Regular readers of this blog know how much I love music made by men with guitars. I’ve mentioned my admiration for Nick and Roy Harper, Nick Drake, Niels van der Steenhoven, The Allman Brothers, John Martyn, Carlos Santana, Neil Young, Steve Earle and more. But I've never mentioned Jeff Beck before, because the last time I saw him live was before I had this blog. But now I can talk about him because last night we went to see him play to an adoring audience at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.

In simple terms, one might describe Jeff Beck’s music as a combination of blues, hard rock and jazz fusion. But that over-simplifies it and attempts to categorise something that is as unpigeonholeable, as universal and as beautiful as the music of Nick Drake, but with the power and passion of J S Bach’s organ music.

I love instrumental music; I find vocals often ruin perfectly great music. The music should be good enough stand alone. Happily Jeff doesn’t wreck his music with anything as trivial as vocals. He doesn't need to. What he gets out of his guitar has more meaning than any verbal language. The sheer variety of sounds he teases out of his vanilla ice cream-coloured Fender Stratocaster is jaw-dropping and takes you through the entire spectrum of emotions. Without over-using effects or pedals he effortlessly breathes out music through his unique touch alone. The results make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck!

Bass player Tal Wilkenfeld and Jeff play a bass duet

And so sitting just three metres away from him up there on stage last night, listening to the sweet, heart-wrenching melodies and powerful riffs was a rare treat indeed. You know that feeling when you stand in a great cathedral and an organist is hammering out, say Bach's Toccata and Fugue or some other massive Baroque classic, and the sound seems to actually fill your body? Well, it was like that. It doesn't merely touch you, it inhabits you.

Beck was there right at the beginning of British blues, working with Clapton, Mayall, Page, and many other famous and influential musicians throughout his truly astonishing career. Clapton doesn’t even come close to being god. Beck makes Clapton seem muddy, laboured, tuneless, amateurish and ham-fisted. Beck is THE guitar god.

Photos: Moth Clark, taken the previous night in Brighton

Hopes were high at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone this weekend for a British win from Jenson Button. Everywhere I looked Union Jacks flew, banners waved and Jenson T-shirts were sported. There were lots of Lewis fans there too (many of who are also Jenson fans) but we all knew Lewis couldn’t win in that dog of a car. After Jens qualified only fifth on Saturday, and Vettel looked so strong on pole, I think the crowd realised it would be a miracle for Jens to pull off a winning stunt. But everyone cheered, clapped, waved and tooted their airhorns virtually every time he whizzed past. And they did for Lewis, too.

The lights went out and the race began, and before they’d even cleared Becketts less than halfway round the first lap, Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel was storming ahead. And by the time the cars reached Stowe corner, where we were seated (with a clear view all the way down the Hangar Straight and as far over as Bridge) Vettel was already pulling clear – almost driving a different race. Barring disasters, Vettel was already the winner, so the interest for me would be what was going on in the dog-fights at the back.

And as ever, Lewis didn’t disappoint. He hounded and nipped at the heels of Kubica, monstered Piquet (pictured below) then later in the race he got into a great scrap with Alonso. They didn’t always show this on the TV coverage, but following it live was wonderful.

Formula One may be the ‘Hollywood’ event, but it is often processional and doesn’t provide the best incident-packed racing. Take GP2 for example, of which there are two support races at the British GP. In Saturday’s GP2 race over 36 action-packed laps, we got wheel-to-wheel dog-fights, thrilling overtakes, prolonged harrying and a life-depends-on-it sense of sheer mad bastardness that F1 all too often sadly lacks.

Take driver Karun Chandhok for example, pictured below, in the blue car in the middle, a local boy from Brackley, His aggression, courage and creativity at the wheel is a sight to behold and makes superb viewing. His persistent monstering of Roman Grosjean was epic! As my husband Moth would say: "this is proper sport, with engines".

After the F1 qualifying session finished on Saturday, some of the crowd started to leave before the GP2 race had even begun. Moth wondered: ‘what’s wrong with them? Don’t they like motor-racing?’

Another equally thrilling support race run at the Big Prix is the Porsche super cup. Like GP2, it’s got lots of scarily close wheel-to-wheel action, and daring manoeuvres. To see road cars hurtling round the track right o the edge of what’s possible for them to do is wonderful entertainment. And even if you don’t know much about this class of racing, the track commentators are so informative and entertaining, you soon become gripped.

Finally, with all the media chatter about how marvellous Silverstone is (and it certainly is conveniently close to us) there is something seriously inconvenient about the so-called 'home of British motor-racing'. The 'conveniences'. They are simply appalling in their sheer lack. For the whole of Stowe corner, which must house perhaps 5,000 spectators, perhaps 35% or more of which are women, there are just 14 ladies' loos. What a pile of shite, Silverstone!

Photos: Moth Clark

13 June 2009

Today we were to meet up with a few people at Long Meg, a huge menhir in Cumbria. But before we did we thought we'd first swing by Glassonby cairn circle, which is dead easy to reach from the lane in a field, today policed by young Holstein bullocks with only one thing on their minds – to practice close surveillance on us. I armed myself with a large branch, just in case things got nasty. But it turned out these boys didn’t have the balls.

As we arrived to inspect the site, so did our mate scubi! “You two get everywhere” he said. Yep, we certainly try.

Glassonby is a very sweet little circle with plenty of brick-sized stones and rubble left in the middle and a good ring of medium sized kerb stones forming the circle. Now it is inhabited by rabbits, some of which scattered down the field while others disappeared into holes dug into the cairn as we approached. Its bucolic hillside setting and tiny diameter makes it particularly charming.

We stopped off to see Little Meg on way our back from Glassonby, carefully dodging the coast-to-coast bicyclists which swarmed round these lanes. It was far less overgrown than when I was last here in 2003. This, is also a cairn circle, but its stones are far larger than Glassonby's, and one, famously, has spirals carved into it.

As we arrived at Long Meg and her Daughters , the light on the pointy menhir showed up perfectly the spiral carvings on the flattest face of the menhir. I’d been here before but could hardly see the rock art then; this time it was as clear Catherine wheels in November.

Scubi arrived, then Vicster and her mate Vick, then pebs. We cracked open the picnics and sat in the hot sunshine by Long Meg and feasted on cheese, very garlicky hummous, smoked salmon, pebs’ homemade olive and ham bread and strawberries.

Like Avebury, this place is so massive you can’t stand far enough away to get it all in one view. Also like Avebury, it has a road running through the middle. And also like Avebury some people will insist on tying pieces of tat as so-called ‘offerings’ to the lowest branches of the nearest ‘sacred’ tree. There was a broken child’s toy lorry lovingly suspended by a piece of carefully selected baler twine, an enchanting old stripey sock, a badge with the legend ‘I’ve been to Ostrich World’, some strips of sacred plastic bag, a faded old ribbon, and a red plastic fake crystal heart - no doubt harvested from a Christmas cracker - bobbled around in the breeze.

Its enormity alone makes Long Meg and her Daughters a very special place. The large stones which form the circle are evenly spaced and despite many of them having been toppled, are so big they still look like they’re standing. I defy anyone not to be impressed by Long Meg and her Daughters. Just don’t let this impressiveness move you to tie offensive rubbish to the trees. Jack-in-the-Green wouldn’t approve.

Scubi, Moth, Jane, Vicster, pebs and Vicky at Long Meg

Replete, and with the sun beating down and tiny high clouds scudding overhead in the bluest of skies, we all decided to head as a convey over to Moor Divock, just 14 miles away to visit The Cockpit stone circle. This involved a walk of perhaps two kilometres over a track on the moor. The company was so good I hardly noticed the walk and only stumbled about twice.

Once at the circle, we sat together in the sun and watched exaltations of larks rise out of the moorland.

14 June 2009

Next day we arranged to meet again at Copt Howe, the Langdale boulders, in Great Langdale near Grasmere. We watched as the sun swung round in the sky to until the light was at the right angle to reveal the extraordinary rock art carved on the flat surface of one of the largest boulders. I made a little sketch.

Photos: Moth Clark

12 June 2009

It's amazing just how many wonderful prehistoric sites you can cram into one short trip if you're so inclined. Cumbria has many stone circles, some of which I had not yet visited.

Moth peruses Julian Cope’s epic tome The Modern Antiquarian

As we drove up the M6 we listened to the Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie show on the radio. They were encouraging listeners who may be pop stars (current or ex) to text in to the show. Many were spoofs texted in by naughty listeners just pretending: “Ayup! Elton John here…” Mark and Stuart were guessing which texts might be real. I thought I’d try to fool them. I texted in: “Yowzah drudes, Julian Cope here watching the sun set over Silbury Hill. Awl love from the Archdrude”. They were certain it was really Julian.

Next morning, we headed west from the Travelodge in Penrith where we were staying and where Julian stayed during filming his televisual version of The Modern Antiquarian for the BBC, towards Castlerigg stone circle.

Moth poses outside Penrith Travelodge

I was last at Castlerigg in August 2003 with my late friend Bec. This was one of her favourite prehistoric sites, and a photo she took of it back in the early 90s has both graced my walls and been etched into my heart for many years. The monument itself is marvellous enough, but the natural amphitheatre of the fells, soft and green all around in the bright sunshine combined with the added poignancy of the loss of Bec made the place today seem more dramatic than ever. In my mind I could hear sweeping, heart-string twanging orchestral music and the sound of her dirty laugh.

a little sketch of Castlerigg

Next we were off to Blakeley Raise stone circle

It is quite charming and in a satisfyingly remote moorland spot but right next to the lane. The stones are small and whether they were re-erected in the right holes or not didn’t matter to me. I cleared the centre of the circle of the empty crisp packet, rusty horseshoe and Remembrance Day crucifix and stood back and admired the stones. I loved it here. The sky seemed very big.

Poor Greycroft! This once magnificent stone circle is much neglected, hideously overgrown with thick unmanaged grasses and weeds, fenced in like a prisoner and overlooked by its neighbour, the industrial nightmare of the Sellafield nuclear power plant. But it’s not all bad. At least the fence prevents sloppy tractor drivers from bumping into the stones, and at least the weeds offer some kind of untouched habitat for birds, insects and small mammals. The view down to the sea is gorgeous and my one crumb of comfort is that despite everything, it is still here, it’s pinkish stones glinting in the sunshine.

There’s not much left of Elva Plain stone circle. Its 14 small stones are all down and it seems to be melting back into the gentle slope of the field, overlooked by distant fells. But like Greycroft, the miracle is that it’s still here at all.

Mighty Mayburgh henge is slap bang next to the M6 at Penrith, but don’t let that put you off – indeed, let it encourage you to visit! The henge’s grassy rubble banks rise 20 or 30 feet all around to form a giant cup with a vast menhir in the middle. The last remnant of what, I wondered? A few mature trees grow randomly out of the humungous banks, but the henge is so impressive they seem tiny even though they must rise 60 feet or more. Inside the henge there is no internal ditch, which is a bit weird, but this seems to add to the enclosedness of the site. What was if for? Private events? Fortifications? Sacred ceremonies? Trading? Cattle market? A sports arena? What WAS it for? To me this henge is way more impressive than Avebury.

On Thursday night we went to see Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd (pronounced 'lĕh-'nérd 'skin-'nérd) perform at Birmingham’s NIA. Their heyday was the mid 1970s, during which they produced two of their best-loved songs, Sweet Home Alabama and Freebird.

I confess I find all that long, flowing hair, cowboy boots and twangy, jangly insistent and riffy guitar absolutely irresistible. If you’re thinking ‘hang on what about all those confederate flags and references to God and firearms’, I’m pretty confident this is all tongue-in-cheek; though I suspect they are (or were) Christians.

Many members of Skynyrd were wiped out in a plane crash in 1977, but the band rose again, - some might say like Jesus – with a new line up, which now includes the late lead singer’s brother Johnny Van Zant as lead singer.

The star of the show for me was one of the three guitarists - Rickey Medlocke - whose stage presence outshone the rest of the band by miles.

The crowd of maybe 3,000 people wore hard rock band souvenir T shirts, Harley Davidson emblems, waved confederate flags, and enthused wildly!

OK, we may have heard Freebird and Sweet Home Alabama a million times before, but who can honestly say they don't smile when they hear those songs again?

Photos: Moth Clark

I’ve had three new greetings cards printed of recent paintings: 'August sunshine', 'I wish I was on White Horse Hill' and 'Pinkish pebbles'. Each one costs £1.30, but I’m also selling them in my shop in packs of six (two cards of each design) for £7.

Last night Moth and I went to see Geordie improvisational stand-up comedian Ross Noble perform at Oxford's New Theatre.

We saw him perform at last year’s Latitude festival and suffered the same happy face-ache then as we did last night. When I say ‘perform’ what I really mean is wander around the stage for two and half hours talking about whatever utter bollocks comes to mind. His performance is unrehearsed, unplanned and largely inspired by comments and heckles from the audience.

Ross was voted one of the top ten greatest stand-ups of all time by Channel 4 viewers: I’m surprised he’s not one of the top three. His skill lies in his surreal imagination and memory; He regularly whizzes off at tangents but he wittily weaves random threads together, returning to subjects he touched on earlier, building on them, putting them together and then enhancing his ideas with mime.

So no two shows are ever the same; last night, for one night only we got stuff about Jade Goody, facts about pigs, politicians fiddling their expenses, his baby daughter, thoughts about Oxford, Inspector Morse, strokes (of various kinds) and a rant about the evils perpetrated by the Pope, which of course I warmly applauded, and much, much more.

If you don't know Ross Noble’s work, then give yourself a laugh during these troubled times - check him out here.

It's true! When I found out I couldn’t believe my ears; indeed, I actually had to sit down.

The Swinford toll bridge is for sale for £1.65million, apparently, and there should only be one buyer: Oxfordshire County Council (OCC).

OCC had the chance to buy it and incorporate it into Oxfordshire’s road system back in the early 90s. But they didn’t. The opportunity to buy the bridge comes up so rarely - perhaps only a couple of times a century - that if they don’t act now we may have to wait another 20 years, possibly longer, for another chance.

OCC are likely to say they can’t afford it. But that’s rubbish. Yes they can! And it couldn’t be simpler. Make the bridge users themselves pay for it over a number of years by continuing to charge the toll for a fixed period (a number of years). After which, with the money recouped, they can scrap the toll, stop the highway robbery and get west Oxfordshire moving again. The Act of Parliament, which allows the bridge owner to collect a toll, doesn’t say a toll HAS to be collected, after all.

Do the decent thing, OCC. Buy it now. Buy it for the people you’re meant to be serving. £1.65million seems remarkably cheap to me, and in the light of the current row about MPs’ expensesis little more than beer money.

What I fear is that OCC will whine: “we can’t afford it”, which really means “we can’t be bothered”; and yet another private greedhead owner will buy it, creaming off the profits from this cash cow at the expense of bridge users in West Oxfordshire, who will line his pockets every morning and evening with their wasted time, wasted fuel, and their patience while simultaneously damaging the environment with needlessly-emitted exhaust fumes.

Buy it OCC. Buy it now.

There's more about the toll bridge, including a short film, here.

My Artweeks exhibition has been and gone. Here's a movie of what you missed:

If you came to the show - thank you - and you saw something you fancied, email me.

Music: The Commodores' superbly funky song 'Machine gun'

My new movie camera, a new computer and new software means that I can now make short movies! I have posted them all up on my YouTube page but I particularly want to show you this movie of a helicopter flight we took over New Zealand's glaciers, which blew my mind:

After the flight, I was so overcome by the scale and beauty of what we had seen, I spent the following hour sobbing with joy, overwhelmed at the privilege of witnessing these vast and profoundly humbling natural structures.

Is it any wonder that I love Sir David Attenborough so much when he nails his colours to the mast on a subject as important as this? My hero has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, an organisation whose aims to slow the world’s population growth I wholeheartedly support.

For my birthday, which isn't until next week, my husband Moth bought us tickets to see David Byrne at the Oxford New Theatre. The gig, which was last night, was tremendous.

David Byrne was a founder member of the band Talking Heads. In my late teenage years, I was a huge Talking Heads fan. I loved their arty originality and variety and I was enchanted by David Byrne’s interesting lyrics, his love of words, his wicked humour and the fact they weren’t afraid to try new things. With the legendary Brian Eno as their producer, they made songs with ambient grooves, fascinating rhythms, catchy melodies and weird concepts, punctuated with sounds I hadn’t ever heard before.

I remember excitedly cycling down to the local record shop in Stratford-on-Avon, waiting for it to open on the day their 1979 album 'Fear of music' was released. I was the first one in Stratford to buy the album and I loved its dark weirdnesses immediately.

I never managed to see Talking Heads live. I think they played at Birmingham Odeon once, but I wasn’t allowed out to gigs on school nights, so I missed them. Consequently, you could say that I had waited 30 years for last night's gig. I wasn't disappointed.

On stage with him were his band, which included a conga player (I love congas), and three dancers. I had mixed feelings about the dancers. I fully expected them to piss me off, but actually the choreography was very free and loose, making creative and unexpected turns, and it suited the music well. The dancing added an atmospheric sense of 'show' – how very arty – and was especially pleasing when David Byrne himself joined in.

Highlights for me were 'I Zimbra'; 'Heaven'; 'Life during wartime' from where the lyric 'this ain't no party, this ain't no disco' comes; 'Air'; 'Houses in motion'; and 'Once in a lifetime'. Much to the annoyance of the theatre staff, Byrne encouraged the audience to take lots of photos and to get up and dance, which everyone was delighted with. Too many venues these days are nazi about these things and it’s largely pointless when practically everyone’s got a camera on their phone anyway (except me and Moth who still prefer to take photos with cameras, not phones. But I digress).

Wearing white throughout, the band looked great and for the final encore, for no apparent reason, everyone came back on stage wearing tutus. Random!

Photos: Moth Clark

New Zealand has two outstanding advantages. Firstly, it has a tiny population, only four million, a quarter of which live in Auckland, leaving huge swathes of land to farming and best of all, to wilderness. And that brings me to its second feature – its tear-jerkingly, breathtakingly, largely-unspoiled, gobsmackingly gorgeous landscape.

Formed by volcanoes and carved by glaciers, the landscape leaves you gasping in awe and wondering where is everyone? And coming from a filthy dirty, light-polluted, noisy, overcrowded island like Great Britain, that’s a refreshing and glorious feeling!

Mountains rise dizzyingly their crags and peaks covered in snow – even in summer, and pebbly rivers run blue and fresh. Lakes lie deep sparkling blue as if they’ve been put there deliberately to reflect the beauty of the mountains. Meadows and hills roll and undulate and patches of forest ring with birdsong. We fell in love with the place, especially South Island. Here’s some of the stuff we saw last month:

Someone had re-punctuated the sign from ‘scenic lookout’ to scenic, lookout!’ which amused us. Virtualy everywhere is a scenic lookout in NZ.

This breathtaking view looks down towards Arrowtown.



Mount Cook in the Southern Alps is the highest peak in New Zealand. We saw it from a helicopter, but more on that story later.

Lake Wanaka’s Glendhu Bay is surely one of the most beautiful places on the planet! There were only another eight people there.

The Franz Josef glacier is one of NZ’s top tourist attractions, and as you can see, it’s hardly busy at all.

At Milford Sound it rains hard two days out of every three. We got lucky and had a dry morning, The scale of this place is hard to get your head round when you are there, let alone convey in a photograph.

The Franz Josef glacier, reflected in the tiny glacial Peter’s Pool makes your heart sing with joy.

The waters of Lake Wanaka, like all the lakes we came across were unsullied and crystal clear.

Moeraki boulders, just lying on the beach are great bubbles of stone all of them hollow. Being close to the main road going north, there were quite a lot of people there, perhaps as many as 100!

We had beautiful Sandfly Bay on the Otago peninsula to ourselves.

Waterfalls abound in NZ, this one was hardly even noticed by this crocodile of trampers.

Photos: Moth Clark

It's only a few weeks until my annual exhibition, part of Oxfordshire's Artweeks festival and this year, part of the Darwin200 festival, too. I have lots of paintings and prints of the natural world on a Darwinian theme to show you.

My exhibition, entitled natural selection, is open on Saturday 2, Sunday 3, Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 May 2009 at 18 Newland Close, Eynsham, Oxford, OX29 4LE from 12noon until 6pm.

Most of us are watching the pennies at the moment, so I’m happy to tell you that I have lots of original works of art for less than £100 and a large selection of prints, postcards and greetings cards. Or just come and have a cup of tea with us; we’ll be delighted to see you.

There are eight exhibitions going on in Eynsham during Artweeks so there's lots to see. I've made this little map which you can download here to help visitors find their way around and see all that the village has to offer.

The one place you don't expect to see parrots is in cold mountains. But such is the evolutionary weirdness of New Zealand's fauna, this is exactly where the kea(Nestor notabilis) makes its home.

They are long-lived, intelligent, playful and highly inquisitive opportunists, not shy of human company. Far from it; they have learned that wasteful humans provide easy meals if they hang around long enough. We encountered our first kea at the Franz Josef glacier car park. It was just jumping around, swooping, squawking and picking obsessively at the top of a tree fern. It posed nicely for us with a great view of the glacier in the background.

We met another kea as we waited to go through the tunnel on our way up to Milford Sound. Suddenly a huge bird swooped down towards the campervan and thudded onto the roof just above the passenger window.

I knew immediately from the dramatic flash of vermilion under its wings it was a kea even before I’d heard the comedy laugh of its call. Despite the rain and wind, I leapt out of the van for a better look. It toddled around the roof a bit and then started to try to dismantle the van by picking the rubber seals from around the window. Quickly bored with our van, it swooped onto the car waiting behind us and tested the rubber seals on that too.

Sadly the lights for the tunnel then changed to green and we could hang around kea-watching no more.

Photos: Moth Clark

I find it impossible to look at penguins and not smile. So I was happy to discover that New Zealand is home to a number of species of penguins, some of which I hoped to see when we visited that extraordinarily beautiful country last month.

At Roaring Bay, in the very south of South Island, the guide book suggested it might be possible to see yellow eyed penguins (Megadyptes antipodes). Yellow eyed penguins are not only endangered and rare – the world’s population is estimated at only 4,000 – but they are also shy and solitary.

Despite this, we arrived at Roaring Bay at the suggested time of day, and we had patience and determination on our side. The weather was foul; drizzle with pulses of heavier rain and a chilly stiff breeze. I put on six layers of clothing, longjohns, gloves and a hat and off we set.

We sat quietly on the exposed rise at the back of the beach on a muddy patch of ground taking the full force of the weather for over an hour, listening to the sea roar, watching every wave in case a little penguin was thrown out of it. Finally our tenacity was rewarded.

A single bird appeared and made its way determinedly over the sand, pausing to preen itself, before jumping over the large pebbles at the tide line and climbing up into the thick vegetation on the hillside beneath us. Suddenly a large chick popped up – presumably it had hidden all day in a burrow, waiting for its parent to reappear with a full crop of fish and squid. We were ecstatic! Despite the miserable conditions, this one little penguin and its chick warmed the cockles of our hearts.

The guidebook also suggested that the Otago peninsula, near Dunedin on South Island is a particularly good place to spot sphenisciformes. So we turned the campervan northwards and headed up there.

We were told that blue penguins (Eudyptula minor), the world’s smallest sphenisciform, could be glimpsed at dusk at Pilot’s Beach, right at the tip of the breath-taking beautiful peninsula, near an albatross colony. The light was fading fast when we arrived at 8.30pm. We stood quietly, silently at the top of the beach as the gloom turned to virtual darkness. We strained our eyes to see anything at all, but knew the birds would come back to feed their chicks which waited in their burrows among the grasses and bushes on the dunes.

Then they arrived. Tiny little things only about 14 inches tall. We could just make out their white fronts and that distinctive penguin gait as they hurried up the beach. They climbed up into the vegetation, scurrying past us within metres, unafraid of people, to be reunited with their chicks. As the parent birds found their chicks, the rookery began to sing: chicks crying like babies, squawks, whirrs, chirps and peeps.

As we left the beach we walked slowly in the darkness – it would have been easy to tread on a bird – they were moving all around us. We sat in the campervan with the windows open and listened to the symphony of penguin music.

Such was the magic of this place, we came here to watch and listen to the blue penguins for three nights in a row.

Pictured left: me filming a blue penguin in a nesting box at a different location close to Pilot's beach.

Photos: Moth Clark

I have some new greetings cards available, featuring this painting of a bird of paradise:

Each card measures 115mm x115mm and has a smooth silky finish. Inside they are left blank for your own message so they're suitable for any occasion. They are available in packs of six with envelopes for just £5.

Moth and I fell in love with the little town of Kaikoura on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island. Until very recently it was just another sleepy coastal settlement, with a bit of a crayfishing going on, but mainly it was a hub on the main road south for the livestock farmers in the nearby hill country. Its location with jagged snowcapped mountains running straight down into the sea, a grassy peninsula, rocky beaches and sandy bays was largely overlooked. But then someone started running tours for visitors to swim with dolphins and sea lions, watch whales and albatrosses, and the village has grown into a lively small town with a real buzz and pride in itself and its marine species.

Lists of 'things to do before you die' (why not just make that memorable things to do ) nearly always include swimming with dolphins. If I did have such as list, which I don't, I would now be able to cross that one off, thanks to this company in Kaikoura.

15 February - I'd picked a good day for my swim with the dusky dolphins; the sun shone, the air was warm and the swell in the sea had largely died down from the previous day.

After donning wetsuits and snorkelling paraphenelia, a little boat took a small group of swimmers and watchers including me and Moth for a 30-minute ride into the sparkling blue Kaikoura bay and slap bang into the middle of a pod of perhaps 500 or more dusky dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obscurus) a small cetacean less than 2ms long with lovely stripey markings. When the boat's klaxon sounded the swimmers piled in! Those who know me well will know that I'm always the first one into the water. And so it was.

The visibility was poor, perhaps 2ms at the most, but that is quite sufficient when you’ve got your face in the water to see the black, white and grey stripes of the dolphins whizzing past.

On a few occasions a dorsal fin or a tail touched me. If you’re quick you can see them watching you and follow their gaze. Some turn and come round for another look, but it depends what song you’re singing.

Yep, you have to sing to them. The dolphins won’t hang around without good reason; they have important dolphin business to attend to. So it's up to swimmers to attract their attention and keep them interested. Swimming hard in open sea with a snorkel in your gob and a mask on your face, while simultaneously singing and trying to take in the wonderful sight of dolphins swimming all around you is surprisingly bloody hard work! I sang the chorus of Bill Bailey’s comic prog rock song "Insect nation" and Focus's classic "Sylvia", though in the latter the yodelling section proved impossible underwater. Lots of dolphins kept swimming round me so I guess they liked it. I must remember to tell Mr Bailey.

At one point, I needed to wipe the condensation from inside of my mask and as I looked up out of the water I could see what was happening all around me. Dolphins were exploding out of the water all around me, whizzing like rockets into the air.

It’s all the more dramatic to see it happening at their level rather than from the deck of a boat. You can appreciate the height of the leaps much more. Yes, swimming with dolphins is as amazing as you imagine.

Photos: Moth Clark, and he's rather proud of these

A week before we went to California, my Californian friend Karen tipped me off about a rookery of elephant seals (Mirounga angustirostris) at Point Piedras Blancas seven miles north of San Simeon, California. Late January is the perfect time to visit as an estimated 15,000 animals pup and mate on the beaches there.

Even having been told about the huge number of animals on the beaches, the sight that greeted us still left us astonished:

There were mums nursing pups of all sizes:

And large males fighting for supremacy at the waterline.

The winner of each battle was usually the largest – size matters to elephant seals – and he became beachmaster, with the right to mate with any female who became sexually available.

Other males, less experienced, tried to sneak a quick mating with any female he could lay his flippers on if he thought the beachmaster wasn’t looking.

We spent four fascinating hours observing their activities. For a creature which congregates in such numbers, they are extraordinarily bad-tempered and antisocial. There's never a dull moment at Point Piedras Blancas.

Photos: Moth Clark