Kew diary 1

What to do with a year's pass for Kew gardens? Go there lots and record the beautiful plants, trees, wildlife of course!
I'll never be able to do it properly justice but will have a go over the months, maybe do a bit of drawing there when it's less busy. This visit was on a very cold day so was mostly spent indoors. March is Orchid month at Kew - hundreds of the things in wild bursts of colour - so exotic when all is a bit drab and wintry outside the glasshouses.

 

 I'm particularly drawn to the cactii - the shapes are just wonderful.

Another indoors gem is Marianne North's gallery. It's possibly the worse presentation of paintings I've ever seen but is strangely compelling after the initial overwhelming tumble of colour and detail. Two rooms stuffed with botanical paintings by an intrepid woman born in 1830 I think. She set about travelling when she turned 40, visiting around 17 countries, often painting alone in forests, jungle, plains and swampland. What a woman!

Attack of the monster birds

I made some papier mache birds a few years ago, as Christmas decorations but a couple somehow turned out as monsters that would have scared the horses and so they ended up on the rooftop, as guardians of the strawberries instead. What's strange is that while the wren-type monster has stayed untouched, the robinesque monster has been repeatedly pecked and turfed over. You can see some of the stabs in this photo. I put two and two together when I watched a robin land there, check out the fake pretender to the territory and fly off again. I've read how territorial robins are and that they will size up to any small patch of red that could be a rival.

What cuts mean to disabled people

Here are three friends, interviewed about the cuts to ILF (Indepenedent Living Fund). The fund allows them to live independently, like you or I.
Thanks to strong campaigning by these activists, they have at least won a judicial review at the High Court on the 13th and 14th March. They are fighting on behalf of all those disabled people who cannot.
Something we need to remember too, is that we are living to a greater age now and most of us will end up with some form of disability in the future. We should not leave the burden of action and dissent to those who struggle the most in life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIzCtAsBV4M&feature=player_embedded#t=3s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRQNUXqma2s&feature=player_embedded#t=0s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMElPk0pq6I&feature=player_embedded#t=0s

fish dance

The upper part of the River Lea is beautifully clear. You can see right down into the underwater grasses.

And you can see loads of fish! A friend told me there are perch in the river so I looked them up and see that they are the stripy ones I catch sight of sometimes, but I wonder if the others might be gudgeon? These are little fishlets but the bigger ones were a browny/grey colour, silvery underneath.
They were darting around together but I noticed every so often, one would swim on the spot, head downwards, tail up to the surface. Then another would join it and maybe one or two others so you had a little group that looked like synchronised swimmers. Does anyone know why they do this?

snippets of my summer

my beautiful mangle

It not only  squeezes all the water out of my washing but it folds away into a neat little yellow-topped table.

Welcome to Britain

So, the main Olympic games are over and an amazing spectacle it was too. It was good to see people celebrated for their hard work, incredible endurance and ability.
The efforts made to give a warm welcome to visitors were enormous, to the point where many people were inconvenienced. We were encouraged to accept a few temporary disturbances in the "spirit of generosity", as Coe called it. And of course, this language, along with a genuine wish to be welcoming, makes it difficult to complain. For some, the disruption was to travel, for some it meant missiles on their rooftop, for some it meant local common land being built on, and for others it meant eviction from their homes. Nevertheless, between them, the Olympics organising team, the media and the police did such a good job of squashing dissenting voices, that we ended up agreeing that anyone complaining was a party-pooper. We could ignore the 180 arrested critical mass cyclists, ignore the groups protesting about Olympic sponsors like Dow (linked to Bhopal disaster), G4S (human rights abuses), BP (one of the world's biggest polluters), Rio Tinto (poisonous mining), Atos (assessing and victimising disabled people) and Adidas (sweatshop production). Nothing could be allowed to spoil the party. And it WAS a fantastic party, but these ARE shit sponsors that should never have been invited and people's objections WERE valid and important.

So, the welcome was made. The wonderful volunteers made London a friendly place and when the athletes left, many commented on this. I for one would like to always have those helpful, cheerful people on hand at every tube and train station! Britain had welcomed in people from all over the world and as the official Olympics website says, 'showed the world what makes the UK such an exciting and diverse place to live'.
But some didn't leave. Having been shown what a great place it is to live, some athletes actually have the affront to want to live here! Several have disappeared, before the games and since, and as they have black and brown skin, they will soon become aware of the other side of our welcome to foreigners.
A study this year reported that black people are 30 times more likely to be stopped by police, than white people. In the run-up to the Olympics, there has been a huge upsurge in stops by Immigration Officers. According to the UK Border Agency's instructions, "an Immigration Officer (IO) may not stop an individual based upon their racial appearance and race and colour can never be the basis of the IO's 'reasonable suspicion' that someone has committed an immigration offence", yet having heard from several people stopped and questioned, there could have been no other reason for the intervention as they were walking down the street or shopping at the time!
So, I don't think the athletes (plus a 15 year old lad from Ethiopia who was a torch-bearer) will be free for very long. Their photos are online, the very media that celebrated them are also the media that lambast asylum-seekers and refugees daily. A large part of the population has long been conditioned to regard foreigners with suspicion and asylum-seekers as scroungers, criminals and potential terrorists.
I wish the absconders the very best of luck. They'll need it now the welcome's over.