Watery Abstracts

These are just some of the abstract type photos I've recently taken of waterscapes. I took the first two photos at Cramond and photos 3 and 4 at Cammo.

for Watery Wednesday

A couple of photos of birds

I thought I'd share Crafty Green Boyfriend's photo above, just to show the sheer number of birds that were around at Musselburgh Lagoons when we visited recently. The waders in the photo are bar tailed godwits and there are also gulls including herring gulls and black headed gulls. Everything in winter plumage of course.


Meanwhile below is another photo I took of the Canada Goose that seems to think it's a mute swan, which I previously mentioned here.

for World Bird Wednesday

NaNoWriMo

So I've finished NaNoWriMo early, I had written my 50000 words by midmorning today. It felt like a real achievement! It's been hard work but I've been lucky to have had plenty of time to work on this and was determined from the start to try to finish early. So what have I learnt from the experience?

a) Although to date I have mostly written haiku, short poems and flash fiction, I have proven now that I can at least write enough words for a much bigger piece of work.

b) Just writing with the aim of reaching a given total word count is liberating, as it means you just write without worrying about the quality.

c) at the same time just writing like that means that I didn't get stuck on polishing the first paragraph to perfection only to find myself left with nothing to add to the one perfect paragraph (having said that, the first paragraph is probably the best paragraph in the novel!).

d) but oh, this isn't a novel. Not at all. It's a very rough first draft, which, with a lot of editing and polishing, may one day resemble something like a real novel that people might want to read. (So that's what I'll be doing over the next year or so!)

e) It's useful just to write through the plot dilemmas, in this draft I have characters talking about where they want the plot to go, at one point a character actually says she wishes the author could sort out a particular aspect of the plot (hang on a minute, maybe I should keep that! It could be a nice post-modernist twist to the novel!?)

f) I had always thought that I would find research so tedious it would put me off ever writing a novel but in fact I really enjoyed the research aspect. I think it would be more tedious for me if it was historic research where you need to get all the facts as accurate as possible. Given that my novel is speculative fiction set in the far future then I have a lot more freedom to do what I want with my research. (I've had great fun with extrapolating some elements of the contemporary world into the future!)

So now I'm going to catch up on all the research information I identified but never got the chance to read properly then I'll start looking at the 'novel' in a few weeks time and get it into some kind of decent shape.

And I won't keep talking about it, promise!

How was NaNoWriMo for you?

Blood in the Mobile

Blood in the Mobile is a hardhitting documentary about how mobile phones (and other consumer electronics products) contain minerals such as coltan, which are mined in the Congo. The mines employ child labour and are guarded by military and paramilitary organisations which profit from the mines by taxing the workers and demanding payment from anyone who wants to go into the mine (for example to make a documentary film.) Armed conflict in the Congo over the last 15 years has cost the lives of over 5 million people. 300,000 women have been raped during the conflict. The conflict is funded by the taxes and charges mentioned about and the selling of minerals.

The director of the film Frank Poulsen travels to the mines in Congo to see what conditions are like there. (There is a really harrowing scene down the mine.) He also travels to Finland to try to talk to decision makers within Nokia, the largest producer of mobile phones in the world to see what they are doing to make sure that their phones don't contain minerals from conflict areas of Congo. Nokia are very evasive, they don't say where their minerals come from and in fact spend much of the film denying that it is possible to trace minerals through the supply chains. (despite the fact that German scientists interviewed in this film have devised a way of doing just that - surely Nokia with their large resource and development budget must be able to pay these scientists to trace their minerals?).

Every Nokia employee interviewed in the film whined about how difficult it is to make a difference and assured the film maker that Nokia is doing all it can. Somehow I doubt that they really are.

It is likely that there is no mobile phone in the world that can be guaranteed free from conflict minerals. To do your bit to change this, you can write to your mobile phone company and ask them what their stance is and encourage them to source conflict free minerals. In addition you can take the actions on the Blood in the Mobile website.

You can also do your bit by considering whether you need a mobile phone at all and if you conclude that it is actually essential to your life, then only replace your phone if it breaks, rather than buying the latest hot new model, as I believe is what many people do these days.

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks which take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Birds on a Blustery Day

I had heard via Edinburgh Wildlife (@wildedinburgh on Twitter) that there were snow buntings and long tailed ducks around Musselburgh recently, and though I don't agree with twitching (travelling long distances to see rare birds) I did think that jumping on the 44 bus which runs directly from our flat to Musselburgh to see two birds i've never seen before was okay.

Anyway Crafty Green Boyfriend and I hopped on said bus and travelled to a very blustery, windswept Musselburgh. We walked along the River Esk, where we saw this lone pink footed goose, (in exactly the same spot it had been in last time I was in Musselburgh with my birdwatching class, when I had used it as a compare and contrast exercise with the superficially similar greylag geese that are found on the river in much greater numbers).

There were also alot of Canada geese on the river. Plus a few redshanks and five turnstones. We then walked along part of the John Muir Way along the coast. The wind was wild and the waves were high. I could scarcely keep my binoculars to my eyes it was so windy, so there may have been long tailed ducks hiding in the waves, that I just didn't see. We did however see eiders and goldeneyes on the sea.

We then visited Musselburgh Lagoons where we sat in the bird hides (and particularly uncomfortable bird hides they are too, all concrete seats and no roofs!). The views were magnificent though. There were large numbers of waders (oystercatchers, curlew, bar tailed godwits, knots and dunlin). There were also good numbers of two pretty species of duck - teal and wigeon. Then one lonely lapwing. Crafty Green Boyfriend took several photos of the birds on the lagoons, but they were too far away to come out well enough to share here (much better to follow the links in the text and find out what the birds look like from the RSPB website!)

The walk back into Musselburgh was even more blustery than the walk out had been! But even though we didn't see the birds we had hoped to see, we were very happy with those we did see!

As ever, text in red contains hyperlinks that take you to other websites where you can find out more.

haiku

fallen leaves -
the ivy covered tree trunks
alive with bird calls

Water of Leith update

I had the most wonderful view ever of a kingfisher today. I was walking along the Water of Leith in Colinton Dell when I noticed the colour of a kingfisher out of the corner of my eye. It then landed on a branch overhanging the river, just very close to where I was standing. It turned to look at me, 'bowed' then dashed off, flying downstream in a flash of turquoise.

*******

I was very pleased that Greener Leith posted my recent blogpost about the public meeting about the tree felling that is happening as part of the Flood Prevention Works along the Water of Leith. You may have read the post on this blog, but you can read it on Greener Leith here.

Tree felling was stopped yesterday at Canonmills as it seems the specific trees to be felled are subject to tree preservation orders and cannot be removed. The original plans for the Flood Prevention Work had committed to saving those specific trees. Some trees have already been felled along the river, this can't be avoided unfortunately if flood prevention is to be provided, as there is no natural flood plain alongside these parts of the river and the protecting walls can't be built without removing trees. Once the flood prevention works are completed two trees will be planted for every tree that is felled.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.