In which Lady Bracknell twitches inadvertently
Whilst standing on the station platform earlier this evening when it was very nearly dark, waiting for the train which would convey her home from her visit to the osteopathic gentleman (a visit in which, she regrets to report, she was treated most roughly), Lady Bracknell's eye was caught by the silhouette of a wol* drifting silently over the railway line.
Whilst by no stretch of the imagination an expert in the identification of our countryside's crepuscular creatures, Lady Bracknell suspects the bird in question to have been a Tawny Wol.
One is not often granted the pleasure of seeing a wol in flight, particularly when one lives in the city. Lady Bracknell has the great good fortune to live in a decidedly leafy area of Liverpool, close to one of its largest parks. On occasions when sleep escapes her, she therefore sometimes hears the cries of the local wol population. But, it having been many years since she has actually seen a wol, she considers the quarter of an hour she spent standing in the deepening frost on the station platform to have been entirely worthwhile.
*Having been exposed to the delightful volumes penned by the talented Mr Milne from a very early age, Lady Bracknell finds herself constitutionally incapable of referring to birds of the strix aluco genus by their more common English name.
posted by
Lady Bracknell | Tuesday, February 06, 2007
5 Comments:
Ma'am
Hurrah for wols. My last sighting was a few years back in the North-East of England whilst taking a holiday in rented accommodation that backed onto a field with a barn at the far end. The horse residing in the field was totally spooked by this silent twilight apparition - although, as said wol was apparently resident in the barn, it can hardly have been a complete novelty to the beast. Indeed I saw it myself on three consecutive nights. Dashed silly creatures, horses!
Whilst my own place of residence appears to be relatively wol-free, on many a balmy evening when the present Mrs Dude and I are taking the night air before retiring we hear (and occasionally see) any number of bats. Heaven knows where they live though; certainly not in the local belfry, as the Vicar recently explained to me that he had discovered a sure-fire cure for such Cheiropterous infestation.
It seems the subject had come up at a Deanery synod and our Vicar confessed that his church tower had seen several generations of bats using it as their primary abode - with all the mess and inconvenience which this entails. As they are protected by law, he couldn't just have them eradicated and, in any case, as God's creatures they have as much right to life as any other, so he needed a way to move them on. It was a fellow clergyman who let him in on the secret…
He explained that he had first observed the effect on human parishioners and determined to see if the technique would be similarly effective on his bat population. So, late next spring when the new baby bats were but a few weeks old, he went up into the belfry and baptised every last one of them.
And neither they, nor their parents were ever seen inside a church again!!
Dude
Lady Bracknell cannot be sure, but she suspects there must be a rule somewhere to the effect that comments must not exceed the length of the entry which has inspired them.
Has the Dude never considered writing a blog of his own?
Yes Ma'am.
Considered and dismissed. This way I get all the fun and none of the responsibility. I mean, people actually read these things you know and are influenced by them!
Anyway, I have depressingly little stamina for such a task, what with the driving an' all.
Respectfully,
Dude
Lady Bracknell feels that the blogosphere is being deprived of a potentially shining star.
However, as she simply cannot do without the Rolls Canardly, she will say no more about it. For the present, at least.
You should have asked the wol if he could spell Tuesday!
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