Sightlines: Jane's Journal

Olympic ramblings

I love the Olympics and have been watching it a lot these past couple of weeks (much as I CAN'T STAND Sue Barker and Gaby Logan wittering on and on…) And now it's over.

There are lots of 'Olympics bashers': some say it's corrupt, a waste of money, or that it shouldn’t have been given to Beijing, what with China’s illegal occupation of Tibet, appalling human rights record and shameful environmental record. That’s all as maybe.

But you can’t deny that the sport and display of raw human spirit and determination has been superb. Many of the athletes have been inspirational. Kenya’s Sammy Wanjiru’s sprint finish in yesterday’s men’s marathon (which was horribly overshadowed in the news by the closing ceremony) was a lesson in commitment for us all. What a dude. Indeed I take my hat off to all the East African distance runners.

'God save the Queen'. We heard that a few times didn’t we? Which was great, but as both an atheist and a republican it’s not a national anthem I can ever sing, get moved when I hear or feel is mine. I’d really like a British national anthem which is for all the peoples of Britain. My vote goes for 'Land of Hope and Glory'. OK so it's got a god reference in the lyrics, but it’s mostly about truth and freedom. That's worth singing about!

You can keep the silly, noxious overblown ceremonies. Just give me the likes of Wanjiru. And even the most hard-hearted Olympic-cynic must surely be proud of the plain fact that we (by that I mean Team GB) got more medals than Germany and Australia. Aw! Makes you proud.

In other news, I am totally stumped as to how to set up PayPal, which should be, apparently, the easiest thing in the world. I'm still struggling to get it to work despite four lengthy phones calls to robotic PayPal agents and numerous emails going over the same thing again and aga ..

Two men and a barbel

In the magic river Kennet, which rises from Swallowhead spring near Silbury Hill in Wiltshire and joins the Thames at Reading, live many fine barbel. They are not easy to catch – it requires patience and expertise. Fortunately, yesterday, near Thatcham, we had loads of both, the expertise provided by our friend Martin, who knows his beloved Kennet intimately for all the best swims.

Last year we went barbelling and Martin caught a very fine specimen. This time Martin insisted that Rupert should cast and land whatever fish we hooked so he could feel the rod as the fish took the bait and enjoy the unique snatching fight that only 'old whiskers' give. We baited three swims and had quite a few knocks but it wasn't until 4 hours into the session that the rod jerked wildly and we knew Rupe was finally 'in'.

It wasn't a huge fish – about 5lbs – but who cares when it's your first solo barbel and you land a creature as beautiful as this?

Thank you so much Martin!

Quagga - a great striped hope

One hundred and twenty-five years ago today, on 12 August 1883, the last quagga died in Amsterdam zoo. I blogged about quaggas last year as they are of great interest to me. They tick so many of my ‘fascinated’ boxes; fascinated by South Africa, fascinated by equines, fascinated by the natural world, fascinated by stripes, fascinated by natural selection, fascinated by science.

Quaggas became extinct in the wild almost without anyone noticing. They were hunted for sport and for their meat. A few lonely specimens remained in zoos until 1883 and now just 14 stuffed specimens still exist in the world. But an extraordinary project in South Africa aims to bring them back. Careful examination of genetic samples revealed they were actually a plains zebra sub-species. Thanks to the wisdom of scientists they are selecting zebras with the most quagga-like characteristics and breeding from them to produce very quagga-like equines indeed.

How very Darwinian!

Perhaps we can allow ourselves to hope that one day we’ll see creatures like Henry here galloping around free and wild on South Africa’s plains once again.

RIP hot buttered soul man

I was shocked to discover that hot buttered soul man Isaac Hayes died yesterday.

He gave us groovy funk that rocked my world including ‘Shaft’ and the epic ‘By the time I get to Phoenix’ which had me gasping when I first heard it. He was the voice of ‘Chef’ in the biting satirical comedy show ‘South Park’, but quit the show when it satirised his own dodgy religion. Despite this minor blemish he was a musical giant. What a loss.

Say it with doves

I have added some new paintings of doves to my e-cards system, so now you can send free cards of these beautiful, symbolic creatures to your friends and family.

Just add your own message of peace and love!

An easier way to shop

Even though I sell a good number of pictures through this website, I’ve never been happy with my decidedly old-fashioned way of doing it. Basically buyers have to email me to discuss how to pay and exchange addresses and so on. It’s made more difficult because I can’t accept debit or credit cards. While there’s no denying I really love to chat by email with buyers, I’ve always wanted a more seamless way to let people buy. Sometimes you just can’t be bothered to send an email and just want to buy it. I know I do! You know, click, click click – job’s done. Well now, thanks to some help from my tame web developer - you know who you are! – I have finally got myself PayPalled.

Where you see this button you can buy instantly online using PayPal.

The Genius of Charles Darwin

It won’t surprise you to hear that I can’t wait until 8pm tomorrow night when I’ll be glued to Channel 4, watching Professor Richard Dawkins present the first programme in a new series about his great hero (and mine): ‘The Genius of Charles Darwin’. Oh yes! Here’s a little clip on the Channel 4 website to whet our appetites.

This will be the first in a plethora of programmes about Darwin, 2008 being the 150th anniversary of the publication of his world-changing book 'On the Origin of Species', and 2009 being the 200th anniversary of the Great Man's birth. The BBC are also making some progs to celebrate these events, including one with Sir David Attenborough. Can't bloody wait!

Wild Windrush bounty

Rupert has recently discovered a stretch of the river Windrush near his home which is just about as perfect a stretch of river anywhere. It’s narrow, fast-flowing with lovely unkempt wild banks filled with reeds, grasses, flowers, overhanging willows and rafts of vegetation, alive with birds, insects and fish.

It's also alive with these hideous monsters:

…American signal crayfish, one hundred and thirty of which he and two of his friends extracted from a 15 metre section of the river earlier today. They are a pest and a menace, decimating our native species of river-dwellers. Thankfully they are edible and his mates took them home to cook up into a feast.

I wanted to see if we could catch a brown trout, an endemic species. To me, if the salmon is the king of fish, then the brownie is the crown prince. So this evening, we took to the riverbank among the reeds, wrens and kingfishers and dropped in a few maggots…

Almost immediately we got a bite! A chublet, and another, and another, then a slightly bigger one…

Then the line screamed and Rupes hooked a fighter! A rainbow trout! Ok they're not endemic, but the rainbows in this river are wild and not artificially fattened. We admired its gorgeous colours and gently released it.

It was wonderful to catch a wild Windrush rainbow, but it wasn’t what I wanted - a brownie.

And then it happened! We were jumping up and down on the bank before we’d even landed it. We thrilled at its red and black spots and beautiful iridescent sulphur-coloured belly before letting it go:
Latitude festival, which we’d very kindly been given guest passes for.

I’m not a big fan of multi-stage festivals as I find the constant moving around between stages pretty annoying, but Latitude has a very chilled ambience. I’m ashamed to say we weren’t that interested in most of the music; we had primarily come to see Julian Cope. Julian wasn't on until the early evening, so we spent the day hanging out with Cope-loving friends near the comedy tent.

We couldn't get inside the tent to see Russell Howard (he's the young blonde Bristolian man on 'Mock the Week') so tried to hear what we could from the speakers outside but were a little bit too far back and his voice was drowned out by music from one of the other stages. Learning from this experience we got a lot nearer the tent and one of the big outdoor tellies and waited for Ross Noble to take the stage – inside the tent was already packed and way too hot!

OK, so I'm predisposed to love anyone that does BBC Radio 4's 'Just a minute', but from the start Geordie stand-up Ross Noble was brilliant. He continued to be brilliant and at the end he got even brillianter!

We're a nation that prides itself on creativity, humour and love of language, making this man a jewel our crown. He lets his mind go in ways I wouldn't dare! He makes it up as he goes along allowing one absurd idea to morph into another. He talked about wormholes, Jesus, whalesong, Red Bull, vegetarians and wind chimes and was fascinated with his dual audience – those inside and those outside the comedy tent. He ended by conducting his two audiences taking it in turns, line by line, to sing Bohemian Rhapsody, after which he got his entire ..

Lewis wins!

Two years ago at the British Grand Prix, we saw Lewis Hamilton win the GP2 in commanding style. Today in atrocious conditions, we saw him win the F1 race even more commandingly!

I wanted a wet race, as they are often so unpredictable, so I was delighted as showers kept coming in. He overtook Koveleinen at Stowe corner to take the lead – right in front of us…

…and for the next 56 laps I (and 90,000 others) willed him to maintain that lead. He did, thanks to great tyre choices and superlative driving.

The crowd went CRAZY for their new hero! Here’s the report on the BBC website and some nice photos, also on the Beeb’s website.

Photos: Moth Clark