Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Hedgehog Rescue 4

Originally uploaded by Bollops

Swedish hedgehog experts send out a call for help!

Too-early spring wakes up hibernating hedgehoglets to find no breakfast. No insects or worms yet–but many hungry young hedgehogs!

Although we are in England now (where Flickr-ian Bollops recorded his own hedgehog rescue in this photo), I am still hooked on Sweden’s news in English at “The Local.” Where else would I learn about hedgehogs in springtime,

• elf lessons in Lapland,
• Stockholm reindeer protests, or
• Hetz the theatrical dog?

Not to mention telecommuting witches…some of whose magic might help out those Swedish hedgehogs!

"Bespoke" sheep in pasture

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Pictured: the sheep on a local gentleman’s farm with wide view of the Isis. I nicknamed this flock the “bespoke” sheep because they are clearly not some farmer’s normal collection of uniform “off the peg” sheep for commercial purposes.

In other rural news from the Oxford area, everyone’s favorite Oxford Times newpaper says that a wandering sow has made a pig of herself in the gardens of Wantage. “Stray pig eats two tonnes of root vegetables from town allotment” was the hard-copy headline. From the story:

The stray sow, pictured, is believed to be living in an empty barn in a field close to the West Site of King Alfred’s Community and Sports College. She has eaten all the parsnips, carrots and cabbages growing in the 41 allotments….Sharon Chrisp, an RSPCA inspector, said: “The allotment holders are understandably upset about the damage to their crops to the extent that some people have suggested the pigs should be shot, which we are desperate to avoid…If the owner cannot be found, then we are looking for someone who has porcine experience who would be willing to offer these pigs a suitable home as pets.”

If the owner of these bespoke sheep has porcine experience, two furry legacy-breed pigs would probably fit right in with the springtime scenery.

Oxford moment

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

February 29 comes only once every four years–but in Oxford, it’s merely 7th week Friday of Hilary Term–and an exam day, to judge by all the black suits and commoners’ gowns I saw students wearing early that morning.

A commoners’ gown “is made of black material but with the style of a turned-over collar. It has no sleeves, but has a streamer on each side with square pleating and hanging to the full length of the gown, which covers the normal lounge coat, ” says Shepherd and Woodward Ltd. (Oxford student gowns since 1845.)

Oxford is famous for its many briliiant students–Tim Berners Lee, Stephen Hawking, and our own Bill Clinton, who didn’t inhale here. So I’m sure all these serious students will do quite well on their exams, although they did not look any happier about exam day than any other student from anywhere else.

Some things are pretty reliably universal.

Looking up from the bus stop

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

I would call this a moment of springtime serendipity except that I did not have a full moment to give it.

Standing at bus stop, bus approaching. Petal falls past my nose. Look up, grab camera, turn on camera, raise camera to take shot of tree-against-sky, jump into bus, and look frantically for my bus ticket.

Thanks to camera magic — though I couldn’t enjoy the view then, I can see it now.

Mixed media

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Just at the edge between winter and cold early spring, two Oxford ducks were exploring the new possibilities.

Er, what I mean is …

After a lot of trouble and with much help from Cecil Coupe, my trouble-plagued blog has come through a WordPress upgrade and onto a new ISP. Wish me luck as I now move from treading thin ice to (I hope) a dramatic re-entry into full springtime.

English Sunday traditional roast beef with Yorkshire pudding just got multiple updates–from a bright orange Mexican plate to the colorful veggies, steamed lightly to please modern taste buds.

But this photo is symbolic–not so much of what I’m eating as it is of the too-many too-tempting things distracting me from my current blog troubles.

Aside from Gilbert and Sullivan, lectures on Darwin, springtime in Iffley, work on my book, trying to set up a non-fiction writers’ workshop, and the glories of Oxford Botanic Garden, there are distractions less delightful taking up far too much time…grocery shopping with no car, just for a starter.

And then there are cross-cultural gotchas, like the dry cleaner who phoned to tell me that somehow he’d broken all eight buttons on my best jacket. He did pay for ten new buttons and sew them on free, but I did have to go find them in a tiny second-floor sewing store on a small back street.

Do less, write more–what a good plan. I plan to try that plan now.

Grote Markt with tiny twilight moon

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Can this really be the only three-star destination in Belgium?

The great market / Grote Markt / Grand Place of Brussels is indeed spectacular, with or without a tiny crescent moon next to one of its many spun-sugar towers. Frank and I got here yesterday, taking a train (!) all the way from London.

More soon, but we are racing off. Forgive the blog-interruption last week; some odd hackers with a big interest in both dodgy drugs and Google ranking hijacked the blog so I couldn’t post even a comment or a correction until Cecil Coupe fixed things for me. If you still use WordPress 2.3.1, time to upgrade it!

Dock of the bay
Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Is it 11 hours or 13 … the time difference between New Zealand, and Oxford, England? We got to Oxford pretty late Friday night, and I’m still too jet-lagged for such complex mathematics.

This morning I’m resting my sleepy spirit with New Zealand memories, most especially of our peaceful week in Ferry Landing Lodge, overlooking this bay. This small B & B is top-rated in TripAdvisor because so many of Pam and Rob’s guests take the time to write rave reviews.

It’s not exactly the format for TripAdvisor, but Frank even wrote a sonnet for Pam and Rob’s guest book.

We took a transcontinental flight
And the transoceanic overnight
Then drove through scenic Coromandel,
To reach Ferry’s Landing, whose tale I tell.

It’s been our base for six fine days
We soaked up lots of UV rays
Hiked, swam, and slept as we pleased
Life is sweet with times like these.

Breakfast was fine and fresh and merry
At dinnertime we took the ferry
Bones got carved, glow-worms sighted
The snarls of workaday life got righted.

Thanks for everything, Pam and Rob
From the grateful Wilczek mob.

So does that or does it not qualify as a sonnet by a Nobel-Prize-winning poet? Once again, I’m just too jet-lagged to know.

From today’s NY Times, here you see mother and daughter jaunting and laughing through summertime in side-by-side bus seats, because “My daughter and I wanted to see the Swedish countryside, and a bus is a good way to do it.”

I always love visiting Mary in her lovely and welcoming small-town NH library. I’m glad NY Times photographer Jacob Silberberg captured her and Kerstin in such a lovely but truly typical moment. I’m also glad he mentions that Mary is 60.

It seems to me that the natural active fun for a person at any age is whatever stuff that exact person has real fun doing.

My Time Goes By friend Ronni Bennett pushes back when older people talk about being active or happy as feeling young. I know why she does–for the same reason I once wrote about “I’m too bleeargingledly for my shirt.” But I think what most people mean by “feeling young” is just that we don’t feel some (bad) way society told us we’d feel when we got “old.”

My mom when she was 80 liked gardening and doing crosswords and reading Colette, and far be it from anyone to say that she should have been out riding back roads on a giant Harley while clad in black leather. Though that’s an image that would have made her smile…

And far be it from anyone to say she shouldn’t have ridden those roads and that Harley if she wanted to.

Fellowship of the rings Part 1

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine

Beneath Shakespeare Cliff, all over Lonely Bay’s really quite lonely beach, lie broken and sea-smoothed bits of gastropod shell.

We’d seen such rough shell circles in New Zealand restaurants, used as napkin rings. That’s why we quickly had rings on our fingers (though no bells on toes.)

There’s something about New Zealand that makes people smile. How about this sign from coffeeshop Mariposa in Port Wells?

UNATTENDED CHILDREN
WILL BE GIVEN AN ESPRESSO
AND A FREE PUPPY.

We formed many hypotheses about Shakespeare Cliff. Mine was that William Shakespeare jumped off after some bad reviews. Frank says that it wasn’t William Shakespeare at all, just his boyfriend Cliff. So, which of them really wrote all those wonderful plays?