Despite any momentary delusion to the contrary, I was recently forced to acknowledge I am still a soft townie at heart. Having opened the door for Cat to go out, apparently always preferable to the cat-flap, I took a stroll around the garden in the early evening. It’s a funny thing but even in a garden your eye picks out things that are not right or that have been recent additions. Like fox poop on the lawn or a pile of feathers signifying the sparrow hawk has struck again.
Anyway I digress. In this case it was a small honey coloured lump near the Liquid Amber tree. Thinking a gull had deposited the remains of someone’s packed lunch on the grass (don’t go down to the Quay with your lunch unless clasped tightly, no really), I approached it to remove the blot on the lawn. Strangely for a cheese and onion sandwich it appeared to be shivering, but undaunted I continued. Turns out it was not a product of the chiller cabinet at all, more a product of a distinctly more avian kind. At first I thought it must be a duckling since it was covered in down, but on closer inspection it produced a distinctly un-canard like beak and truth be told was a tad larger than you might reasonably expect a duckling to be. As described by Wife, it had the sort of beak it would need to grow into, much as a puppy grows into its ears. Since it was still very much alive she called our vets who said “Oh you need to talk to the Bird Guy, I’ll give you his number”.
Of course there’s a Bird Guy, there’s a guy for everything else around here so why wouldn’t there be a Bird Guy? So we rung him up, described the small miscreant to be told it was in fact a Wood Pigeon chick. Yes it was the progeny of a seemingly never ending dalliance by the two Wood Pigeons who always seem to be ‘at it’ in the garden. And this is when we realised we were still well short of being country folk. We drove half way across the Forest to deposit said small bird into the tender care of the Bird Guy instead of dealing with it ourselves.
As it happens, it was a more than worthwhile trip as, after we saw the little guy settled, we did the tour. Something I didn’t know up to that point was that if you stand too close in front a Tawny Owl in a red shirt (no, I was wearing the shirt) it flies to the front of it’s enclosure and shows you just how impressive its talons are. And very impressive they are too. But the highlight for us was seeing a European Eagle Owl (Scientific Name :Bubo bubo, I kid you not) up close in all its glory. Apparently it had been purchased off the Internet and kept in a wardrobe by some crackheads in Southampton but had been bought by the Bird Guy after the police decided they were not interested. Though not exactly numerous here, there are growing numbers making it across the Channel using their wings rather than the Information Superhighway and are big enough at nearly 70cms to take small deer. Could be a tad tricky to re-home.
A small confession, I don’t really like going to the doctors, or any other medical practitioner for that matter. It’s not down to any deep seated angst from childhood or a traumatic aesculapian episode in a former life. No it’s because it means I am unwell, and I don’t like being unwell. Regrettably Wife has had more than her fair share of brushes with the medical profession, some beneficial, some not so. I had hoped that I would balance it out by being super-fit and boundlessly healthy, but apparently you have to make an effort to find yourself in that condition, and a solitary 1Km swim per week doesn’t cut it. Who would have guessed….
So anyway, some seven weeks ago I had occasion to have to lift the MiL off of a low sofa she had parked herself on and could not get back out of. Funny thing is that at the time I felt no ill effect whatsoever, well apart from slight annoyance that is. A short while later I became aware of a distinctly unhelpful feeling near the base of my spine, assumed muscle pull and did no more. After a while it became clear that if it was muscle, then muscle was not cooperating in the restorative process, so I visited the GP. “Ah you seem to have compressed a disk and as a result it has squeezed out a bit”, she said. Best news I had all day. So I was armed with prescription for anti-inflammatory drugs and muscle relaxants and suggested I found a chiropractor. I’ll be honest, somewhere in my brain there is a little short-circuit and I therefore always get momentarily confused between chiropodists and chiropractors. No idea why. Having got over the initial confusion as to why I needed a foot specialist, I made an appointment with the Lymington Chiropractic Clinic website here based on personal recommendation.
It’s down one of those little alleys off the High Street that support so much of Lymington’s entrepreneurial activity and to be honest, relatively easy to miss if you don’t know where it is. However once changed into one of the more masculine cotton gowns on offer (I really did consider the fluffy gown just for effect it might have), the first visit was all about diagnosis. Fortunately the broad diagnosis was the same as the GP, so I didn’t have the problem of warring medical types. To cut a long story short, after three visits I suspect I am beginning to feel the benefit, although having decided to walk to and from each appointment, it’s kinda hard to tell right now. What is clear is that after many years of hard manual work in the building and allied trades, now sitting at a computer for most of the day has taken it’s toll on my otherwise fine physique. Did that sound believable? No I didn’t think so, but I am going to have to try harder. See that’s the real reason why I don’t like going to consult medical practitioners, it inevitably means you have to do something you’d rather not.
By the way, if you need a chiropractor in Lymington and environs, just visit the Lymington Chiropractic Clinic, ask for Steph and tell her I sent you. You won’t get any particular benefit other than her excellent treatment, but I always wanted to write that.
Oh behave! Of course I mean the sort that tell you where to go! Question is, do you trust them or not? This became more than just a philosophical point when a couple of yomping buddies took up temporary residence in a cottage along the coast and pretty much press-ganged me into a yomp. Someone had previously bought a ‘Walks from pubs’ book which seemed a fair enough place to start, so we did.
Well actually we started with lunch at the Rising Sun on Tiptoe Road north of Bashley. In my experience a pint and a Plough persons lunch all round sets you up for a good yomp, and although acceptable it was never going to match the Plough persons lunch of gargatuan proportions we enjoyed several years ago in the Fleur de Lys, Pilley. It is the yardstick by which all other Plough persons lunches will be gauged, and my suspicion is that none will quite measure up.
So suitably fortified we started off on what was promised to be a gentle 2 or so mile walk through the forest and a nearby Inclosure. Now just a word to the wise, when you are walking from a guide book, read at least two sentences ahead from where you think you are. It will stop you having to backtrack along a road you should have turned off several hundred yards back. I’m just saying….
So anyway, many small ponies and a flying display of Swifts (I think) later, we were told to look out for a ’small stand’ of trees. Hmm. See trouble is if you use trees as a navigational aid in the forest, there is some room for misinterpretation. This is where tip number two comes in. Look at the front of the guide book before you start and see when it was last printed. This will give you some idea of whether a small stand of trees is likely to have become half a plantation. It will also tell you whether travelling along the river bank is likely to be possible without the aid of a machete, which in our case it was most definitely not. We did however learn that the mud didn’t come over the top of your boots if you kept moving fast enough, that Adders can grow rather longer than we had thought, and there is a beautiful tiny pink speckled orchid growing commonly in the area. This is after all the reason for country walks, that and being able to feel self-righteous about the healthy way you have spent the afternoon.
I guess we’ll just have to do it again next time they visit. It’s tough, but I like to support the local publicans when I can.
