Sunday, August 6, 2023

Interface

 

One of the village Jack Russells hurtles down the dirt path and greets us as if we're long lost friends.


In town for a coffee at the cafe by the kirk. A gentleman wearing a blue velvet Viking hat takes time off from watching the football in the local pub. He stands by the refuse bins and shares a freshly made cheese and ham baguette from the sandwich shop with an attentive seagull. The man takes a bite and while he's chewing the gull tears a piece of bread from the end of the baguette. This process is repeated four times. It is, in its own way, a quite remarkable example of human/animal interface. 'The Font' thinks the gentleman in the blue Viking hat may have been consuming alcohol for some time and is completely oblivious to the presence of the gull.


The roundel has arrived from Germany and been installed. When the weather allows it can be opened to allow fresh air into the 'cabin' while keeping the rain out. That, at least, is the theory.  The outside lights are due to be installed tomorrow and the cladding around the roof taken down. Some progress was made on the conservatory yesterday so we remain hopeful that this coming week will see the project finished ... or at least largely finished. Monday is nightmare day. The kitchen fitters are due to show up. The original plan was for them to be here on their own to instal the marble counters. Delays mean they will find eight other workmen on site. It will be crowded.


Our village has a population of eighty or so. The next place down the coast  , with a thousand or so inhabitants, is a small metropolis in comparison. While going to get the Sunday papers a very familiar face peers at me from behind a flower tub on  the pavement.


An artist I'd never heard of before. The eyes of the dog under the table are wonderful ( click on the picture to get a better look ) :https://www.kulturstiftung.de/abend-ueber-deutschland/


12 comments:

WFT Nobby said...

Thanks for showing us the wonderful picture with the alert dog waiting under the table. And for giving me an opportunity to practice my German over Sunday breakfast! What a heavy price was paid for being three-quarters Jewish in 1930s Germany.
As for the man and seagull interaction - one can't help thinking this is how cross species virus transmission can occur...

Angus said...

WFT - We count no less than 23 dead Razorbills on a half mile long stretch of the beach this morning. Our hope that avian flu had peaked is clearly wrong.

Yamini MacLean said...

Hari OM
Angus, I am going to provide links regarding reporting possible Avian Flu sightings/deaths, but in a separate comment, as I have noted that whenever I include links, my comments tend to disappear... to the spam filter in the Blogger dashboard probably (which you can go to and authorise as 'not spam' and then publish if you are happy with the comments). The first link will be to the page with current reports (updated weekly I think) and the second link will be about how to go about reporting. Looking down the first list, the lack of gulls and other seabirds is quite notable. Are folk just not thinking that these birds deserve as much to be reported upon as all the swans and geese and buzzards etc?

I consider this very important, especially as you are regularly seeing victims, so if these links for any reason do entirely disappear, I encourage you (and any others concerned here) to look up the Scotgov website for info on Avian Flu and what to do.
Yours concernedly, YAM xx

Penny said...

A wonderful greeting from the JR. You have "dog lover" emblazened on your forehead, visible immediately to a canine. Thank you for sharing village life, which is never dull.

Anonymous said...

The dog under the table could be my boy.

Are those really PONs? Or Beardies?

And, Hari, I think that the evidence is that auks are MUCH worse affected, this year, than gulls.

Anonymous said...

Oops. Yamini, I mean

Lisa in France said...

Your heart must have skipped a beat when you saw that familiar face behind the flower tub. I had something similar happen to me in Tokyo, although in my case it was the backside I saw, that immediately recognizable PON side-to-side wiggle. I don't hear much about avian flu in France, although it must be here. We don't seem to have many birds where we are, other than doves and magpies, which surprises me, but then again, I think it is safer given that we have our pet birds to worry about. When we were preparing to leave Japan, our birds had to spend 30 days in quarantine. In the US, this would have been a government quarantine at JFK, but the government vets in Japan were very kind and allowed us to do a home quarantine (also, I don't think they had an appropriate government facility). They spend a great deal of time with us, first "inspecting" the quarantine facility (my son's bedroom) and then coming back at the end of the 30 days to issue the certificate the French required. We realized the vets we were dealing with were spending most of their time culling chicken flocks infected with the avian flu. It was plainly an awful thing for them, given they had become vets because they loved animals. I think that helping us may have been a welcome respite from those everyday duties.

Angus said...

Yamini - Thanks for the links. Have reported and sent pictures of this mornings harrowing walk on the beach. It's not just the deaths but the manner of deaths that leaves the poor things flapping around on the sand in agony. I fear Auks and by extension puffins may be having a really really tough year.

Jake of Florida said...

Angus, Did you stop for a quick few scritches with the familiar face?

Lisa in France said...

I realize there was a typo in my earlier comment - "wiggle" should have been "sashay". A PON princess would, of course, never "wiggle."

rottrover said...

I saw this immediately after reading your post this morning :)

https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1688168374805651456?s=20

Poppy Q said...

I think you are getting sent signs to get yourself a new walking buddy.