In August and September 2016 I cycled from London to Santiago de Compostela: the classic "Camino". This site and my erratic blog started with that adventure.
Ieuan is our son, previously known as “tnp” here. He’s a versatile person currently doing work in the film industry, making jewellery (here on Instagroan) and he has completed his first sculpture back in the summer. That was one of a small collection of commissions for the “Never Ending Glen” art trail which is part of the annual Kelburn music festival: https://www.kelburngardenparty.com/.
Back in the summer we, the nuclear family, assembled to join the opening walk up the Glen that reveals the sculptures. Sadly for me, I’d done something to pinch both a nerve and a nerve root (collective agreement of self, lovely A&E SHO in Glasgow and equally lovely osteopath in Dalry, near Kelburn!) That meant that even with two sticks I simply couldn’t get to the walk and had to give up about 200m from the car park. That did get me into a wonderful few hours in the double decker bus/bar at the festival and the on the edge of the first music festival I’ve been to since about 1979. However, that’s a completely different story.
Fortunately, with the osteopath’s exercises, the nerve mess has resolved and I’m walking pretty normally again and back last week, 6/9/24 to be precise, Ieuan took me back to Kelburn. We laughed at the memories of him rescuing me by steering me into the bus and could head up the trail. Here’s the stately home from the start of the walk. As with all the images here, clicking on them should get you the full sized images.
But back to the sculpture. It’s a mobile suspended over the pool of the waterfall at the head of the glen walk and partly inspired by Alexander Calder’s mobiles. Ieuan and I share Calder amongst our superheroes. Here are a couple more of my images. You should be able to click on them to get full sized images.
Ieuan’s sculpture at Kelburn, Scotland
Ieuan’s sculpture at Kelburn, Scotland
Ieuan’s sculpture at Kelburn, Scotland
And this …
But being a mobile, ‘photos don’t really do it justice nor capture what for me is one of its glories: how it fits the setting so well. As you can see with the next few vimeo hosted videos, I am no cinematographer for all that my camera tries to allow me to get motion as well as stills.
There are some other sculptures and constructions in the glen and one particularly that I loved but I think I shouldn’t really be putting images of other people’s work here without their permission so just a few images of nature’s work from our walk back from the waterfall, pool and his sculpture. Click on the image to get the gallery in full size and be able to click through them.
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I have an Email list that I am starting to use to tell people when I created new posts, pages, images, galleries etc. here on this site. Do sign up here if you’d like to get those messages. Never more than one a month and probably rather less often than that!
I’ve been meaning to create this little post for over three weeks now! I guess that says something to me about my management of my life. Anyway, I have managed to get back to it. Kite day is something the organisation did last summer too and I like the ambition. What organisation I hear someone ask. I don’t know! I think I like it partly as it takes me back to, hm, probably 1979/80 when I had a phase of making kites (and, related, making up paper lampshades for my then flat).
What was funny to me, looking down from “my” terrace up on level L here where I live, was that the organisers didn’t seem to be doing a very good job of explaining that kites need wind and that if you looked around down where they were organising things, it would rapidly become clear that there were areas in wind shadow whether of the saddle or of our pretty substantial building. But there was a real diversity of kites and many people having fun which is what matters!
Here are some images from my aerial viewpoint on the event. You should be able to click on the rather ugly first view of the gallery to be able to step through them in full size for your browser.
And now some videos (via vimeo, you should be able to click on the image to start the video and the little icon, bottom right of the image, just before the “vimeo” should open the video full screen on your device). Warning, it’s a bit noisy! This does rather illustrate that people hadn’t been told that they were in vortex there on the saddle and would fly their kites much more successfully if they walked up “Sue’s run” to the left for a bit. (1 minute and 12 seconds.)
People trying to fly their kites
And a bit later (38 seconds).
The numbers were building up.
Rather poor hand holding by me and it illustrates that where they were trying to fly the big and rather wonderful kites was really badly chosen, it’s in double wind shadow with a seasoning of leftover vortices from the saddle! (22 seconds.)
This one caught a better breeze and shot up past a rather grand kite doing well. (23 seconds.)
and more of the same challenges for the kite flyers and your humble cinematographer! (1’16”)
Definitely brought back some good memories from days when I guess I took work less seriously! Lovely to see so many people up here having fun.
Hm, nearly a year since my last post here. Back on 6.viii.23 I titled my post “A lot has happened … back in my eyrie again” and I could have used exactly that again. I am back here …
I’ve been loving seeing Mont Blanc beyond my monitor again …
So what has happened?
I became a grandparent back in January, something our daughter had very, very much wanted but it ended, belatedly and with an emergency Caesarean, what had been a very hard pregnancy for her. That she and her son survived was wonderful but it led into a horrible January for her, and vicariously for everyone around, as she had horrible first month mostly in hospital. While that went on the cat we had fostered had to be put down. That wasn’t so hard for me as I’m not a pet person and hadn’t loved Lily at all, but it was tough for J and the others in the family.
After that I was back up here for much of February, March and April and we planned a week skiing for myself, J and a friend of hers. That was lovely in many ways but I did something that pretty much ended my skiing after two days. However, it was fun having people here, eating more interesting food than I usually do (though I do OK!) and having lots of great conversations. After some time on my own up here getting a bit fitter again and getting some work done moderately successfully, then it back to the UK catching up with the family.
Then off to Latin America!
Then the big event was a month long work trip to Latin America from late May to late June. But more on that in other posts. I hoping to make time to put one or more posts about the work aspect on PSYCTC.org but I’m also hoping to put some posts here about the tourist bit which was mostly having a binge on pre-Columban art and artefacts in all three countries I visited: Ecuador, Chile and Costa Rica. I’m going to do that in reverse chronological order.
So how am I? How are things?
Well I’m aware of ageing! For some reason I have some nerve/nerve root compression which has led to some real pain and sensory disturbance in my right leg and some significant loss of power. That’s been true for about horrid though I think I’ve been a better invalid and better tolerator of pain that I would have said I am. It seems it was triggered by pulling the lightest piece of luggage in all my travels this year and pulling it the least distance. Go figure! Otherwise I know that all the events of the last couple of years have prompted me into some serious reflection about how I live my life and this issue of my “work/life” balance. I don’t like that term but I’ll accept that it’ll do for now. The issue is partly about how much work I would still like to complete before I hang up my keyboard but it’s also about having more pleasure outside of work (yes, I do get real pleasure from quite a bit of my work!) Perhaps I’ll come back to that in some later post this year. Now back to Costa Rica!
Hm, I last posted September last year. I see I started a post in late October last year and I may go back and put the images that underpinned that into it but here I am again!
A lot has happened, sad and tough in the extended family; a lot scuttling around in the UK partly around that but also, more positively, around things in the nuclear family and work. And a lot of work! But now, as of 18.vii.23 I’m back up in my eyrie and trying use the next three weeks to get some more steadiness into my work and way of life. I won’t bore on about details but will just put this here as evidence that I’m still alive for anyone who might use the blog to check up on that.
It’s the summer season up here, i.e. more of the restaurants and shops are open across the domaine and one little general store and some restaurants in Aime2000 itself which means I don’t have to trek down to Plagne Centre for essentials (it’s not the down that’s the challenge!) The tourists seem rather few on the ground and some places, like the beloved bar/restaurant “La Terrace” up here haven’t opened (some only open in the winter season but this is a first, I suspect the shortage of money for many families is biting into holidays).
Yesterday was one of the days that the locality hosts an event to promote it as a holiday venue and this time it was classic cars so at some point I was struck by the unusual amount of car noise (out of season you can go hours between one vehicle and the next). I looked out from “my” terrace and there was a long snake of cars clearly some real vintage ones and some I think were posh modern ones showing off, one an open back van with a rather fine white Lambretta or the like riding in the back! I was amused to see cars that were absolutely normal in my adolescence clearly turning out to claim classic status including a Ford Capri engraved in my memory for one of my more hairy hitchhikes in those long gone days when I got around so many places courtesy of my thumb and sometimes signs on bits of cardboard of even an A4 pad for the purpose. Apart from the colour and swank, and the rather amusing noise, the really striking other sensory impact was the smell even 12 floors at least above them the smell of unburned hydrocarbons was strong and not nice. Reminds me that when I get out on Cerise (my mountain bike for those not regulars in this soap), I notice the smell of every car that goes past. I guess that tells me how clear the air is up here generally, and how inured to the smell I am in London.
Although I love it that there are restaurants open in this building I try to live fairly frugally up here but I did treat myself that first evening. Click to get the full glory!
That was lovely though lunch just now was a raw carrot, two cold diots (local sausages), orange juice and coffee: I am trying to get healthier!
There are temptations in my way: this are from the boulangerie/patisserie down in Plagne Centre. Fortunately for the health aspirations I’m not really much of a sweet eater but yes, that tarte aux noix at the end made it back up to the apartment to join that coffee!
The weather has been varied but mostly colder and more wet than I had expected from previous years but the views remain often glorious and the dull weather does remove temptations to sunbathe and probably helps get work done. Here’s a rather impressive hailstorm. The biggest stones were good grape sized. I’ve never been in one like that (and stayed comfy indoors). This sequence shows how it down the valley and them swept over us. [At the moment the gallery plugin, which is the umpteenth I’ve tried and I’ve never really got to manage any of them, seems to be stringing all these images together so sorry if you find yourself looping from hail to food!]
Enough. Too much. A lot of views for anyone who wants more of the beauty up here.
This started as an Email but my Emailer was making a complete mess of the images so I moved it to a blog post. For all the images except this next, which is of Adam’s invite to his show, you can click on the images to see them full size if you have time and the interest!
But here is Adam’s invite, PDF file here if you want it. Rember the copyright is his here, not mine. My images are distributed under the licence I use for everything of mine here: the Creative Commons: CC BY-SA licence. I really recommend his work, I don’t know Will Brook but if he’s working with Adam I’m sure the work will be good.
So I recommend for anyone who can: see it! However, this blog post is an evolution from my attempt to send Adam some images from up here in my Alpine eyrie that I thought would appeal to him. I’ll leave it as a letter as that feels right. I started with this steal from his invite.
Loved the images Adam. Couldn’t resist grabbing that as a sort of appreciation. Sadly, barring some crisis, I’m 99% sure that I’ll be up here in the Alps.
I think you might like the juxtapositions we get to see up here.
That’s a sunset view from one side of the shared terrace outside our apartment. [For the blog version, click to see full size.]
This is the 2022 transhumance looking down yesterday from the other side of the terrace (Mont Blanc was in cloud in the far distance). The cows will move around our building for the next week or two being moved from one area of pretty verdant meadow to another and eating pretty much everything down to an inch high (and covering the place with their poo: almost as thickly as you can see there, those milking/watering points get much more densely covered than before the milking shed is moved to its next location.
When I took that, with a longish lens, I hadn’t seen the man with the backpack and the cow looking at each other either side of the electric fence. I think that’s your sort of moment. The juxtaposition with the end of a small beginners’ “button” also amuses me. [You have to click on this one to understand!]
And the machinery: this modern transhumance is a fascinating mix of centuries old and really quite modern!
They’ll eat most but not quite all the Rosebay Willowherb leaving just the odd stalk. (That’s back the other side of the terrace looking to left rather than right where where the sun sets over the top of a modern fast ski lift.) Top of a snow blower is poking into that scene in case you wondered what that was.
The summer season finished eight days ago now and immediately it does the tourists are replaced with a smaller number of technicians fixing and improving things.
That’s the first of four extension platforms being added to the last pylon support for the telecabine that joins our apartment building with Plagne Centre (whence I will leg it in a minute to get this week’s food shopping done in the little Spar shop there … the only shop unless you want to drop more the height of Snowdon into the valley).
On a rather sad final note: our local glacier (long lens and cropped to get in closer).
What’s sad about that is that it’s visibly shrinking yearly (though sadly I don’t have summer ‘photos of it from the past to show this). You can see massive rock slips onto the top of the glacier that give it a dark surface up there now that will absorbing the roasting sun up here rather than reflecting it. I’m not sure if the even more massive rock slips to the left of the glacier are new or not, we mostly know it to ski on in winter when everything up there will be snow covered, temporarily. The whole of the glacier is clearly sprinkled lightly with exposed rock and the foot of it, particularly to the left, is turning into terminal morraine. (There’s rather a nice great pillow of that: rock left by the trailing edge of the glacier, at the bottom. Who’d have thought that 1972 “O”-level geography would come back to me like this?!)
When will we face that our politicians and corporates, and though individually almost powerless, ourselves, are destroying the current state of our planet? Ouch. Go and see Adam’s work if you can: he balances concern with joy better than I do!
I think this belongs here, not on my personal research site. It comes out of a longstanding wrestle with “what am I?” and particularly “am I doing enough?” Though I’ve been ambivalent about labels like “doctor”, “psychiatrist” and pretty much rejected “scientist” for all its rhetorical overload, mostly I’ve accepted “researcher” as a part of my identity since about 1983. If I dig back even into my adolescence, that aspiration was there. Thinking even further back, probably from age about seven or eight, wandering across the fields across the cattle grid from where we lived in Kenilworth, I think the fascination and curiosity about how things are was there.
In about 1987 I suspect, I started to see my drive as a researcher as the question: How do we know, or think we know, what we think we do? I think the first time I put it “out there” would have been 1995 when I think I put it in my first web site (some bits of text from then are probably still in my research site.)
I have stuck with that drive. The biggest proportion of my research papers come within the CORE (Clinical Outcomes in Routine Evaluation) system/project. (As with everything I’ve done, CORE was co-developed, see history on the site.) CORE has grown into a pretty large body of things, mostly good things of which I’m proud. However, I do worry about how it can feed into much that is wrong with 21st Century research, higher education, health care, the NHS and therapies so it’s not a simple glow of pleasure I get looking at it.
What else have I done? Well, a rather weird spread which I won’t dive into now but the most recent thing is that I have finally managed, with my better half Jo-anne Carlyle, has been to co-write a book (“Outcome measures and evaluation in counselling and psychotherapy“). I am really proud of that and particularly that we have tried to steer a tricky course aiming the book for practitioners not theorists while not dodging so much that is wrong with current “outcome measurement”.
So I have been reflecting on this history and on where I’m going in the work years I hope I have left and things came together a couple of weeks ago with a little epiphany (I do like the idea of an epiphany, not least ‘cos it’s interesting to separate it from the old psychiatric definitions of “autochthonous delusions”, but let’s skip that for now). The thought that seemed to come out of nowhere (oh autochthony!) was:
Christopher: you’re an artisan researcher! Hm, or maybe you’re even failing to be that, but that’s probably what you are rather than being a more “successful”, clubbable researcher.
(Yes, I rarely have epiphanic ideas that don’t have a sting in the tail!)
Since that funny moment I’ve been turning the idea over and feel a need to put it “out [t]here”: hence this post.
I think this “artisan position” reflects my mistrust of so much I see in that list above: “21st Century research, higher education, health care, the NHS and therapies”. These have been my worlds since I went to university. They’ve been the clubs I joined, but always in my Groucho Marxist way: “I wouldn’t be a member of any club that would have me!” I now feel more ambivalent about them than ever it did. I think they have willingly adopted industrialised, 21st Century toxic capitalist, dehumanising, uncaring ways within my working lifetime.
When in 1975 I went to Cambridge (ooh, very prestitigious; ooh very second generational for me as it happened) to start medical training I dived in, passionately, enthusiastically, believing that at last I was really going to be encouraged to think, helped to think well, enabled to link with many others wanting that.
Of course for me there some mistrust was already there about the elitism, the tolerance of really, really shoddy thinking (yes, even out there in the fens!); the indifference to politics, to wealth differentials, the sexism, racism and so many other ingrained hatreds. However, there was much that was joy: new fields to wander in and think. Back in the 70s there was still something anarchic both in the world of higher education and of the NHS when I joined that as a very wet behind the ears medical student. These were worlds where, provided you didn’t do something very stupid and ticked enough boxes (yes, and I started with white, male, “indigenous” Brit, straight, not completely stupid) you could survive and, if you worked hard then you had a lot of freedom particularly about what you might think, say (cautiously) and perhaps even get time to research.
The down side of that for society was that if you ticked enough of the boxes (public school?) and if you were never going to ask any difficult questions about the ways of the world, the university or the NHS then probably you didn’t even have to work very hard: you had a job for life.
Anyway, I worked, mostly very hard, and I tried to work out what niche would suit me best and, where I found good enough niches (see my CV!), I was given a lot of freedom, I think I earned it. However, come, say 2009 I started to realise that both the research world, and particularly the world of research in the NHS, had been industrialised, commercialised, commoditised and was now managed, not with respect for practitioners nor really for new ideas or for the healthcare needs of the population. I was now managed too often with rank stupidity by managers and directors above me (one of them recently asked to link with me on LinkedIn: they always were lacking awareness of self or other!) The whole club was now to be managed as a hierarchical monolith of acquiescence to the layers above until, now, in the UK, your hierarchy ends with Boris Johnson and the nasty bunch he has around him.
I was slow to recognise the changes: stupidly so. However, ever since then I can see that I have been finding my way to the edges, finding smaller and smaller niches but managing to minimise any loss of autonomy, any erosion of my moral compass or my curiosity.
So now I realise that I’m an artisan researcher, probably always have been, and I’m proud of it. Enough (for now) already!!
Why that header image? Well it shows one niche I cut myself recently and something of the artisanal in the satisfaction I felt wielding the shovel. Now it looks like this:
It did go through this:
And it had one intermediate excavation after that snowfall. Niches don’t last for ever but neither do humans! Onwards.
I’ve written about icicles here before Icicles, snow and freedom. That was back in December 2019, before we knew coronavirus was about to hit us and the icicles in question were linked in with some not very well written musings about freedom. I see that, despite a global pandemic, my mind returns to similar themes. However, tonight I’ll make this mostly about the icicles and their life cycles.
I was amused when I arrived here with J, back on 31.i.22, to find this outside the windows at the end of the corridor, just outside our apartment. As ever, click on this to get the full sized image.
It’s an icicle, or ice, stalagmite and I’m not aware of ever having seen one before. It reminded us of Indian lingam and turning to my beloved Wikipedia for that link took me to the amazing Shiva lingam of the Amarnath temple which is a bit bigger than this one (about 12 cm high!) but still an ice stalagmite lingam. That one has an annual pilgrimage, and terrorists killing pilgrims so perhaps I should be happy that my own little ice lingam stalagmite is small.
It was a shock to read my post of over two years ago and find that my fascination with the physics of icicles is little changed and that the formations are very similar. Hm, perhaps it’s not very surprising that neither has changed! Anyway, one thing I have realised this time around is that I have two very distinct sets of icicles up here: the ones straight ahead out of the main window, facing (roughly) north, and the ones hanging off the balcony above on the side of the living room to the right of that window, over the terrace we share with three other apartments. Because the first ones get I think less than an hour of direct sun in the morning, and are in effect on a cold cliff of concrete, they can and do survive days and in winter they can die by becoming too big to carry their own weight, or because someone comes and knocks them off to prevent them falling and killing someone.
By contrast the ones facing the terrace get direct sun for most of the day if there is direct sun. Even more importantly for their life expectancies, they hang off over a wall of the brown wood facing of our apartment which catches the sun and gets frankly hot if there is little or no cloud. That must create a strong upward convection current of warm air sweeping up and around the icicles … and melting them rapidly. Here are three images of the corpses (and some smaller lingams/stalagmites).
I particularly liked this defiant but doomed fellow.
I think that’s an icicle that has turned a near perfect 180 degrees as it fell leaving its former lower tail sticking up from the snow around it … until it will, inexorably succumb. (I will check on it tomorrow but I’m sure it will have gone, not started to accreted falling drops to itself to become another lingam: it’s not sufficiently directly below a drippy point.)
Here though is the corpse of the largest icicle that had grown over some days outside the main window. It fell with a bang that startled both of us onto the balcony below.
Hard to tell from that ‘photo (and it was cold and hard enough leaning out to get that!) but that’s several kilos of ice half immured in the snow a good three metres below.
And here’s one last icicle corpse form, or perhaps it’s a way ice stalagmites start. I call these “ice jellyfish”. They happen when ice/water is on the tiles on the terrace edge. I suspect they start with a fallen icicle and drips following it as the tile is just getting above zero centrigrade.
So that’s it, no musings on freedoms and the sad state of the world, nor of the sad state of, and life cycles, of my musings tonight. I’ll just leave you with a gallery of icicles.
And a couple of views beyond swinging left to right, across the valley, Mont Blanc in the distance, Mont St. Jacques just across our little tributory valley and the Sommet de Bellecote.
There was a particularly glorious cloud formation over Mont Blanc yesterday evening (24.x.21) (usual: should open up if you click to see each of the five images full size).
The last couple of weeks I have felt very preoccupied with returning to the UK as J & I agreed I should come back a few weeks earlier than we had thought I would. So much has been going wrong back in the UK that it’s felt increasingly unfair to be up here. Somehow that cloud, and trying to capture it, felt part of the leaving process.
I never really get the colours and the intensity and richness of the evening light up here in my ‘photos (though some are much better than others … those will do!) For once I am cross-referencing this to the timelapse video of the day (https://vimeo.com/638414814). Have a look at the last 30 seconds of that to see that cloud forming and disappearing. I will really miss the beauty and the peace living up here: the stillness and quiet. At weekends particularly I can stand out on the terrace and look at the views and hear nothing but the breeze for minutes on end until a plane overhead or a car below intrude … but even they are quiet generally!
I will miss the last stages of the larches turning to brown and dropping all their needles and the first real snow arriving (though I would probably have gone back before it really starts to build for the ski season, even on our original plan).
It’s definitely moving to winter. The header image is of the first ice I’ve seen. That was late morning on my final walk down to Plagne Centre for this year. For some reason it took me back to memories of walking and birdwatching in the fields around Leamington in my adolescence. I’ve always loved the shapes that ice forms on puddles: it’s no simple process of phase change is it?
A few blog posts back, hm, the 4th of September, I wrote about my almost constant wish to be more productive: I could do with a purple patch and an ex-student teased me about outdoing catholics for guilt. Pedant that I am, I think it’s more puritan than catholic but what do I know about religion?! I’ve been amused in the last few weeks to see how the rosebay willow herb slabs of purple have turned to grey that at times catches the sun to create patches of silver. This does do it justice but it amuses me that it’s part of the patch I used in the images in that earlier post.
I have continued to want to achieve more, and to feel I can do something more about our destruction of the planet but I have managed to accept that I’m getting work done, if not all I would want, and that I am living a fairly low impact life. That’ll have to do for now.
And I’m just going to sign off from the Alps for this year with a collection of images from that last walk. This starts with my exit steps (they really are a bit like temporary steps down from a ship to a little boat pulling alongside), then more shots of this extraordinary place. Then the shift from the brutalist concrete to the trees via one shot of the meadow the cows chewed pretty much to the ground a week or two back in their brief transhumance co-habitation with me up here. There’s Mont Blanc way away in the background in the last shot.
By magic (or was it J fixing things?!) I do have this waiting for me in West Norwood when I get back…
West Norwood film club
I’ll have missed Seven Samurai, probably my favourite film of all time … but I have probably seen it seven times at least. The galleries and museums in London are open again and I get to catch up with 3D people. Onwards!
One last image. Moon in the morning over the top of the Les envers lift last week (another one to click on to get it in full).
Back on Monday I was walking down to Plagne Centre to get some food for the week. The view above is about halfway there where the track, or the piste as it is in the ski season, turns a corner and you can see Plagne Centre below. A slope rises very sharply on the right hand side of the track, out of that image and as I’d come to the corner I had noticed for the first time that that steep slope had a number of small young conifers. I noticed them because they had a range of paler greens and almost yellow needles that were catching the sun ahead. I sort of half thought of stopping to try to take ‘photos of them but decided to leg it on.
That’s a bit of a story of my life up here. I think of that corner as “bird corner” as there are some mature conifers to the left of the track and above the slope on the right there’s a thicket of shrubs and smaller conifers and there’s often quite a bit of bird noise here and I know I’ve seen a number of species without identifying them properly. I suspect there are goldcrests or firecrests which are pretty special, there are also some warblers in summer I think and at least one thrush species which I don’t otherwise see up here. However, legging it up and down to the SPAR I don’t take binoculars or the camera and I guess I always feel I should be getting back to work. However, I have registered the little area as one a target for my “new life” when I get to that! What the “new life” thing means is that I will make enough time in the week to go out with binoculars and perhaps the camera but with time, enough of it to just sit still for as long as necessary to feel that I’ve started to understand what species, mainly birds but the odd marmot perhaps and perhaps also to get to identify the trees not just call them “conifers” and to recognise more of the flora and butterflies. So this is a “good corner”! (Click to get it full size.)
There were a couple of years (I think it was a couple, I’m not actually sure, when I used to spend hours with two mates on Saturdays and Sundays walking around the countryside near Leamington Spa where we lived. We each had our binoculars and Pete and Kim were generally more savvy about nature that me, I remember Pete was very good at identifying birds by ear and Kim was good at butterflies and moths but we were all three mainly there for the bird life. We were also all three good at going ages in total silence and at sitting and standing pretty still for good enough periods for things to stop avoiding us. I know that creating that sort of still, observant, time in my weeks would be good so the “new life”, as so often, has a bit of a return to an “older life”.
Anyway, I came up by the lower track partly to avoid the worst of the smell from the liberal donation of cow pats back up the upper track nearer Aime 2000. As I walked back up I mentally kicked myself for not having at least stopped and tried to take usable ‘photos of the little trees clinging to the very loose soil on the steep slope. I wanted to share them so I doubled back (finding a little path I didn’t know was there connecting the two tracks) and here you are.
They’re not great ‘photos but I think they do convey both the light colours of needles that had caught the low sun and my attention on the way down and I think they also give a sense of that slope. I was having to pick my footing very carefully on the slope: the soil seems only a very thin and friable inch at most and liable to slip away under you feet have you sliding ignominiously back down to the track. I felt amused and impressed by the tenacity of the little proto trees and wonder how many will survive.
Which brings me to the more grim punchline here. Yesterday I finally put the keyboard aside for 40 minutes and watched Climate change: Europe’s melting glaciers | DW Documentary. It has beautiful sequences of the Alps and, though none of Savoie (it’s by a German documentary company and is mostly in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Slovenia) they feel so familiar. However, the message is grim: that none of the glaciers are likely to be up here by the end of the century unless our politicians really do address CO2 and methane and climate change, unless we all force them to do that and change our ways of life. Perhaps it’s aridity, despite scary flash storms, and “forest” fires that will threaten these young trees more than the challenges of clinging onto, into, that slope. Do watch the video. The voice over is, to my ear, American but the young people who form the narrative theme are from many countries and it’s right they should be as, as Save the Children have just pointed out, it’s children and particularly children from poorer countries (not the ones creating the problem) who will suffer most from climate change. I was lucky to have my countryside in my young teens. What will future generations have?
An odd spin off, linking with a bit of my work at the moment: on the documentary you get to see the subtitles in what I think is Bahasa Indonesia. Climate change is a global issue.
It’s worth watching through three minutes and 35 seconds of the timelapse video for today to see this through a different lens.
I get along OK without alcohol on weekdays up here but this visit we’ve evolved a pattern of “sharing” drink at at least one point over the weekend partly because a lot of tough stuff has been happening around J and tnp and S and other friends back in the UK. I celebrated the switch from work to this by filling a glass of red wine and taking the three paces back to the keyboard I raised the glass around the compass to many people I work with happily around the world and to friends (mostly in UK but some of my work colleagues further afield have become great friends as well as great colleagues.
So, cheers and thanks to all. (Ouch, it’s 23:40 for goodness sake, hm, where did the last hour go? … OK, I have been working a bit later than usual as J is having a meal with friends and will check in later.)
This morning opened with a lot of haze in the air creating what photographers call “atmospheric perspective”: where you can see what’s further away and what’s nearer by the blurring and desaturation of colours the further away things are. Of course, overlap perspective up in the mountains mean you can be very wrong about how far away things are but never about what’s in front of what! However, this “atmospheric perspective” is a part of the glory of the views up here that I love. So let’s have that header image from this morning again. (As usual, click to get the full image.)
Looking a bit to the side got this.
And in between the air seemed clearer and Mont Blanc had one of its hats on.
Then it was back to work, not writing R code very well (it comes and goes!) meanwhile the day outside darkened and the idea of sunbathing while having lunch disappeared. However, at one point I looked round the monitor to catch a rainbow, so here it is. Happy hunting for the pot of gold, I think it’s near Plagne Village!
In many ways it’s been a very tough year, not to do with living up here, nor much, luckily for me/us, to do with cv-19. Sadly a lot of that has come on or worsened since June when I did come up here so this post is counting my blessings and thanking colleagues and friends.
[Stage direction: protagonist raises glass again, same glass, little reduced, and salutes the world solemnly looking utterly mad! NO bird cries should be added, it’s mad enough as it is.]
