By: Vague

An excerpt from Vague’s new tumblr blog. Read more online here.

16 October 2010

“One thing I am realising out here is just how much of our modern lifestyle is built on compromise. This is brought into stark reality by the facts of existence out here. There can be no compromise…

Never compromise. Certainly make choices based on the bigger picture, but never lose sight of your vision.”

I was to elaborate on this little snippet of journal in a blog piece I crafted later in the day, once the sun had set and the owls came out to hoot.

By: Vague

An excerpt from Vague’s new tumblr blog. Read more online here.

Another day with no photographs, and my journal also records I was conscious of the fact I was letting my recording of events slip slightly. I had been busy, thatching, tidying and sorting the shelter, hanging food and equipment from paracord tied to the shelter. I had also ensured I had a good supply of dry firewood – a task that takes time and, as the old woodsman’s saying goes, keeps you warm three times; first when collected and carried, second when sawn, chopped and processed and finally when burnt.

This was a good thing, the weather had been cold and damp all week, with rain soaking everything. In my shelter, with a fire and my layers of wool, I was warm, if not entirely dry all the time. When I went out to relieve myself, or collected wood or water, I often came back very wet indeed. Yet this was the west coast of Scotland, an area of temperate rainforest where water was everywhere and intrinsic to the landscape.

Even when I was within the wood and heather walls of my shelter the wildlife still came to visit. I have already mentioned the wood mouse, the robin and the wren and my journal from this day records the visit of a noisy family of shrews, moving together along the base of the walls, shrieking, calling, squeaking. My camera was hung up and in its case to protect against the damp and the smoke, and I did not dare move, lest I frighten the tiny creatures. Instead I sat and watched as they rushed around catching spiders, cranefly and anything else that seemed like a tasty morsel. They were enchanting little creatures – although sitting observing them showed just why they have such a reputation for ill manners.

On this day I also levelled the area of the floor where I was now sleeping, and began to design a better bed. I wove a neck sheath for my main knife, as having it on my belt was proving impractical. I also sharpened all my tools – something that is often forgotten by those who only play at “survival skills”. Indeed, I have known people who have bought a new knife rather than bother to learn to sharpen. This behaviour is alien to me – I have had one of my knives for nearly twenty years now, my main sheath knife for over a dozen and my axe for six.

When I was younger (much younger) I was not allowed knives, my Mum hates the things, equating them with violence, as many of the population of the UK sadly do these days. I got around this by making a knife for myself, using an old Sheffield steel butter knife I found at my Granny’s, in a shed. I laboriously ground this with a piece of sandstone to reshape the blade, then learnt to sharpen it, also using a piece of stone. I then made a sheath from an old belt and used the leather from an old moccasin slipper to make the bone handled grip larger. I still have this knife today, and it is still kept razor sharp, the leather well oiled. A blunt blade is a disaster waiting to happen – more force is applied than should be used for a cut, exponentially increasing the chances of slipping and cutting oneself.

If children were routinely taught to appreciate a knife as a tool, learn to handle them, care for them, reshape them for their own needs, I wonder; how they would view them? Everyone I know who was brought up using blades as tools would never think of using them as a weapon.

Although no photos were taken on this day, I would more than make up for it on the 16th, and I am currently wondering which of the 126 I should upload tomorrow…

By: Vague

An excerpt from Vague’s new tumblr blog. Read more online here.

14 October 2010

“There’s a little wood mouse in the SW corner near my head, I have seen him already this morning, he seems to know no fear. I may feed him peanut butter and take some photos.”

This entry was recorded before I discovered that the mouse had chewed holes in the new dry bags I had bought as part of my resupply a couple of days earlier. These bags had been bought to replace the others that mice had chewed at an earlier camp. Despite being suspended on paracord, they were clearly too close to the horizontal shelter beams – a luxurious walkway for a mouse. I learnt from this experience and ensured the paracord length was much longer. Fortunately I lost little food this time.

These mistakes are irritating, but they always serve to remind me I am but a small part of the overall picture. The wren that flew in as I prepared breakfast, was another reminder of this (Troglodytes troglodytes, she was at home in my artificial cave). She alighted on the bench beside me, about three inches from my hand, tiny dark eye fixed on mine for a moment, then off she went to catch another spider from the heather thatching above our heads. Both mouse and wren are good for keeping down the insect population.

By: Vague

An excerpt from Vague’s new tumblr blog. Read more online here.

13 October 2010

“I have now rigged up the tarp inside the shelter and moved in. This evening there was a stag just down the hill from where I am. I had a go at roaring at him, and he answered.”

Although the thatching was not completely waterproof (yet), I decided to tie up my tarp under the side opposite the doorway.  This way I could be totally weatherproof, centrally heated and cook over the fire.  My hammock was rigged up on the ground, so I could use the midge and mosquito net around my sleeping bag.  This first night it was not too comfortable, as I had only decided to move in as the sun was setting – the rest of the day had been taken up by thatching.

I was surprised the stag had roared back at me, given that my red deer roar is pretty rubbish!  When I went out for a look he ran off at full tilt, although as recompense for not getting a photo I found a deer skull instead.  This was placed outside the shelter on the top of the boulder, by the doorway.  I now had a name for my new home.

One Skull Shack.

By: everylittlething

As soon as the unsold Christmas items are off the supermarket shelves, the chocolate eggs appear for Easter. Theologically, I can see a link – but I suspect that God has very little to do with this commercial venture. I’m not pretending that I don’t get excited when I give and receive Easter eggs. They are still a treat for this wean of an adult. Some parents carefully hide small eggs in their gardens so that their offspring can have the fun of finding them. Weather permitting. Traditionally, children would go around their communities asking for eggs – but not chocolate ones. Hens’ eggs were a treat, especially as the church decreed that they shouldn’t be eaten during Lent. Hens didn’t appreciate that their eggs weren’t needed so they kept on laying, and people were pleased to share their stored eggs with anyone who asked for them at Easter.

We always buy free range hens’ eggs from the butcher around the corner. We consider them to be of really good value. Recently we have been given a generous number of eggs by a friend who has a smallholding. A princely gift. Holding each one in my hand, while washing it, I consider the chicken and the egg conundrum. The answer is beyond me. Some are able to use scientific knowledge and skill to fertilize eggs but we cannot answer the chicken/egg question. A hen’s egg is pleasing to hold- it is as if one is taking in some small part of its magic. What powerful magic.

During my time as an infant teacher I had lots of fun teaching the little ones simple songs and rhymes. The simpler they were, the better to remember. Irene Pawsey’s short poem for children, “An Egg For Easter”, is one such :

“I want an egg for Easter,
A browny egg for Easter;
I want an egg for Easter,
So I’ll tell my browny hen.
I’ll take her corn and water,
And show her what I’ve brought her,
And she’ll lay my egg for Easter,
Inside her little pen.”

This ditty is an early lesson for children. Feed and water your hen and you will have your reward.

Even now, after several decades of cooking and baking with eggs, I still feel privileged when I crack open an egg with a double yolk. Or should that be two yolks? The puzzle reminds me of my studies in child development – should one refer to “the twins” or NEVER mention the word “twin” to those two people conceived at the same time?

When the sperm has fertilized the egg, there is the wonderful circle of life in evidence. But which came first?

As children, my brother and I were interested in birds’ eggs but it was really considered a boy’s hobby. Sexism was rife in the good old days. Michael was given someone’s collection of birds’ eggs, carefully preserved in sawdust-filled “Snowcem” tins. This, like a grown-up friend’s butterfly collection, is frowned upon now and I fully understand the thinking behind such condemnation. I have to say, though, that such collections were part and parcel of growing up in the 1950s and 1960s and they passed on an awareness and respect for the natural world.

The Willett and Hall “Pocket Book of Common British Birds” has descriptions of the eggs produced by each bird. This book is now considered outdated and many identification guides which are published today, omit the eggs completely – as if the birds give birth to live young. Well I, for one, am not going to steal eggs, I am just interested. Edith Holden captures my imagination with her observations of Nature and her ability to conjure up a vibrant tableau with what is very simple vocabulary, always surprises me:

“April 29th. Gathered some Wild Geranium and Wild Hyacinth. Saw a lovely little Hedge-sparrow’s nest in a Whin-bush with four eggs in it. The Gorse was in full bloom and made a glowing contrast with the blue eggs in the mossy nest. ”

In our house we have many books. We have some very beautiful books which require care but one of my favourites is a tiny tan-coloured book measuring nine cms. by fourteen and a half cms.. I have the dust cover in pieces. “The Observer’s Book Of Birds’ Eggs “. In it you are able to find details of the eggs of just about every bird to breed in Britain – and a sensible list of dont’s :

* don’t handle the eggs or disarrange the nest

* don’t spend more than a minute at the nest

* don’t disturb the natural cover

* don’t leave a track for others to follow

* don’t visit a nest more than once in twenty four hours

and

* never try to hunt for the nests of rare birds.

There are many casualties in the springtime. Birds like the magpie will make a meal of other birds’ eggs. We don’t have magpies here in Caithness but there is plenty of marauding going on along the sea cliffs. The herring gull is one such marauder. Guillemots, shags and cormorants should know the danger of leaving their eggs unprotected. And everyone knows what little killers the baby cuckoos are. They push all of the chicks and unhatched eggs out of their foster-parents’ home so that the fat little cuckoo creature gets the undivided attention of the dunnocks or reed warblers. These are the birds chosen as host by the female cuckoo. Sometimes meadow pipits may be chosen. Whichever bird is chosen to foster the cuckoo’s egg and, later, the chick, the cuckoo’s egg will match that bird’s own egg. Cuckoos have small eggs for their size so that the victims do not realise there is a new egg in the nest. Not only that, but the female cuckoo will remove an egg from the nest and eat it before laying her own egg there.

Eggs are not, exclusively, birds’. You and I are here to prove that. We tend to refer to the human egg as ovum (being Latin for egg) but, whatever label we give to it, these tiny, tiny eggs, once fertilised, give our kaleidoscope world its saints and sinners. Little thought is given to the how and why when a new baby is born, but those first moments of a child’s life normally produce a sense, in the mother, of having been the bearer of a new order. There has been nothing like this before – this little person is exactly what the world has been needing. Here is the answer to all the questions ever asked.

Offering less potential for world peace is the little tadpole developing from the frog spawn which is floating about in jellied masses in ponds and streams around now. Tiny black dots in the jelly turn into tadpoles after a couple of weeks and then, after about three months, they develop into baby frogs. Few of the tadpoles get that far, however, as many are eaten whilst in the pond. We had a pond in our cottage garden in Lincolnshire and each Spring there would be something of a competition to be the first person to spot the frog spawn. The female frog is capable of laying up to three thousand eggs. Not SO bad then that the infant mortality rate is high. Cutting the grass was always a problem once the little perishers had left the water.

Eggs and Springtime. Easter in Spring. Eggs and Easter. In Scandinavian countries, branches of flowering trees may be brought indoors in advance of Easter so that the little flower buds will open out for Easter Day. My granny used to do that – we have no Scandinavian roots as far as I am aware – except for the “Vikings-got-everywhere” thing. Eggs would be hung on these branches – sometimes hens’ eggs but often today they will be chocolate eggs.

As a child, it was very exciting and special to be given the opportunity to collect hens’ eggs and I don’t remember ever breaking one. Perhaps that is because I didn’t do it very often. It was equally thrilling to find a nest with the greenish-blue speckled eggs of a blackbird. We knew the parent bird would come back if we returned promptly so we didn’t linger, but the image stayed with us and we wondered if the blackbirds singing in the lane the next season had been growing inside those little turquoise gems. We expected to keep them and their own family as neighbours. Eggs and expectations seem to go together so well. This poem points to the new beginning within the egg and the hope which accompanies it :

EGGS AND EXPECTATIONS (Janet Mackintosh Cayley)

Beginning with rarity
Whose advent is the starting point
Of the others’ maturity,
This genesis gives form to the infant dawn
When a new nucleus
Becomes the source of initiation,
Giving rise to the opening chapter
At the outset of the original voyage.

The commencement of this rudimentary journey
Is marked by a single bud
Which, after its nativity,
Emerges from its spheroidal
To await infancy.
A suckling.
Ripening. Mellowing.
Contemporaneously instituting curiosities.

Suppose the world was originally an egg and the Supreme Being cracked it open to reveal the yolk – life itself and all that is needed to sustain it, and the white – to cushion us when we fall. Now imagine that we are fast using up our yolk – not difficult when we take note of what is happening to this planet. How close can the world come to consuming all of its yolk? What amount of albumen will then be required to bolster us? Where will we find it?

Troubling questions with some frightening answers – and worse – no answers at all. But the human race strives to survive. Fear and uncertainty may set in, yet, as the land warms and the daylight is extended each springtime, we eat our Easter eggs; we roll our hard-boiled eggs down steep hills or, as in America, across the President’s lawn; we make little nests for the Easter hare to fill with eggs and we remember that, two thousand years ago, a few friends of a nobody found that a boulder (symbolised by the egg), which had stoppered his tomb, had been rolled away. He was on their side of the tomb.

RUSSIAN EASTER CAROL

Easter eggs! Easter eggs!
Give to him that begs!
For Christ the Lord is arisen.

To the poor, open door,
something give from your store!
For Christ the Lord is arisen.

Those who hoard, can’t afford -
moth and rust their reward!
For Christ the Lord is arisen.

Those who love freely give -
long and well may they live!
For Christ the Lord is arisen.

Eastertide, like a bride,
comes, and won’t be denied.
For Christ the Lord is arisen.

By: Lydia Crow

ShiverWrigglers may recall Lydia Crow’s letter of complaint to the O2 Academy, Brixton in early December 2012. You can read it online here. Well, Nigel Downs, General Manager at the O2 Academy Brixton, has replied. Here is his response in full:

Dear Lydia,

I can only apologise for not replying to your most elegantly written of complaints dated the 5^th December 2012.

Whilst I’m pleased that you enjoyed a fabulous evening with Ben Folds Five, I can only apologise if perhaps your evening was slightly tarnished by what at best can be called an over enthusiastic member of our security team who possibly had good intentions but stretched these a little too far.  I have reiterated that perhaps security staff should allow audiences to find their own spots and only help if requested.

The venues policy is that people of all colour, race, sex, sexuality….and height be treated equally and enjoy the shows together.  My hope is that everyone attending shows at the venue will be made to feel welcome.

I hope that your experience at the hands of one of our maybe overzealous members of security won’t put you off attending shows at the O2 Academy Brixton and that maybe you can find it within your soul to forgive and maybe accept two pairs of complimentary tickets to a show or shows of your choice.  If I can entice you to perhaps give us another chance, perhaps you would like peruse our website (http://www.o2academybrixton.co.uk) and see if there are any shows you might like to attend.

Best Regards

Nigel Downs
General Manager
O2 Academy Brixton

By: everylittlething

I listen for the geese as they direct each other over our home, from one feeding ground to another. I have tingled when I heard the swifts scream all around me. Winter sounds, summer songs, spring music, autumn calls – they are everywhere. Some grey days, when the world won’t come alive, are menacingly quiet. And then a robin sings. It may be a male, it may be a female – they both sing, often from a hidden spot in a hedge, a bush or a tree. In the springtime – and we are almost there – it is the male who will sing his rich warble to attract a mate. His volume is up and the notes are long and almost plaintive. Later, towards the end of summer, robins seem to disappear for a while. While they are moulting, after breeding, they become a little embarrassed and silent. When autumn comes the robin will begin to sing again so that it can let us know where its winter territories are going to be. The song is quieter than in the springtime though. In his “Songs of Innocence”, William Blake touches on the throbbing song of the little redbreast:

“Pretty, Pretty Robin!
Under leaves so green
A happy Blossom
Hears you sobbing, sobbing,
Pretty, Pretty Robin,
Near my Bosom.”

The little poem is entitled “The Blossom” and who hasn’t seen a picture of the robin singing from a spray of apple blossom? Birdsong has such power. Power to lift a soul from its muddy puddle. I cannot understand how a body has no interest in the sound a bird makes when that same body will travel miles to catch said bird on camera. Why do people have tick-lists of birds they have seen when they could stay and listen and thrill to those exquisite notes? I have only seen the cuckoo once but I have heard it many, many times – even as far north as we now are in Caithness. Wordsworth in “To the Cuckoo”, describes that tantalising sound,

“While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear,
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.”

My family honour the first call of the cuckoo. It is a rite of passage. When you hear that sound, there is a certainty through Spring into Summer. My grandparents loved it, my mother still loves it, my own generation loves it and my grown-up children are captivated by it. The cuckoo’s loud and monotonous two-syllable call IS Spring. This is the cuckoo’s courtship and will attract a female for the male but, nonetheless, to the human ear, it IS Spring. But back to our little robin. The robin and the wren, whose song is pure thrill, will punctuate a winter’s day with their territorial calls but, as the March days lengthen, the thrush will join in and the blue tits and great tits too. Spring migrants will soon arrive and add their voices. The willow warblers sing without pause to make certain of their territories. Their song is soft and liquid with notes descending. The tune is beautiful.

Birdsong is not limited to the daytime. One of the most memorable sounds of the first part of Spring is the song of the tawny owl. The male and female make the well-known “tu-whit, tu-whoo” sound by calling to each other – a merry note, so says Shakespeare – so it must be! Their song is much pleasanter to the ear than the call of the barn owl which can be pretty scary. It ranges from a hiss to an eerie blood-curdling scream – hence the “screech owl”. We have both here. We sometimes hear the tawnies from our house and the barn owls we spot from the car when we are driving home in the evenings. It was much the same in Lincolnshire. The tawny owls frequented the trees at the bottom of the garden and a great ghost of a barn owl would fly low alongside the car of an evening. Their calls please me. As the cuckoo is symbolic of Spring, so the owl is emblematic of the night – except for the short-eared owl which is an opportunist and hunts in the daytime too. Last year, on a walk, we spotted one flying ahead of us, then stopping, then flying on- rather as a wheatear does. It isn’t classic owl behaviour but that is what happened.

Some twenty years ago, living in a wrecker’s cottage named “Grey Gulls”, we were able to watch and listen to the various gulls sailing the skies of Orkney. Their songs range from the bark of the great black-back to the shrill whistle of the common gull. Now that we are across the Pentland Firth from there, we hear them still. Sometimes it is difficult to differentiate between the bubbling trill of the curlew and the laughing mew of the herring gull. We hear all of the sounds which the herring gulls make as they are all around us throughout the year. We throw an apple core onto the garden and ZAP! a herring gull is down on it and swallowing it in its entirety. You can even watch it go down the neck of the bird. The mafia of gulls which exists in our neighbourhood contrasts vividly with the solitary thrush in Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Darkling Thrush”. Hardy claims hope for the new century in the song of the thrush. He called it a blessed hope which the thrush knew of but the writer did not. It turned out to be a century which brought two conflicts on world scale – but our planet survived and is currently stepping gingerly into a new millenium. While the birds continue to sing, there is hope for all our tomorrows.

Another favourite birdsong is the cooing of the dove. Often, when I am at my desk, I can hear the doves in the trees which fill our square. Perhaps it is because of the part the dove plays in the Christian scriptures, but that sound is such peace, such calm – and clears my fuddled head every time I hear it. They are silvery sweet birds and I am always glad to see them share the birdseed in the garden. Another sound they make, which I consider to be friendly and sociable, is the tuck-tuck-tuck as they pick up the seed which is scattered daily on the roof of my little metal tool shed. I first met the modest dove when we lived near to the village school and the trees surrounding it had cooing doves sharing their secrets with this voyeuristic little girl. I hope there will always be a pair of cooing collared doves close by.

The messages which we call birdsong don’t stop after the breeding season. John Keats, in his very well-known “To Autumn”, was aware of the redbreast whistling from a garden croft and gathering swallows twittering in the skies. At the back end of the year those twittering swallows sit on the wires, which run to and from our home, calling to each other. The sound is particularly lovely as it will likely be the last time we hear from them for a while. Their relative, the house martin, is another twitterer. We shared our first home with a pair of house martins. They would return each year until our children were old enough for boisterous games below the birds’ pitch. We would listen to their chattering and watch them build as they came to and fro with mud for their nest. The sounds of the martins and of our children playing, blend in my memory, transporting me to delightful summers when the returning martins were not as new to parenting as we were. When the children were much older we lived in an old cottage with a roof which was in part supported by a massive tree trunk. The swifts would nest in that roof year after year and wake us with the summer dawn – yet staying up late in the evening. Their families – I am sure there cannot have been only one family – sounded more like rats scurrying about up there than birds. Don’t read Alan Garner’s “The Owl Service” while you have visiting swifts in your attic!

The tiny wrens make excellent parents and the strong family bond is reflected in the way the young of the first brood often help their parents in feeding the next lot of babies. Both sexes sing during courtship and their vocalising is a joy to hear:

“You know I love the wren
Yodelling for me,
Yammering as he defends his den,
Yelling to save his mate -
Yet you will hear his song, then
Yesterdays will be as today.” ( Janet Mackintosh Cayley )

The poor little things are fairly terrified of the jackdaws who come here to join in the breakfast party in our back garden. The jackdaws come in their tens. Their “chack-chack-chack” is enough to frighten the smaller birds and yet, to me, it is an amiable sound, almost as if they are telling me that Jack and Jack and Jack have all arrived and send greetings.

By the end of March, garden bird activity becomes quite intense. As well as our robins, wrens, thrushes and tits, the chaffinches, dunnocks and greenfinches join in the music. Some, you just hear and rarely, if ever, see – like the wee goldcrest. The summer visitors, such as the blackcap and the chiff-chaff, arrive in April. The orchestra expands until, in early June, birdsong is everywhere. How anyone cannot love the passion in each aria, I will never understand. They sing out with everything they can give and then, when light is all around them, they come down to the ground and look for food. It is thought that the song thrush starts off the dawn chorus when it is still dark and the great tits, blackbirds and wrens are also early birds. But they are unable to catch the worm until it is light. Then they tank up and, it seems, they give an encore later in the morning – almost a thank you for the food they have found.

There have been many times when the dawn chorus has seemed to me so beautiful that it has almost made me cry. There are some sounds which make your nose tingle, your eyes fill and simply pick up you breath and run away with it. The dawn chorus is choral singing of the heavenly order. Two of our lovely daughters were born early in the morning – one in Spring and the other in early Summer. They were welcomed into the world by the same celestial choir which will sing us through Spring and into Summer 2013. They sang away the pain of someone dear who had suffered with Motor Neurone Disease. The music is there all our lives through:

“A song of the rolling earth, and of words according,
Were you thinking that those were the words, those
upright lines? those curves, angles, dots?
No, those are not the words, the substantial words are
in the ground and sea,
They are in the air, they are in you.” (Walt Whitman 1819-92)

By: Vague

An excerpt from Vague’s new tumblr blog. Read more online here.

12 October 2010

I snapped no photos on either this day, or the following one.  I was busy with the shelter and did not need to move far after replenishing my water bags and bottles on my laborious walk back from the train.

My journal entry for this day is correspondingly small, yet it serves to document the day.  Just a small note, or a single photo, will jog my memory.  I am so glad I did keep the journal.  Here follows the entire journal entry for this day:

I’m falling behind with my journal entries.  The simple reason is twofold; I’ve been rather busy just doing “stuff” and I’ve more or less moved in to my shelter – apart from sleeping.  This means I have yet to find a routine or even a place to write.  I will soon enough, have no fear.

Brief mentions:

Yesterday.

Saw wild cat track.

Train conductor letting me off the 3p I was missing for the return fare, so I didn’t have to buy two singles – that would never have happened in England.

Fox outside the shelter.

Steak sandwich and wine.

Total exhaustion after carrying all that weight back.

Packing and sorting food.

Beautiful evening.

Today.

Small creature near me when sawing supports for a bench – shrew?

Bench.

Clearing floor.

Packing base of walls.

Rigging up poncho door.

Hearing music, thinking it was close by, but it was actually a small creel boat way out on the loch.

Cold, cold night.

By: Vague

An excerpt from Vague’s new tumblr blog. Read more online here.

11 October 2010

I set my alarm for the first time since leaving the city.  The train was not very early, but I thought it wise to factor in extra time for fire lighting, breakfast cooking and the walk to the station – something I had yet to do from my new location.

The night was full of noise, the deer roaring, the Thing In The Bracken and something making a yip, yip, yip yelping sound further down the hill from my hammock.  It took a few listens to realise it was a female tawny owl, unable to make the full owl hoot the male is famous for.

On the walk to the railway station I followed a deer trail down the hill to the sea, then back up the glen.  I had still not discovered the easier way in to the area I was camped.  On the way I saw many tracks of deer and, most excitingly, a single large cat print, substantially larger than the average domestic cat.  I knew that the area was known to have wild cats, the famous Highland tiger, untamed and untameable, and, while I was delighted to find the track, I was also slightly irritated that I did not have the time to attempt to follow the trail.

The weather was beautiful, with clear blue skies and a warm sun – yet the sun was beginning to get sleepier and lazier day by day, with dawn coming later and dusk falling earlier.  The angle of shadow was increasing and, in the places where the sun ceased to fall, chill gathered.  I was glad I was warmly dressed, and I was glad I would soon be moving in to my shelter.

My resupply was successful, although heavy to carry back.  I did not worry about the weight of food, given that I would not be moving along for a while, if at all, and there was plenty of storage space in the shelter.

The sunset was beautiful, with stunning colours reflected in the calm waters of the sea loch.  As I stood, leaning against an oak and listening to the sound of the evening chorus and the deer roaring, I was glad I was back in the woods, away from the hustle and bustle of others.  I had lived for nearly ten years in a city, prior to leaving for the hills, lochs and woods – and yet I found coping with the sudden noise, sights and scents of a comparatively small town difficult after four weeks in the wild places.

I ate well this night, frying some steak in butter and eating it in a baguette,  with an empty and washed peanut butter jar-glass of red wine, listening to the tawny owls calling one another, sending shivers of fear into the local rodent population.  Who said wilderness living has to be frugal?

By: Lydia Crow

In the final few months of 2008 my life started upon a curvature of change that was going to have substantial and long-standing effects. Life would, quite honestly, never be the same again.

My creative frustration, that feeling I had built up for years of not having done enough to pursue my own creative interests while I had been trapped by a life that I eventually came to realise I didn’t actually want, was one of the things that had finally reached a claustrophobic boiling point. As a result, over the early months of 2009 I started working on a website to house various creative snippets written by myself and my friends. I launched this, ShiverWriggle, on 29 June 2009. One of the many reasons for doing this was to make myself take my creativity seriously. I struggled to write anything without building it into a bigger overall work, so I forced myself to start writing Shorts (very short stories no longer than 250 words) regularly. When I felt that I had not written anything of a longer nature for a while and was struggling to decide what to write, I posted the opening two-line excerpt of a real-time fictional diary online (“That dead guy followed me home again tonight. He’s starting to irritate me.”) in a bid to ensure that I picked up the larger task and ran with it. I called my own bluff and it worked: by the end of the year I had completed Journal (2010) and I’m now working on drafting it into a stand-alone novel, written predominantly in the third person.

This last point is really important: these things I have written during the last four years of my life are all important to me. Every single one of them. In all this time I have only ever taken one of the things I have written and posted on ShiverWriggle offline, and I also stand by that decision: but now I want to start afresh. These latest few formative years have been more precious to me than, possibly, any other series of years in my life: definitely since childhood at any rate. But four years on I am now at a similarly important turning point in my life as I was during those autumn days of 2008. Nearly two weeks ago I handed in my notice at the University at which I have spent the last four and (nearly) a half years working. I started work at the University of Essex at about the time my entire life began to change, so it seems neat as well as important that I take a step back and reassess everything now.

The truth is, since I made that final decision almost two weeks ago to start afresh and make the final leap towards being the me that I’ve been working on for the last four and also thirty years, I’ve felt more and more uncomfortable about what I have posted online under different pseudonyms. I finally feel at a point in my life where anonymity is no longer necessary, more complicated, and in any case is more or less pointless given that people know who I am. If nothing else, I explained my various pseudonyms on my own personal website when I launched that on the final day of 2010.

This is not to say I regret having written under different names, not by any means. It was important to me at the time that I wasn’t associated with my writing, often for the protection of loved ones who I didn’t want to be associated with some of the things I had written: but I’m now in a delightful position whereby my family and close friends know who I am. They might not understand me entirely, but they know me: and I no longer feel like I have to tread delicately in order to protect their feelings. I have finally unashamedly and openly grown into my own skin, and they still love me. And being loved for who you are, rather than despite who you are, is possibly the most perfect thing ever.

I leave my job at the end of July. I have no job to go to and I don’t know what I will spend the next few years of my life doing. But I do know that I want to do everything as me, for me and because of me. There will be (and still are in some instances) right times for pseudonyms, but I now feel that I want to start drawing together the various threads of the different versions of me across the internet to make a version of a whole me that can go forward in this world and share her multifaceted self with you all as she does so.

What does this all mean? Well it means I’m evaluating what I have posted online over the last few years. A lot of it is going to disappear and what doesn’t will now be attributed to me (that is, the Christian name and surname I was given when I was born). Possibly even by the time you read this, there will be no more mention of Elysia and Tess on ShiverWriggle, though a certain Lydia Crow might already be listed as a contributor. There’s another project I have to decide whether to wrap up or hand over to someone else, and then I’m free to create my own creative world from not-quite-scratch with me transparently at the centre of it.

I love treasure hunts, so I’ve no doubt my online presence will not remain easy to understand for long, but this feels like the right thing to do right now. And, given that this is how I plan to live my life over the coming months and years, I can’t really say fairer than that.