Archives

Started reading: Osprey by John Lister-Kaye 📚

My weekend’s reading sorted…

Thanks, @littletollerbooks.bsky.social !

Pre-strategy workshop breakfast in Market Deeping.

Well, this is exciting — a wild pine marten spotted just down the road from me in Worthing. It’s the first time in over a century.

Enjoying a solstice party on the beach.

Trees don’t run you over; they don’t shout at you or nick your mobile. In fact there’s a good argument to say that trees are better than people.

— Jeremy Vine, in Broadleaf, the @woodlandtrust.org.uk magazine.

Started reading: Overnight: Journeys, Conversations and Stories After Dark by Dan Richards 📚

Started reading: Ancient - Reviving the Woods That Made Britain by Luke Barley 📚

Started reading: The English Path by Kim Taplin 📚

Bird feeders scrubbed, dried, disinfected and refilled.

A particularly friendly robin caught in winter winds at RSPB Pulborough Brooks this afternoon.

Started reading: The Return of the Grey Partridge by Roger Morgan-Grenville 📚

Started reading: Time and Tide by Fiona Stafford 📚

Fungi season. The woods were full of them yesterday.

And then autumn is motorway rain and the dirty courts of service stations, greys and greases and the smeared crimson brake lights streaming into junctions, and days that seem to shut themselves down, disgusted and forgettable.

— Horatio Clare in Autumn, edited by Melissa Harrison 📚

Started reading: Autumn by Melissa Harrison 📚

Spending some quality late summer time with my girls and the local nature reserve.

Started reading: The Hard Way by Susannah Walker 📚

I think I’ll pass it on to my eldest daughter when I’m done.

Stunning work there, Mr Spider.

Currently reading: The Accidental Garden by Richard Mabey 📚

Starting to work my way through the Wainwright Prize shortlist.

Started reading: The Long Man & Friends: Sacred Sussex by Philip Carr-Gomm, David Bramwell 📚

Started reading: The Cuckoo’s Lea by Michael J. Warren 📚

Picked up one of the special independent bookshop editions from the Steyning Bookshop.

Stalking the storks at Knepp.

#mbjune day 1: Tree 📷

A stork flying overhead at Knepp.

Started reading: Waters of Life by Tom Bowser 📚

I do love a book full of beavers.

Just arrived, and I can’t wait to dive in…

Rowan Williams on David Attenborough:

There are people who seem to think concern for the natural world somehow sidelines characteristically human concerns. David Attenborough makes it clear deep attention to our environment nourishes all that is most humane and generous in us – and if we lose this …

Shoreham Beach, 6.45am, Easter Sunday

Travel from most countries to the US is dropping under Trump.

This is a presidency with no understanding of complexity. The second and third order effects of what they’re doing will be more and more painful to the average American.

Spring anemone.

Our first visit to Kingley Vale.

Interesting selection of stickers, found rather randomly on a Sussex gate.

Back at the Brighton Dome for the Blue Film Programme of the Banff Centre Mountain Film Festival world tour.

I think spring is finally here.

When you are young and naive you think the professionals involved will sit down soberly, look at the evidence wisely and then labour long to achieve a good end based on sound science and experience. As you get older you realise that it is commonly not this way.

— from Bringing Back the Beaver by …

Nice to have company up on the downs.

Last Sunday of March, the first of British Summer Time.

7.35am, South Downs, near Lancing College.

Song thrushes and skylarks singing.

Have no regard for the words of the witless. They neither love nor care.

From Bringing Back the Beaver by Derek Gow 📚

Oh, dear: UK on alert after H5N1 bird flu spills over to sheep in world-first - Ars Technica:

The H5N1 bird flu has spilled over to a sheep for the first time, infecting a domesticated ruminant in the United Kingdom much like it has in US dairy cows, according to UK officials.

😬

Such a teasel.

Sunset on Shoreham Beach.

Middle of March, and I’m still scraping ice off the car…

AI, My Ass:

… when I wandered into the bathroom and saw the bidet, I made a sound I haven’t been able to reproduce. Heated seat, glowing blue light, and the kind of steely-eyed menace you get from people who have a job to do and know what’s involved in getting it done.

This slice of life post made …

The hollowed world of the appistocracy:

The true power of the appistocracy isn’t measured in billions but in dependence. It’s a relationship that transforms us from citizens into users. Yet even as these digital dependencies deepen, so too does our capacity to question them – to carve out spaces of …

Smart Home is an illusion:

So maybe it’s time we finally changed the way we talk about the Internet of Things (IoT). We keep talking about it as something achievable. Perhaps it’s time we started talking about what it really is: one of the biggest consumer scams ever invented.

Oh, I really want …

Quiet on the beach.

First lamb I’ve seen this year.

I now have access to Sora, OpenAI’s generative video tool. So, I asked it to generate a stressed middle-aged blogger writing in a coffee shop.

The results are… interesting

Truth found in a second-hand bookshop.

Friendly wee fella.

Signs of spring.

Started reading: Renaturing by James Canton 📚

An evening in Brighton for the Banff Mountain Film Festival Tour.

Miscellaneous Adventures:

It started as any walk should, with the discovery that the entire contents of my Kleen Kanteen flask had emptied itself inside my rucksack. My jacket, gloves and everything else I knew I would need that day were drenched in coffee.

Now, that’s how to start a newsletter.

This evisceration of worldly experience is evident in news stories of people dismayed to find themselves suddenly sharing their spaces with other animals. My anti-favourites include ‘Vicious badger roams Scots school grounds as farmer warns parents’ (Daily Record), ‘Man calls 999 …

Cold, frosty and misty Sunday morning in the South Downs.

If you’re contemplating getting into (or back into) blogging for the New Year, micro.one might be worth a look. Blogging with fediverse compatibility — for $1 a month.

Headline only RSS feeds are an abomination.

It’s update your Apple devices day: bug fixes for iPhones and iPads.

How I escaped my desk, and spent the day at WWT Arundel:

www.coffeeandcomplexity.com/walking-a…

Stunning wintry photos from Chris Townsend.