Dunge

This week's birding trip with my mentor and his expert daughter was to the windswept shingle of Dungeness.







Although the weather hasn't been ideal of late, it was actually quite warm on the day (Thursday) and apart from a fairly strong breeze (always a feature of this open landscape anyway) it was a fine day to be out.

What little rain there was occured as we were about to duck into one of several hides about the reserve and by the end of the afternoon there was an outbreak of warm sunshine.





At the entrance we were joined by another couple of birders, friends of my mentor who I had met before in less happy circumstances when one of them plunged off a sea-wall and ended up in hospital. It was good to see them again and that he was in one piece and looking fit despite a souvenir scar very close to his eye.

  
At first glance the landscape here in the bottom corner of Kent, can seem rather barren and desolate, with the looming nuclear power station not helping the view to be any more picturesque. On closer inspection though this is a rich habitat with a variety of salt marsh flora, insects, arachnids and of course birds.

On this occasion, as far as I was concerned the quality made up for the quantity. Although there were not huge flocks of birds to be seen there were a number of "life-ticks" for myself which made the day very exciting and pleasurable.

The first bird we noticed on the drive in towards the well-equiped reception and shop, was a Cattle Egret. A very good start for me.

I bought an Avocet badge for my hat to join the rather fraudulent Puffin (I've yet to see one in the flesh), as the logo of the RSPB it seemed appropriate and anyway they have legs of my favourite colour: blue.

Tempting though it is to just watch the birds from the huge viewing windows in the RSPB building we set off from hide to hide slowly addding to our tally of birds for the day.

 

One of the hides was almost as fascinating for the fauna inside as through the window, since it seemed to be full of spiders.


At Christmas Dell we broke out the tea and sandwiches by which time we had added the third type of Egret (Little Egret being rather easier to find), Great White: Another first for me.









Before we finally set off home we paid a visit to the beach at the point for a period of sea watching.


Although we failed to see the Glaucous Gull which was the main object of the detour we did see a number of gulls and terns and several species which for me were good "ticks": Arctic Skua, Black Tern, Eider Duck and Guillemot.

I also enjoyed watching through one of the scopes as a Gannet which had been beating rather painfully into wind suddenly folded its wings and went into the species' characteristic spectacular high-speed plunge into the sea.



In addition to the new birds we also saw Stonechat, Linnet, Great Tit, Pochard, Teal, Wheatear, Sandwich and Common Tern, Greylag, Cormorant, Gadwall, Lapwing, Ruff, Common Gull, Dunlin, Ringed Plover, Marsh Harrier, Kestrel, Grey Heron, Sand Martin, Swallow, Great Crested Grebe, Black-headed and Black-backed Gulls.

As is often the case I was tormented by singing bushes immitating the loud song of Cetti's Warblers but where no bird was able to be seen even on very close examination.

My friends also saw a Bar-tailed Godwit and Goosander neither of which I managed to get the binoculars on.

As we returned to the cars we noticed what we thought at first was another Great White Egret but after getting the 'scopes on it we discovered that it looked more or less like a Grey Heron...except that it was the wrong colour.

The lady from the RSPB, back at the entrance, acknowledged that there was indeed a "pale heron" in residence but owing to some slight doubts as to its neck shape my friend's daughter decided it was a hybrid which she dubbed a "Heregret".

After a good run back there was just time to hit the fish and chip shop for the second night running (a sausage substituting for the fish in the interest of variety) before setting up for the visit of the game group.

Love, Revenge and Buttered Scones by Bobbie Darbyshire - From my Goodreads account

Love, Revenge & Buttered Scones by Bobbie Darbyshire

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Just finished this and I'm happy to be able to report that I enjoyed it. Happy because I know that Bobbie Darbyshire is a GoodReads author but also because I met her at a book signing and she it was that talked me into reading it. Well to be fair she wasn't as pushy as that sounds but she did describe it in a way that I felt interested in trying it. She is under the impression I think, that I decided not to buy it but had a change of heart and returned. In fact it was more that I wanted straight away to buy it but took myself outside to try and talk myself out of it. For one thing L,R & B S has jumped a queue of several hundred "ToBeReads" on shelves and just in heaps here. I was actually in town for an air-show but couldn't resist a bookshop browse even without, on this occasion, any need or desire to buy...

Anyway back to Love and Scones, I had the impression that it would be a lightweight, quick, amusing interlude to fit between the dark post-war world of Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther and the latest vast breeze-block installment in G.R.R. Martin's Ice and thingummy fantasy saga. I got much more than I was expecting though and found it was one of those books to which I actually looked forward to returning each evening. Love and revenge are strong themes running through the book which takes us from England to Scotland with side excursions to World War II France and the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. For the most part the narration alternates by dropping into the point of view and thought processes of three of the main characters: one appearing in a rather "stream of consciousness" impressionistic style in keeping with, and illuminating, his personality. For me, seeing the plot unfold through these different eyes worked very well and made this trio very real.

I won't reveal too much of the plot, which involves several twists and turns and some shocking revelations about these three, their relationships and their interaction with a number of new and intriguing acquaintances in Inverness. The three independently set off in search of something life-changing and in the end they get it but not exactly in the way they were expecting. Along the way it takes a very humane look at love, loneliness, and guilt but manages it with a light humourous touch as well as some very dramatic set-pieces. I think I can't sum up my own opinion better than in the words of book-blogger David Hebblethwaite of Follow the Thread "...A fast, fun read but not a superficial one" and that I was not expecting the latter aspect is what made this read a particular pleasure.



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Fish n Film Friday

Image via WikipediaMy film night friend turned up again on Friday evening. It was not entirely unannounced but I had been out most of the day and forgotten to check my messages. At any rate I had already provided my own fish and chips by the time the doorbell rang and I had decided to watch a film, so he was very welcome and able to help me make the decision.

The film we chose in the end was another of the Woody Allen canon from the middle years: Hannah and her Sisters (1986).

This is a fairly low key drama with plenty of time to examine characters and is in my opinion Woody playing to his strengths. True it does include the director himself in a typical Allen role as an angst-ridden hypochondriac but at the time I had probably not yet begun to see his appearance as unnecessary or even undesirable as in some of his later films.

The rest of the cast is excellent and includes at least one surprise in that Michael Caine plays one of the leads. Not perhaps the first choice for a New York family relationship drama one might be forgiven for thinking. The choice worked though and he was ably supported by some more familiar players from the Allen repertory company: Diane Wiest, Mia Farrow and Julie Kavner (now, famously the voice of Marge Simpson) for example.

The cast also includes Max von Sydow, Carrie Fisher, Maureen O'Sullivan playing the mother of her real life daughter (Mia Farrow), Barbara Hershey as the third sister and an early appearance by John Turturro now better known for his wonderful Coen brothers' characters. It is a stunning cast and Woody adds another as was often the case in his best films: New York. At one point in the film we even get a tour of some of the more striking buildings and at another we pay a visit to what I would imagine is a real and much-loved bookshop.

The drama plays around the sibling rivalry of the three sisters, struggling to assert their own identities and realise their own dreams. Against this and the strong women characters, the men are in the throes of uncertainty and mid-life crisis. The unity of time (one year between two Thanksgivings) and place, New York, together with the simple plot structure, allows Allen to concentrate on the frustrations and desires of the characters in what is one of Allen's strongest and most confident works.

Good to see it again and makes me want to revisit some more from the Mia Farrow years which I haven't seen for a long time, for example The Purple Rose of Cairo or Alice. 

Maunsels and Martins

A change from birding this week as my advisor on all things avian, who is also a huge steam engine fan, suggested a visit to the Bluebell Railway. So I packed a picnic as usual but was picked up and taken to Sheffield Park, which is the southern terminus of one of the oldest preserved railways in the country. Indeed it began life in 1960, before steam had actually met its final demise on the national railway network, and only three years after one of the locomotives in use today was built at Brighton. 

 

While my birding guru pursued yet another of his passions by buying a number of pot plants, in aid of work on the Bluebell's extension to meet the national rail network again, I had a potter round the shop, buying a nice print and a couple of 1940s magazines with an article on the history of the Brighton works.

It was the first time I had been back since the new Woodpax site carriage shed had been completed, along with all the beautiful work on the canopy and buildings of the platform across the bridge, so we went to have a closer look. 

The museum had been updated and re-housed and repaid a visit to see the exhibits and watch some videos, one on the history of the Bluebell itself and another fascinating one on the mechanics of signals and points.

Outside again the attention to period detail was noticeable in the impressive new gas lamps joining the existing ones I had already admired in crossing the footbridge.

Having watched the lovely green-liveried Longhedge-built 1902 0-6-0 C class tender engine with its shiny brass dome, hauling a beautifully restored set of wooden Metropolitan railway carriages on its way to Horsted Keynes, we crossed over the bridge again for lunch.

Detail from one of the Metropolitan carriages

Cheeky sparrow asking to share my roll

It had turned out to be a very pleasant hot Summer day and we bought a cup of tea from the restaurant there and ate our lunch sitting on the platform watching the trains steaming in and out of the station on their way the end of the line at Kingscote, while above us house-martins flitted backwards and forwards from their neat nest under the eaves of the restaurant building. 

Martin at home

After lunch we visited the engine shed and workshop area which is always a highlight of a visit to Sheffield Park station.

There we found the Brighton-built A1 Class “Terriers”. My father had asked me to look out for these neat 0-6-0 engines as he wants to film or photograph one like the OO scale version I bought for him some years ago.

In particular he wanted to be able to see one in Stroudley's “Improved Engine Green” colour-scheme like the model, which has “Brighton Works” on its sides. IEG, which to my eyes is nothing like green and has more a gold or perhaps ochre look, was no longer to be found at the Bluebell unfortunately, and Stepney, whose likeness in IEG I'd bought earlier, was to be found in the shed, but now clad in black. Fenchurch, a similar locomotive, was to be found at the back of the shed, non-operational and decidedly brown .

We found the two operational P class Ashford-built 0-6-0 tank locos together outside the shed with one of them, Bluebell itself in its striking blue colour scheme, clearly in steam.

The other locomotive in use was a BR Standard tank engine built in Brighton in 1957 and younger than me. It was pulling a familiar looking Southern green carriage set complete with buffet car.

I can't say I've ever had a disappointing visit to the Bluebell and even without a train ride it was a very interesting visit. Top entertainment for the very small price of a platform ticket.

...and the Maunsel of the title? Well, R.E.L. Maunsel was one of the names, like Stroudley that formed part of the poetry that made my early Hornby and Tri-ang catalogues so exciting and were part of the beginnings of my love of railways (which is in the family blood in fact) and there is a beautiful example of one of his most successful designs here: The "Schools class" passenger express locomotive "Stowe" and the Maunsel Society can be seen to be hard at work here restoring a Maunsel U Class.

Hosting and Losing

This week I once again hosted the group but on this occasion there was a full turn out of the current local membership making six of us in all. Crabro, The Professor and MaOldie (who had kindly brought with her a tin of sweets with a meeple on the lid to kick off the new venue in proper style), were first on the scene and after a lot of decision making and a cup of tea we decided upon a game of Guillotine while we waited for PetraPan and MrWendall to arrive. 

It was a particluarly short game of Guillotine with Crabro and the Professor making use of cards which shortened two of the three "days" considerably. It was also unique as far as I was concerned in that I never actually had occasion to change the order of the line on my turn (save for one random rearrangement). Its brevity meant that it was a fairly low-scoring game with the winner (MaOldie) achieving around 13 points and  myself in third with a dismal 8.

As I was checking for emails on the progress of the other two, they arrived at the door and there followed more tea and a game of the Sid Sackson classic "Acquire". Despite its age (first published in 1962!) the share-buying and hotel-chain merging mechanic is such a solid one that it is still a very popular game (including with this group and the Goldstone Gamers) although it has gone through a number of different versions over the years with minor variations in theme and rules and varying production values. 

This copy was my smart modern cardboard-pieced version with full range of hotel chains (one renamed in honour of the designer) which had been an excellent Christmas present from my brother.

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Brilliant game designer Sid Sackson

I didn't disgrace myself in the end scoring but still came only somewhere in the middle of the six scores having failed to obtain many of the shares of the very successful Continental group.

It seems that the new table works fine with a full turn out and the new venue for the group must have been deemed successful as it appears that I am the host for next week too.

Cinetripper

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Anne Hathaway

On Wednesday I returned to my home town of Brighton for a day out (details recorded on an older 'blog elsewhere) and visits to two cinemas:
At the hundred year old Duke of York's I saw "The Guard" and at the Cineworld multiplex concealed in the multistorey car park at Brighton Marina I saw "One Day"

"One Day" lived up to expectations, and perhaps because the screenplay was written by the author, seemed to be admirably faithful to the book. I really had one major criticism of the book and without issuing a spoiler I can only say that the same criticism (which is a fundamental plot point) can be leveled at the film. 

The theme of the book (and the explanation for its title) is the traditional romantic comedy theme of two friends of opposite sex, having failed to unite romantically at the start of their relationship, failing to notice that they are made for each other, in this case as we look in on their lives on the same day each year, until eventually... but the latter part of the book and the film have some surprises.

The short span allowed a conventional film is not perhaps best suited to the structure of this story. We are told by on-screen text the date in question and without that device it would be very difficult to appreciate the time-shifts given the very small amount of time available for each temporal vignette. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for the actors, given that films are not shot sequentially, to be playing the same character as 23 in the morning and 43 in the afternoon and then having to be rejuvenated all over again for another scene.

There has been a lot of criticism of the casting, but for me the players filled the roles without jarring too much with my mental image. Despite complaints leveled at the choice of an American in the role of Emma, I found Anne Hathaway, to be very much how I imagined the character while reading the book. The many comments about her accent should not have been allowed to deter people from seeing the film because, beside being sometimes more Yorkshire than others, it doesn't detract from the performance and at no time does it sound to me anything other than English rather than American. 

Another complaint I've heard is that the male lead is obnoxious and unlikeable but this is the way the character is written and his fall and possible redemption are a key thread of the novel. It certainly seems unjust that it should be levelled at the actor as a criticism. 

Rafe Spall as the unfortunate failed stand-up Ian is a scene-stealer whenever he is on screen and perhaps more likeable than the character appeared to me in the novel.

After emerging from the depths of the multistory car park multiplex, I walked back along the sea-front and then past the sadly derelict Astoria cinema to the “Duke's” where I had a glass of red wine on the terrace and then took my seat in the balcony while I watched a wonderful perfomance by Brendan Gleeson in “The Guard”. Written and directed by John Michael McDonagh, the brother of the writer/director who obtained such a great performance from Gleeson in "In Bruges". 

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Brendan Gleeson

This Irish film about a deliciously cynical, and somewhat amoral, Gard and his miss-matched relationship with an FBI agent (played by Don Cheadle) sent to tackle a gang of large scale drug smugglers. As well as these two we meet a number of other interesting characters including bent cops, prostitutes, a representative of the IRA and the Gard's mother and we learn a great deal about Gerry (the Gard)'s life. 

While not averse to some decidedly non-politically correct behaviour and some colourful views on life we discover that at heart the gard is a good man, or at least somewhat less tarnished and more brave than his largely useless colleagues. 

The relationship with Don Cheadle is far from fitting the stereotypical miss-matched buddy type and although they work effectively together at the end, it would be difficult to say that they evre come to actually like each other. Some sort of grudging respect is about the most that could be argued.

It is another marvellously watchable performance by Gleeson who is very ably supported by Cheadle and in fact by the actors that play the villains, his mother and his boss. It is bound to be on my short list for film of the year I think and I can't wait to buy the DVD and watch it again. Despite being largely focused on the fascinating eponymous character it also stands up as a proper policier and has a suitably action-packed denouement.

Review of Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr from my GoodReads account

Berlin Noir: March Violets; The Pale Criminal; A German Requiem by Philip Kerr

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Having been introduced to Philip Kerr by a free copy of one of the later books in this same series (The One from the Other) I was impressed enough by Bernie Gunther, Kerr's hard-bitten protagonist, to want to read the earlier books. The appeal is that Bernie has echoes of classic down-at-heel gumshoes like Marlowe and Spade for whom I have a long standing affection. There is a lot in Herr Gunther and his life that makes one reach for the adjective Chandleresque, his way with a bitter simile, his general cynicism concealing a nugget of goodness somehow still shining at his core despite the rotten world he inhabits and a magnetic attraction for things that unexpectedly cause him to wake up with a headache. Like his predecessors he can be very smart but often not as clever as he would like to believe and sometimes finds that actually he has been taken in and used.



The big difference between him and Sam Spade of course is that Bernhard is German and German at a time when Germany is increasingly the focus of world attention. The evocation of place and period (Berlin and Vienna in 1936, 1938 and 1946 respectively in these three novels) is impressively realised. I can only imagine that a huge amount of research has gone into creating such an incredibly detailed portrayal of Germany during the rise of Nazism, the post war ruins of Berlin and the twilight confusion of interests in the Vienna perhaps most familiar from the Third Man. In fact there are a few nods in the direction of the iconic work of Carol Reed and Graham Greene and we are perhaps being encouraged to see Vienna through the lens of Krasner and occasionally hear the sound of Karas' famous zither. Certainly A German Requiem has its Harry Lime, black market penicillin and occasional glimpses of the celebrated wheel. In fact one of the characters seems to have secured a part in the film and at the very end we stroll through a set up for one of the scenes. A more subtle nod perhaps is the name of a cover firm, ostensibly a film company called Drittemann...



Bernie is an ex-bull with a good record in Kripo but for good reason he has turned his back on that world and gone freelance as a classic shamus during the rise of the Nazis in the first novels, however, the world of the criminal police is reluctant to let him go and he is blackmailed back into being a cop, a Kommissar no less, in The Pale Criminal. Between this novel and the third there is a gap of several years occupied by the Second World War, which are sketched in only with a reference here and there, but perhaps more of these lost years of his service in the German army and subsequently as a Russian POW will be returned to in a later episode. Meanwhile in German Requiem he is once more a private investigator but caught up within the shadowy world of espionage and counter-espionage where the struggle for Cold War dominance is beginning in the confusing world of ruined buildings, ruined lives and ex-Nazis attempting to evade justice or finding they have their uses to the more unscrupulous elements of the prevailing powers.



Familiar events such as the Berlin Olympics and much later the Berlin Airlift appear in the background of the novels and some horribly familiar people such as Heydrich and Himmler also cross Bernie's path, but it is in the fine detail of the daily life of Berlin and Vienna that the feeling of total realism is generated. It feels very accurate and solid and it isn't usually a very pleasant reality for long where Bernie is concerned. Kerr evokes a hard, gritty world where people do what they must to survive. He doesn't look away from the everyday immoralities and illegalities that become a necessity in the rubble of Berlin, nor does he flinch from torture and death both horrible and often casual.



Somehow Bernie, like his illustrious forbears, maintains some sort of dignity and integrity in his heart while bending a lot of rules with the best of them. I hope to return to Bernie's world again soon, as I am very impressed with Kerr's work. For the time being though I need to leave these mean streets for a breath of fresh air.



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