Busy Doing Nothing
The tents all survived a wet night, though the weather wasn’t as bad as it might have been. I had a quick look in them all after breakfast. The Tesco cheapy had a little water in the vestibule area, but not in the tent itself; the Coleman was dry as a bone; and the Zephyros was dry inside though there appeared to be some condensation inside the fly (it was the one pitched closest to the hedge and that might have had something to do with it).
I’ll take them all down when we have a dry spell.
The problem with the Zephyros, it occured to me, is that it’s so compact that it really doesn’t have much of a porch area, and it’s so low slung that getting out of it on a damp morning would be a miserable affair. I have a vague memory from when I bought it of reading a blog in which someone talked about fixing a tarp to the tent to make a porch, and I wasted a lot of time trying to find that blog. And failing. I then found out that Terra Nova make a tarp/porch for it, but it seems to be out of stock everywhere. So I got into an internet blackhole of looking at camping tarps. As I have no current plans to use one, this was entirely redundant activity. And yet I feel no guilt 🙂
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After a burst of creativity, I haven’t written much in the last couple of days. I have been researching, though (and by researching I don’t mean looking at camping gear on the internet). I’ve mentioned here before that I subscribe to Fortean Times, and part of their long-standing interest is cryptozoology and anomalous animal sightings, typically panthers or other big cats roaming the British countryside.
My research has been following the surprising discovery that Scottish mythological history is full of wyrms and serpents, both on land and at sea: historical cryptozoology, if you will. The creatures appear from the Borders to the Orkneys and all points in between. For example:
Sir William Sinclair of Roslin, who was living at this time, thus notes the appearance of an extraordinary animal in the year 1500: ‘Hutcheon Frizell in Glenconie, the best and maist in estimation of the Lord Lovat’s kin, he and ane servand with him, being at the hunting on ane hie land amang very rank heather, twa arrow-draught frae him he heard like the call of ane ratch approaching near and near, while [till] at the last he saw it, and shot at it ane dead straik with ane arrow; where it lap and welterit up and down ane spear length of breadth and length The heather and bent being mair nor ane foot of height, it being in the deid-thraw, brint all to the eird [earth], as it had been muirburn. It was mair nor twa eln of length, as great as the coist of ane man, without feet, having ane mickle fin on ilk side, with ane tail and ane terrible head. His great deer-dogs wald not come near it. It had great speed. They callit it ane dragon.’
Quite how, or even if, this will fit into the work in progress is a moot point; it’s possible that it won’t. It’s fun though.
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While I was still working, I bought a case or two of decent wine–nothing outrageous, but a bit better than the usual. When I finished working, I used what airline points I had left to buy a couple more cases of wine and some rum. None of this was ‘investment’; it was all about having something nice to drink. That was a year ago and we still have plenty left. However, we had a slight surplus of income over outgoings last month and I used some of it to buy another case–six Portuguese whites, three Italian reds and three Californian reds. They should arrive by the weekend.
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Music: It’s Canada Day, so…
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