Going Underground

Non-flattened fauna :

Well... While most of the country were poised in front of the television waiting for Will and Kate to tie the knot, what was Jerushah doing ? Making the most of the extra day off and driving to Cornwall of course !
The journey down was for the most part uneventful, but with two notable exceptions... At approximately 11.20pm a very skilful badger managed to dash out in front of me on the A303, pick the exact spot in between my front wheels, stay there for a split second then dash out from between the wheels on the passenger side of the car – I saw his little white tail disappearing in my rear view mirror.
At approximately 2.15am, when I was approaching our first stop in Calstock, I saw two glowing eyes in the distance on the road. I realised it was quite a large animal as the glowing eyes were about three feet off the ground... ‘Is it the beast of Bodmin ?’ I asked myself, to which I replied ‘No silly - you’re on Dartmoor, not Bodmin Moor!’ As I came closer, I could see antlers and realised it was a deer – wandering very lazily across the road. Perhaps he was returning from a night out on the tiles ?

On the way home it was a bit sad to see that there were many, many animal casualties on the roads as a result of the extra bank holiday traffic. Obviously as an environmental scientist, I am all for recycling, but being a vegetarian of many years standing, I can’t really encourage any ‘recycling’ of animal road casualties. However, I recently read a newspaper article featuring a man who likes nothing better than badger sandwiches :http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article96189.ec

All I can say is I am really glad our badger lived to tell the tale !

Going underground :

In addition to our mandatory amount of sun, swim and sand, we did something equally Cornish and spent a large proportion of Sunday poking around in a tin mine. Knowing it was likely to be rough going, ‘S’ and me wore our best wellies and waterproofs. It was good thing too, as it was raining on the surface and there were waterfalls from the roofs of the tunnels – there was so much water that some sections of the floor had to be pumped out before we entered them, as the water was too deep to walk through.  It was a shame that no one had told the lady in front of us though, she was wearing a very swanky leather jacket and expensive looking leather boots !

J’s record of the week :

‘Going underground’

by

The Jam

As you know, I’m usually more of a soul, R&B and reggae aficionado, and apologies in advance for the rather dodgy link, but this week I’ve chosen ‘Going underground’ by The Jam. I don’t quite know why, but I found myself subconsciously humming it as we crawled through the dark dampness of the mine ! I remember this song getting to number one when I was only five, and playing along to it with an upturned biscuit tin and two wooden spoons ! Enjoy ! Jerushah x