Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Consider the Worm...

 

This worm is a resident of the UK and yet just Look at the Size of it!  That person`s hand can hardly contain its folded-up Enormity - at 15in (40cm), it is three times the size of a common-or-garden specimen.

How can this be?  Global Warming… Aliens… No! – this worm lives on the beauteous Inner-Hebridean Isle of Rum where, abundant in wildlife though it be, the island has no moles, frogs, badgers… in fact hardly any evil-worm-eaters at all.

In this blissful otherworldly place, worms simply live long and prosper, becoming not only the biggest earthworms in the UK, but also the longest-living - up to ten years instead of two! 


Worms are modest creatures and yet Charles Darwin wrote, "Of all animals, few have contributed so much to the development of the world as we know it, as these lowly creatures." (Surely food for deep thought).

It doesn`t seem much of a life though… incessant chomping on any old soil and casting it out as Something Beautiful  (healthy and fertile); It has been estimated that nearly every particle of healthy top soil on earth has passed through earthworms at one stage or another. (earthwormsinfo.com). 
So tread delicately out there.

One (perhaps the?) benefit of being an earthworm is that they don`t catch any diseases, teeming as they are with good and Mighty bacteria. Sadly, they`re also protein-packed and toothless, hence their countless predators.

Agonised by such thoughts, I always reinter worms unearthed in my gardening efforts, but it only takes the patter of rain to bring them hurtling back out to Breathe. 

Or of a Fiendish Cunning seagull pretending...

(I thought he was just Happy when we first spotted him). 

One Day, Seagull, all worms will be Anaconda-Sized.

Monday, January 11, 2016

Up and AwAAAaaaaay!

 
Well it`s all gone – the cards, the tree, the Chocolate called Tonka (not made of dump-truck, but of exotic South American Tonka Bean). And delectable. I`m hoping it`ll soon be found to be a Super-Food.

Anyway, this is that grim, grey, grotty period (I like it), when we splodge around thinking oh hell – we really have to get the roof mended now.  

And then of course, we must Make a Resolution.  As urged by magazines, TV programmes and you-can-do-better books.

So I`m taking up Wingwalking.


People often ask, "Where can I WingWalk?", say the professionals of Wingwalk Displays.

I think we can all relate to that…  and next time I can tell them!

For not long ago there was talk of this very thing on the radio – recently graduated Nikita Salmon answered a Wingwalkers Wanted ad in the local paper and was soon whizzing round the heavens in Formation Display! 
 


She described her job as the most exciting in the world; as quite an Adventurer myself, I could not forget her words and Now is the Time! 

Though not quite as youngfitandbeautiful as Nikita, I certainly meet the criteria for the Individual No-Dancing version (over 16, under 12 stone) and I`m well under the age of doctor`s certificate required (65). 
 
Might need a leg-up to the top wing, perhaps…

But once wedged into the rig, you`ll be taken on a palpitating series of aerobatic manoeuvres - could be low-level flypasts, zoom climbs, 500ft dives…

It`s DAZZLING, HEART-POUNDING and SPECTACULAR!!

Tempted?  And for this unforgettable experience, you can even have a video camera on the end of the wing!


Come on down!