mostly david ephgrave

On a day like today, with political developments as they we re, I was very grateful to start my morning in a forest, catching a barn owl as part of a bird demonstration. We took part in Center Parcs’ Encounter with Owls activity last year too and had such a lovely time we had to do it again. With affairs taking the depressing turn they did today, the diversion couldn’t have been better timed. I barely slept last night what with worrying about the election; checking the news intermittently to catch wind of the way things were shaping up. When they turned out as badly as they did, doing something as simple as getting back to nature was the perfect short-term antidote; I may even go feral in protest. I won’t harp on any more about that now as we’ve all read more than enough on the subject. Instead, I’ll share a slow motion video of an owl and me . The owl's name was Marmite, but there was no love-hate going on here. I just wish I could be as graceful at that rate of f...

Tonight sees the first night of my few days' break to Center Parcs , and as it's a suitably middle-c lass destination, I've decided to play a game of Count the Gilets. I’ve been looking forward to this for months, following a stressful year, with my first solo Edinburgh Fringe sitting dead-centre like an ominous, foreboding summit, peeping every so often through the clouds as I trudged my way to the top and then back down the other side. This, combined with some non-work-related bits and bobs made for eleven months that alternated between being difficult and settled, with a few peaks and troughs along the way. I have my wife to thank for booking the holiday early this year, giving us both something to set our sights on as a little time for us to relax. We visited the same site (and stayed in the same cabin) last October and had such a lovely time we decided to do it again - and though there were occasions when I thought the break would never arrive, being over...

I’ll keep today’s post brief, as I’m currently sitting in front of a log fire (see GIF below), enjoying a glass of wine and some cheese and biscuits at the end of the last full day of my holiday (to a destination just 18.3 miles from my house, door to...well...'forest'.) Arthur Brown would love it. Today, I drove an electric boat. Yes, that's right, an electric boat. It was steered by joystick, like the best things in life. We were only sailing for thirty minutes, which wasn’t long, but I still had time to experience the whole gamut of emotions, from smiley…   …to serious. (These are actually the only two states I can manage, as I’m not a versatile actor - and I'm not even sure if smiley is an emotion.) We played a couple of games of pool, which is something I haven’t done for years; so long, in fact, that I couldn’t remember if I was any good at it. I was, as suspected, resoundingly average, but I still ...

Today was split evenly between playing golf and holding owls. It must have been a Wednesday. Massive owl (right). The bird handling came first, as you’d expect. The brochure described it as an ‘Encounter With Owls’, which made it sound a little menacing; would they swoop at me down a dark alley? I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had, the nocturnal rotating-headed bastards. (Though they can actually only turn their heads 270 degrees – ha: “only” – and they’re not all nocturnal. Can I start again?) Tiny owls make me smile. My encounter was great. I had expected to see a couple of owls at most, à la a junior-school-barn-owl visit (was mine the only school to do this?), but there were nine or ten. It cost just £10, and a pound a bird is not to be sniffed at. They came in all shapes, sizes and breeds - the biggest being an eagle owl, which only the adults got to hold; the experience would have been tarnished if he'd flown off w...

This week, I've gone on holiday to Center Parcs – and where better to spend a few days away than in a Butlins for people with middle-class aspirations? This isn’t my first trip to the Dutch version of a holiday camp, though it’s my first time as an adult. It’s good to be back. It’s wonderful to have a few days away, as it’s something we seldom get to do. I kicked the day off by speaking to some ducks (see picture); they weren’t very interested in me. Over lunch, my wife made a ceramic cow vomit milk into a cup (that's not a sentence I thought I’d ever write).   The most enjoyable portion of the day, however, was from 4:00pm to 8:59pm, as we spent this alarmingly precise timeframe making the most of the park’s spa facilities.   Until 4:00pm, I was a spa virgin. I’d been to the odd Spar or two, but they were a lot less relaxing. Weak jokes side, I loved it. It took a little while to get used to my surroundings and get over my self-co...