.

That’s pretty much the advice we had from Inna’s mum. If we could grow them into plants as spectacular as those in Ransome’s, we’d sell them no trouble at the Thorney Church Flower Festival plant stall. I’m thinking of new plants to grow next year for that.

I also spotted a plant called ajuga, which I have in the garden but didn’t know what it was called. It’s a low-growing, fast-spreading ground cover plant with pretty red foliage and small blue flowers. That another one to propagate for the plant stall.

It was time for lunch when we’d finished looking around and, by good fortune, Ransome’s has a restaurant which seems to do more trade than the garden centre. We’d had no breakfast so it was a late brunch. I had chicken and bacon sandwich with chips, which was quite nice, and then made the mistake of ordering a cake. I went for a Victoria sandwich and when it arrived it was massive - a huge slab of cake in five layers with jam and cream between each layer. It looked like a challenge (and it was) but I munched my way through and then could hardly move afterwards!

Arthur had been good and had a little snooze so we could eat tea in peace. Sam came home fairly early and we had pasta for tea. It was a struggle to eat anything to be honest - even after seven hours that cake was lying heavy.

Sam didn’t feel well in the night. He had severe stomach pain and thought at one stage that he might have appendicitis. That was also my diagnosis (for what it was worth). On Saturday morning, Margaret and I acquired Arthur and enjoyed his company all morning while Sam and Lucy had a lie in. It was gone noon when they eventually surfaced. Saturday had turned into a really nice day and so I decided to do a little gardening. The previous owner had planted eight apple and pear trees in the garden and also had low-voltage lighting all around the borders.

While Sam pottered about with his special lawn weeding tool (which is very impressive), I set to and removed the roots of three shrubs and also the low-voltage lights and wiring down both sides. There are still some cables we’re not sure about, but Sam has an electrician coming on Tuesday who should be able to make certain that everything is disconnected and safe. There’s a big hole in the decking where the hot tub has been removed and Sam has also arranged for a handyman to fix that.

I’ve said I’ll go back in June and spend a few days helping to get the garden straight. Hopefully, they will have patio furniture, a chiminea and barbecue in place by then.

We had a late flight back from Jersey and got home about 12.30am. Arthur is a lovely little boy. It was a pleasure to meet him and I look forward to seeing him grow up.