You might recall my encounter with one of the UK's top birders ..... well, today we interacted again. Over a half-hour cup of coffee he managed yet again to reduce my birding credentials to a quivering heap of crap !! (I ought to come up with a nickname for him .... how about Stodgy ? OK.) But how, you might ask, did he manage to create this ego-destroying effect ? Well, he had really tricky question for me, for a start.... " Where do our Red-Necked Phalaropes overwinter ?" Crumbs ! I had what I thought was a reasonable response ..... but boy, was I wrong. Mind you, it's not something I felt I really needed to know... but as far as he was concerned, it tipped me onto the birding scrapheap ..ouch. Fair enough. So, dear reader ... put yourself in my place ... what would your answer be ? Now onto the second topic .... he got started on Green-winged Teals. Here's his questions about that .... [a] Why weren't they accepted as different species years ago ? [b] How did those two completely differently positioned white stripes evolve ? They're on completely different feather tracts. As far as anyone knows, there's no "intermediate" versions. They're no bloody use anyway ... in either position. So ... how did that come about ? Er ... I did come up with a possible hypothesis ... Maybe there was a whole panoply of intermediates, but those two versions withstood the test of selection/evolution. But we both agreed it seemed pretty unlikely. Have a think for yourself. I'm thinking right now. And by the way ... he repeatedly accused me of being a creationist. What ? Me ? I'm about as far away from "creationism" as any person on the planet. But we'll let that pass. Right .... so there's a couple of things for you to think about. Mind you, I think I stumped him a bit with my question as to whether "our" Swallows breed when they get to southern Africa... ah-ha !! But now, the lovely " Oceanos de sed" with the words (letra) and everything ... I'm feeling a little less crushed now .....
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I don't know what you will all make of this, but there's certainly a range of opinions about it on youtube.... but see what you think for yourselves ... ..and here's another fairly "controversial" video of an interview with "Neal Vees" ... ..and guess what ... here's part 2 ... if you want some more .... .... so make what you will of all that. All I can add to that, is that I've talked to him a few times, in various far-flung parts of the UK, and my main impression is that he's always in a hell of a hurry ! Oh, and I suspect he gets through quite a few tyres per year. And ... while looking for " this sort of thing" I came across a whole lot of much odder stuff.... oh yes. But I've spared you that ..for the time being. And as for the music ..... LOL with one of his " Springsteeny" songs .... " Alli donde soliamos gritar" .... epic stuff ..... .. and here's the same thing, but with the words ... singalongstuff ..... It must be dead easy in these internet-ubiquitous times to cobble together fake birding expeditions to the remote Jarbodian jungles, or the mysterious Lake Burvarken, or anywhere at all really. I bet I could look up the "birding scene" almost anywhere in the world, and find out about the top birding spots, which birds could be got at different seasons ... even the names of local birders and guides that I could drop into my story to make it more plausible. After all, who needs to spend £7000 going to Taxtoxaxtiax when you can just sit at you computer and find it all out for nowt ? And then write about it and get paid for it when it gets into " World Birding " or " Birding Now!" But probably not " Birding Then" which doesn't tend to cover all the topical stuff. It's more aimed at people like me. I like the problem page myself, and the wheelchair adverts. And the Tonic Water special offers. And remember one of my laws of life ... " if I can think of it, other people are probably doing it." And "that sort of thing" has a long long history. Marco Polo (1254-1324) is widely believed to have largely " faked" his famous " Travels" in the Far East .... mainly by listening to the equally dodgy tales of travellers and merchants in lots of scummy taverns in Asia. A lot of people don't believe that Byron actually swam across the Bosphorus. I do ... but many don't. He could have just made it up. Or, I could have made it up right now. There's lots of layers to all this... which can itself cause problems. Imagine what would happen if I cobbled together an amazing birding jaunt around, say, Skaatteringrad in furthest Russia, by looking it all up on a website, but that website itself had been similarly compiled by some cheating git who had got it all off various dodgy tweets, but they turned out to be largely taken from the ramblings of a serial fantasist on Instagram. The whole house of cards would collapse around my ears. But ... it surely must be going on. Because it can. Why do men fight outside pubs ? Because they can . Right then .... now you'll know not to take at face value all those accounts of amazingly successful, see-the-lot-and-fly-home travel stories. Eventually I'll get round to telling you all about my adventures in Lithuania ! Because I can. And now, the music .... totally unthematic today .... it's a v. famous Spanish song this, which I got to hear during my ground-breaking birding trip around Spain during which I broke new ground by only managing to see 2 species .... nobody got that low before. I suppose the fact that I went round it on a bulldozer with those darkened windows that had a lot to do with it. Anyway, on the bulldozer's sound system this was quite often played ... that's probably why I didn't pick up any bird songs either..... bah. But that's working holidays for you. Love of Lesbian & Zahara ... "Lucha De Gigantes" ... different band ----- singalong version .... off you go .... because you can .... You might remember aeons ago that I wrote two rather critical pieces about an "old" bird book for beginners ... "Bird Watching for Beginners" by Bruce Campbell. I was quite scathing about some of it. I was right too ! It wasn't his fault ... it was written in 1952, when bird-watching was very very different to the way it is these days. And so were young people. I should know ... a few years later I was one of them. If you don't remember them, the first one's on the far end of this link .... 3-one-of-my-first-bird-books.html .. and the 2nd one's on the end of this link .... 119-how-to-encourage-young-birdwatchers-or-not.html Here on the left is the original 1952 version, and a later version .... Well, here's another incredibly old-fashioned bit of advice from the very same book ........ "Although it may not seem part of birdwatching at first, you want to make yourself reasonably library-minded and museum-minded. When you are young it might seem a bit cheeky to go crashing into a building like a Greek Temple or a Cathedral ( or a mixture of both) and ask to be shown a book on birds or some stuffed specimens.But this is what public libraries and museums are for, and their staffs are the most helpful people I have ever met. The part of the library you want is the Reference Library, where all the important reference books are kept. Most museums have showcases with British birds in them, but in many there is also a reference collection of "skins" - that is, stuffed birds which have not been "set up" like those in the show-cases but are kept in drawers to be looked at closely. To see them you will have to ask an attendant to take you to the Curator and once you have taken that step you will have found another good ally in your efforts to get to know birds. " ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Well !!! That certainly was NOT my experience with my local museum. When I was 10½ or so, I went to the little local museum in Kerwan ( anagram), and I noticed that they'd got some of the labels wrong in the stuffed birds section. For a start, they had muddled up Hedge Sparrow, Tree Sparrow and House Sparrow ... they'd swapped them around, and the Latin names were wrong too. Being a naive sort of nit, I went over to the counter and told the curator about this. He looked at me as if I was some sort of simpleton. Basically, he insisted that the labels could not be wrong. It was me that was wrong. I asked him for a bit of paper so I could write the correct labels for him. After a bit of wittering and grumbling, he got a bit of paper and a pencil. I carefully wrote out the correct labels and Latin names for the "sparrow/accentor" mix-up and a couple of other smaller spelling mistakes. Well, readers, I went back about two weeks later only to find that nothing had changed. This time I took my "Observer's Book of Birds" with me. I had realised I needed some heavy ammunition !Surprise, surprise, the old, crap labels were still there. So ... I went up to the desk again, to find a different person in attendance. Of course, he knew nothing about any of this. I wrote it all out again ... and this time I took him over to show him those incorrect labels. I also showed him the correct names in the book. Like the other one, he was very grumpy, and basically wanted me to go away. Which I did. I went back twice more ... but each time nothing had changed. I gave up. I was also irked.Very irked. But ...... This taught me an important and lasting lesson. Just because someone is grown up, wears a suit, and is behind a desk and is in a position of responsibility, it means nowt. They can still be ignorant gits. Throughout my various careers I've come across plenty of them. At least I'm a non-ignorant git. It's one step up. I've found throughout my life that this remains true right up the chain of command .... not always ... but often enough. So much for Mr. Campbell's advice. Maybe he was lucky. He was probably down south .... yes. And as for libraries .... that's for another time. Mind you, there soon won't be any. That was all sort of serious... serious-ish. A bit sad really. But now, a rather hypnotic, mystical sort of song from Top French Band Noir Désir... " Le Vent nous portera " ...as indeed it will .... Naturellement, tu veux chanteras avec cet video .... I hope museums are a bit better nowadays ... but my nearest one is very very boring, and the big one in Belfast that I visit most years is more like a labyrinth than a museum, plus, over the (almost) 50 years I've been going to it, it has dumbed down a lot.
I'm not kidding about the labyrinth ... last time I went, everybody was completely lost. The only realistic way to get out was to take any downwards set of stairs you could find ..... repeat n times ... until you got to the ground floor. And whatever you do, don't try to follow the map. It's crap. In fact, it's worse than crap. I often have a "relevant" song to go with what I write ... but this time, a relevant book cover ... I'm a variable old Hector .... As you know, on this blog I try to address all the crucial birding issues. And in this case, luckily, the answer is simple .. it's this one .... ... and that's because it's got what you need ! It doesn't waste time and paper telling you how to recognise a Song Thrush, you're on your own there, nor does it give you the finer points of the Robin, or the exact length of a Starling's beak. No. What it does do, is, it tells you how to distinguish tricky pairs or groups of species. So, there's a section on Ringed/Little Ringed/Kentish Plovers. Another on Grey/Yellow/Citrine Wagtails. There's a big chunk on Glaucous and Iceland Gulls. And loads of other tricky trios, dodgy duos, quirky quintets, subtle sextets and other bunches of baffling birds, awkward avians and flummoxing feathered friends. And not only that ... the annotated illustrations, by the brilliant, one-and-only Laurel Tucker, are terrific, wonderful, amazing and astounding. Your Tricky Terns, Wonky Wagtails, Superficially Similar Stints, Perplexingly Puzzling Plovers and Cryptic Crossbills are all covered in glorious colour plates. And .. on top of all of that, it's pocketable/portable and assuringly affordable. As am I. All of which might be important to you. It's well worth buying a car, just to be able to put this book in it. Hey .. that was all suitably sensible .. I feel quite odd. Actually, an awful amount of alliteration appeared . All amazingly appropriate. So ... time for the music ... it's that Roy Harper again .... " North Country" Although, actually, there's another song of his that would be more appropriate at the moment, " When an old cricketer leaves the Crease." Tell you what, we'll have both.... and you can , rather appropriately, see if you can tell one from the other ... Last night there was a big breakthrough at mini-birding towers. At about 10:30 I went out the back, and lo and behold, there was a very close, very loud, female Tawny Owl calling like mad. I was chuffed. But why ? Well, over all the years (yonks, roughly) we've lived here, there's been Tawny Owls. Every year ... sometimes more than one pair. Owl city. Owltown. The Owlery. Owls-Ar-Us. But not this year, for the first time. Since last November, the only Tawnys I've detected were on two occasions, both very distant, way off , very faint, males. Probably the same one. And that been all. It doesn't take much to lose them. Just chance coincidences .... one gets hit by a car, the other one dies of old age, all sorts of possible combinations that add up to the "no owls next year" scenario. Stochastic processes. So I was amazingly over-pleased with last night's performance. And I'm hoping it will attract a male. By the way, I feel a bit guilty about that post yesterday where I told you a load of old rubbish about the way that astronomical telescopes worked. Mind you, it was entertaining rubbish. I'll tell you the truth now, to make up for it. Well, the truth is, telescopes first came to the Earth with the alien creatures that landed in biblical times .. they're there in the first chapter of Ezekiel, plain as day. Anyhow, they had telescopes, but because they saw the world upside-down compared to us, their telescopes gave what we think of as an upside-down image. So that's why the first telescopes were called "astronomical" telescopes... they came from the stars! All those upside-downy gadgets, which turn the image the right way up for us, were invented centuries later, and at last telescopes could be used for birding, shooting people a long way away and watching what people were getting up to in the tower block over the road. But there's more to it than that. They also passed down to us the names of their Gods .... and since then, as a tribute to their Gods, they've all been named after them. Kowa, Swarovski, Opticron, Leitz, Bushnell, Bausch and Lomb, Bresser, Swift, they're all the gods of those visiting aliens from all those years ago. You'll always think of them now when you use your scope. How lovely. I wonder if they ever got back to their own planet . I hope so. It feels good to have told you the truth about it all. Having cleared that up, it's music time ... this is a very appropriate video by the way, and a fine, nay, gorgeous song by Supersubmarina ... Obviously, you're going to want to sing along ... so here's the words video .. Yesterday's article about "my first telescope" produced a few emails ... you too can have a go at me a [email protected] .... and why not. Everybody else does. I suggest you tootle back one to see what I wrote, and then you will know what this is all about. [1] One reader pointed out ( A Mr. I. No-best) that I could have got round the "upside-down-image" that you get with an astronomical telescope by rotating the scope through 180°. If you have really strong hands, you could try 3 x 180 = 540° . Well, that's a simple technique, the only drawback being that it doesn't work. I could say something a little stronger and a lot more insulting, but I won't. Maybe if you do it really remarkably incredibly fast, you'll get it the right way up for a few seconds .... worth a try. But once "it" realises what's going on, it'll flip back to upside-downsy mode. [2] Another reader (Mr. U. No-nowt) wanted to know why astronomical telescopes show the image upside down . There's always some interfering busybody isn't there. But luckily, I know why ...here we go .... [a] Most maps of the moon and the planets in astronomy books show them upside down. That's why the telescopes that astronomers use need to have an extra "upside-downy" device tucked away inside the gubbins, so that what they see matches up with the maps in the books. There's no simpler solution available to that problem I'm afraid. You just have to pay the extra for that upside-downy bit of kit . [b] Actually I was having a bit of a laugh there. Of course they don't have an upside-downy device in the gubbins ! What a farcical idea . They actually have 17 of them. That way, if an even number of them go wrong, there'll still be an odd number of working upside-downy devices to do the job. Which is all you need. But what happens if an odd number of them go wrong ? Well, what happens is, if one, goes wrong, it automatically buggers up another one, but in a special way, so that one doesn't carry on and bugger up a third one ... it's very clever. I hope this has helped you to understand what goes on inside that telescope of yours. I'm always here to clear up all these technical questions up for you. Well, I won't always be here ...obviously. But then , neither will you. Any road up, here's top French band Manu and " Un baiser dans le cou" I've not had one of those for ages ! Here's some more diagrams to help you understand all about the gubbins, thingummyjigs, doo-dahs, oojimiflips and watsits that are crammed inside those jellyscopes.... ... ...at last, an actual bloody bird !
I remarked a little while ago about one of my very first twitching experiences ... but what I forgot to mention was the totally crap telescope I had at the time. It was really an "astronomical telescope" that my dad had bought ..he'd seen it in a tatty advert somewhere .... and it was basically a long grey metal tube with a tiny tiny tinky-winky eye lens and a not- big - enough objective lens and ... this is good ... a rubbish mega-hefty wooden tripod that looked as if it was made from an old clothes-horse, if you know what one of those is. But the best and really top thing about it was ... being, as it was, an astronomical telescope the image was upside-down. umop-episbn . See what I did there (rather badly). Try turning the screen over. Oh dear. But, it was all I had, and,temporarily ( about two years) I had to put up with it. But what I really needed was ... wait for it ..can you guess ? While you're thinking about that, here's the music ... the remarkable Spanish band Love of Lesbian ( don't ask) and " Mi Primera Combustion " and here's the "con letra" version for those of you who want to sing along ... Now, as I was saying, what I really needed was ..I'm sure you know already ... there has been a bit of a clue ... an upside-down bird book. That is, one with all the pictures upside-down, and the descriptions the right way up. Or the other way round, come to think of it. Terrific. It meets a need. A bit of a niche market, but a market nevertheless. The other way to do it would be to get a normal bird book, carefully cut out the picture pages, and sellotape them back upside down. The third way would be to wander around upside down for however long it takes to make you brain turn the images round, which I believe it would, and then carry on as normal . There's a few problems with that but sometimes things can't be perfect. The 4th way would be to have a special upside-down chair with straps like in an aeroplane, so you could sit at the scope upside-down. I did try hand-standing but, to be honest, it wasn't good, and doing those drawings of mine was, er, tricky. .... right ... you've had your artikul, you've had your mew-sick, there we go .... this could be another solution actually ... Here's a "version" of a fairly famous poem by Wallace Stevens .... a name that conjures up the image of a co-respondent in a hotly contested divorce case. It's a fantastic and remarkable example of my theory that "All Bird Poetry is Crap" which is itself, of course, part of a larger more all-encompassing theory that "All Nature Poetry Is Crap." ( Except mine of course.... mine's deliberately crap ... so it's OK ) (I'm always pleased to find new proofs of this robust statement) And I'm going to prove this by altering it a little bit. And you know what .. it won't make it any more or less absurd and witless. I'm sure that, had this been the original, it would have made no difference. Unless you don't know the original, I'm sure you won't notice anything "wrong." Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Cowbird Based on a poem by WALLACE STEVENS I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the cowbird. II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three cowbirds. III The cowbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a cowbird Are one. V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of innuendoes, The cowbird whistling Or just after. VI Icicles filled the long window With barbaric glass. The shadow of the cowbird Crossed it, to and fro. The mood Traced in the shadow An indecipherable cause. VII O thin men of Haddam, Why do you imagine golden birds? Do you not see how the cowbird Walks around the feet Of the women about you? VIII I know noble accents And lucid, inescapable rhythms; But I know, too, That the cowbird is involved In what I know. IX When the cowbird flew out of sight, It marked the edge Of one of many circles. X At the sight of cowbirds Flying in a green light, Even the bawds of euphony Would cry out sharply. XI Bathed in a symphony Of sky and time, Unbounded, The cowbird waits. XII He rode over Connecticut In a glass coach. Once, a fear pierced him, In that he mistook The shadow of his equipage For cowbirds. XIII The river is moving. The cowbird must be flying. XIV It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The cowbird sat In the cedar-limbs. Well, having struggled through all that, waiting for something interesting or poetic to happen, I don't suppose you've realised that the "cowbird" which features all the way through should actually have been a blackbird. But so what ? Oh, by the way, can you spot the verse that I stuck in there somewhere ??? I'm an interfering old Hector. But as a slight change of topic, here's Alizee and the famous song " J'en Ai Marre" which, interestingly, is where "Johnny Marr" of the Smiths got his name from. It's a slangy way of saying " I'm bored". And Morrisey = Moi aussi ... "Me too." I hope you like that. You can bore people in pubs with it now. In "animal behavioural" terms, she's " showing us her thermometers" here .. I hear that "The Ronald" has yet again got himself into more controversy..... For a start instead of going to that McCain funeral, he chose to go to one of his 773 golf courses .... but it was raining, so instead he had a look round the trophy room, roughly the size of the Taj Mahal,or, if you prefer, 315 Olympic Swimming Pools, and came across this stuffed Green Woodpecker in a glass case. He turned to his " Visitor Experience Manager" .. The Ronald .. " What the F***'s this ?" VEM ............." It's one of the club's most treasured exhibits , Sir, donated to the club in 1952 by the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom." The Ronald.. " Oh yeah, that's just after we'd won the war for them. That's all they could come up with, huh ? A measly dead bird. Not even an American bird either. What sort of crap bird is it anyway?" VEM ........... " It's a Green Woodpecker sir, a beautiful British bird. The Ronald ... "Yeah, yeah, "green" just about sums it up. Just look at it ..it can't even find a proper-sized tree. Just a wet dude, huh ? We got heaps better woodpeckers than that pile of shit. I want proper USA woodpeckers in here pronto. Rootin' tootin' for the USA. Not going around peckin' at piddling tiny stumps like a stoopid witless dude." VEM.............. " Why certainly sir, certainly. " The Ronald ... " Yeah, and I don't want any dead ones. Dead equals loser in my book. I want proper, living 7000% alive birds in this here building, not cowardly,lily-livered give -up -and -get-shot dead stuff. VEM ............ "Certainly sir, I will implement this as soon as......." The Ronald.... "Hey, hey, what about that red hat he's wearing .... it's some bastard Commie dude huh ?" VEM ............... " Why no sir, that's .." The Ronald .." No ! Wha-da-ya mean "no". I'm not here so that low-life arseholes like you can say no to Ronald H Trunk , leader of the god-damn US of A. That dick-headed, commie-cowardly bastard comin' over here from the dinky-doodle-dinkiest prat-arsed country in the World and infestin' my country with their commie ideas. VEM ....... " I'll ... " The Ronald .. " Hey ... shut up and listen up. We got some American woodpeckers, right ? OK ? What've we got ? VEM ............ " Well sir, we do have an Acorn Woodpecker in the basement, a very fine specimen, donated by ..." The Ronald... Acorn ? What kinda crap-headed half-assed name is that ? That's out ! Only wet-assed wimps eat acorns.What else is there huh? VEM .......... " There's, er, the White-Backed W ... The Ronald... " Stop right there buster ... I don't want any White-Backed cowardly mummy's-boy shit in here. White-flag waving surrender-lovers, that's all they are. Come on ( gives the VEM a hefty kick up the arse) .. VEM .......... "Well sir, we do have Red-Cockaded Woo -" The Ronald .. " Shut the f*** up ! We don't need no "cockaded " crap. And no Red- anything either. Garbage. Next ! Come on ... let's hear some goddam good news ! VEM ...... " How about Ladder-backed sir ? A fine specimen, if I may ..." The Ronald.. " Oh yeah, Ladder-backed huh, so every Tom, Dick and Harvey can walk all over him yeah ?" That is one feeble shit of woodpecker, givin' up before he even starts. Hey .... that Green one .... it's not one of those lettuce-gobbling carrot-chewing butterfly-hugging heaps of cow crap is it ? VEM .......... " Oh no sir, no..." The Ronald .. " So what does this Green shithead eat then, huh ? VEM .......... " Er, ants. It eats ants." The Ronald .. " Ants, huh. What sort of stupid idea is that ? Nothing eats ants." VEM .............. "Well, sir, there's Ant-eaters of course." The Ronald.. "Are you taking the god-damned piss outa me boy? What did I just say ? VEM ............. " Nothing eats ants, sir." The Ronald " Goddam right .... except you, you heapa shite . Here's what you're going to do ... go and get me a bucketful of ants right now, or I'll bust your ass. NOW ! And when you get back, you're going to eat the goddam bucketful , and then you're going to eat the Green Effing Woodpecker and all it's Un-American Ladder-Backed Acorn-nibbling Red-Cockaded dead 'n stuffed loser commie friends, right here. And if I can find an Ant-Eater, you'll eat that too. Hey, I'll get you started ! ( Trunk picks him up, slings him over his shoulder, walks over to the 8th-floor window and chucks him through it ! ) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I suppose we'll never know what happened later. You've got to admire his patriotic spirit though. A & J Stone are here to help us recover from all that, with "Heart Beats Slow" [Verse 1: Angus and Julia] Well, I heard you were (you were lying) About how brave you are Well, I heard you were (you were still trying) Trying to get back to the start [Hook: Angus and Julia] And he won't let it into the kitchen No, he won't let it into the house No, he won't let it through the front door Cause it's burning her pretty little heart [Verse 2: Angus and Julia] I'm gonna miss you Gonna miss you, girl And all of the things we could have done I'm gonna miss you I'm gonna miss you And all of the things we should have done [Bridge: Angus and Julia] You say I move so fast That you can hardly see You say I move so fast How could you be with me? But my heart beats slow But my heart beats slow But my heart beats slow But my heart beats slow [Verse 3: Angus and Julia] Well I wish you, wish you well All the best Well I wish you, I wish you well All the best [Hook: Angus and Julia] [Bridge: Angus and Julia] [Verse 1: Angus and Julia] Well, I heard you were (you were lying) About how brave you are Well, I heard you were (you were still trying) Trying to get back to the start [Hook: Angus and Julia] And he won't let it into the kitchen No, he won't let it into the house No, he won't let it through the front door Cause it's burning her pretty little heart [Verse 2: Angus and Julia] I'm gonna miss you Gonna miss you, girl And all of the things we could have done I'm gonna miss you I'm gonna miss you And all of the things we should have done [Bridge: Angus and Julia] You say I move so fast That you can hardly see You say I move so fast How could you be with me? But my heart beats slow But my heart beats slow But my heart beats slow But my heart beats slow [Verse 3: Angus and Julia] Well I wish you, wish you well All the best Well I wish you, I wish you well All the best [Hook: Angus and Julia] [Bridge: Angus and Julia]
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AuthorThat's the author up there ... I was young and sprightly then. Archives
October 2022
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