Brilliant things to do for free – feeding the ducks

Today I took half a loaf of sliced bread with me into a rather posh jewelers.  I wanted to get a new battery for my watch as I’ve decided to take a cheap and cheerful watch with me to Vietnam rather than my usual one – which is also pretty cheap and cheerful to be honest, but has a metal strap and I think might get really hot and burn my wrist in the heat of South East Asia.  Hang on, I’m going to take a photo so you can see (is that over sharing, too trivial?) well anyway, here they are, spot the difference:

I think it is possibly the cheapest watch that has ever been to the jewelers in question, but they were very nice about it, and didn’t say anything about my accompanying half a loaf of sliced bread either (though I could tell they wanted to ask).  Actually, I’ve been in possession of sliced bread in an incongruous location before, specifically, I went to see Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Roman Polanski) at Leicester Square cinema when it first came out (O level set text).  I needed to remember to buy a loaf of bread to take home, and I was so worried I’d forget to do this afterwards that I bought it on the way there, and took it into the cinema with me.  I sat through the whole film with a sweating bag of bread on my lap.  Bad idea, loaves of bread are not practical things to take to the cinema, it didn’t do well, definitely squished by the time it got home.  Anyway, I digress, the point is, I am in the last stages of preparing to go away, and as part of that I’m having a clear out of my freezer.  In it, was an emergency loaf, and I decided it didn’t really merit being kept for another six months so I decided I’d treat myself and go to the local park to feed the ducks.

Oh my god, how completely brilliant it is to feed ducks!  I’d completely forgotten how much fun this is.  What happened along the way that I haven’t done this in ages?  Is there some unwritten rule book that says adults must not venture unaccompanied to parks to feed ducks or something?  Is this an accepted wisdom that has somehow seeped into my soul and prevented me indulging in this extraordinarily brilliant pastime for years and years?  If you haven’t fed ducks lately, do so.  Do it immediately, it was absolutely fabulous – to coin a phrase!

Why?  Let me count the ways…

Firstly, it’s like being temporarily hailed as a goddess by the entire bird population in the vicinity.  The very proximity of a plastic bag in your hand as you approach the waterside sets off a chain reaction of activity.  Birds flap and swarm and splash towards you.  Is this what it is like to be a celebrity and find that as soon as one person notices you a great crush of people surge towards you?  You can tell by their eyes that they will let nothing, NOTHING stand in their way to reach their idol.   Albeit it is a temporary phenomenon, and it would be contraindicated for anyone with either a bird phobia, or an imagination over stimulated by watching Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’ at an early and impressionable age, but for me, it was glorious.  I am fundamentally shallow, and will take adoration in any form, however it comes, and however short-lived.

Secondly, the drama is extraordinary.  It is survival of the fittest played out before your very eyes.  The pond you thought was just a dwelling place for placid mallards is in fact host to a ferment equivalent to that of a crocodiles’ feeding frenzy.  I couldn’t quite believe how the water churned up from tranquil calm to white water in an instant as the birds competed for the chunks of bread.  Extraordinary.  I’d swear this is what I saw today…  Not really from Bing images (feel free to share and use commercially) at all!

Thirdly, it isn’t just feeding the ducks.  In fact, it would be more accurate to say that it was feeding the seagulls.  It’s easy to take for granted wildlife on our doorstep but honestly, it was really impressive.  I wasn’t quick enough to photo and throw bread at the same time (I know, what did they teach me in school all those years back?  Maybe if I’d been a bit more committed to sport I’d have perfected the necessary hand/eye co-ordination ages ago, sigh – what might have been… ) but the way those gulls swooped and soared and snatched bread I’d flung into the air before it had time to land on the pond was pretty darned impressive.

So I used to think the most fun you could have for free in the whole world (as manifested in microcosm in Leamington Spa) was to feed the squirrels in Jephson Gardens.  They’d run after you and ambush you if you looked like you had food but still intended to walk on by. Happily take food from your hands, and on one memorable occasion one ran up my leg in its enthusiasm to get to the peanut trophy it had correctly detected I had on my person.  Granted, not everyone’s idea of fun, but for me, it was brilliant.  Now I am reminded that the simple pleasure of feeding ducks has many of the same qualities.  It makes you feel fantastic for being alive, it brings you into contact with urban wildlife, and if you have any soul at all, it will surely release your inner child.  These are good things.  Embrace them.

Here are some gratuitous squirrel photos, from my parents’ garden.  Love squirrels, it would be nice if there were a few more red squirrels around but I’d rather have grey in the garden than none at all.  Enjoy.

Fretfulness, cold feet and disproportionate angst…

In three days I’m heading off to Vietnam for 6 months.  The rational being inside of me recognises that a bit of cold feet, fretting and miscellaneous angst is entirely natural and proportionate.  However,it is also really annoying and inconvenient.  I’m turning into lady Macbeth in that I have lost the ability to sleep of late.  (Not yet inciting anyone to murderous deeds yet though, so let’s keep it in proportion). I’m hoping that by writing down here my current sources of apprehension I will see how trivial they are in the grand scheme of things, and gain a bit of perspective.

Obviously, for the purposes of this post I’m not even bothering to document the background noise levels of angst that permanently accompany my waking hours.  You know the kind of things.  Contemplating the pointlessness and fragility of human existence.  Climate change.  Remembering in excruciating detail that time I got locked in the outside loo  (for over an hour) at Hampton Wick  railway station aged about 13 years old,  and had to scream for help from passing pedestrians by standing on the toilet seat and shouting through the iron bars on a window I could hardly reach.  Why am I here?  Why are you here?  Who are you anyway?  Who am I?   Why am I?  Penury, destitution, physical and mental decline in old age.  Inability to operate my mobile phone.  Wanton destruction of the planet.  Social inequality.  Extinction of the rhino.  My inability to make friends.  Parental ill-health.  Blah de blah.

  

This cacophony of anxiety is currently joined by a new set of discordant sounds, they are in and of themselves pretty trivial, but they are giving me grief.  In no particular order then, these are my issues for today, challenges I might face in Vietnam:

• Missing the last few episodes of Broadchurch
• Contracting Japanese Encephalitis.  Having confidently decided jabs for this were unnecessary, I took a phone all this morning from a relative in Australia who informs me that the news there is full of people returning from travels in Asia with avoidable hideous mosquito borne illnesses.  Oh crap.  Too late for my jabs for that now anyway
• Dying intestate
• Having been Googling for other people’s experiences of TEFL in Vietnam I came across a series that can only be described as the equivalent of ‘misery memoirs’.  Terrifying tales of exploitation, poor organisation, not being paid, shocking accommodation and unmanageable workloads with no support – maybe I should have done a bit more research before embarking on this odyssey
• Being seen as a clumsy, sweating, super-sized  oafish troll, lumbering around in a land populated entirely by petite elegantly dressed and socially accomplished Vietnamese nationals
• Finding it isn’t so much that I have imposter syndrome, rather that I am actually an imposter, and I will be exposed as entirely lacking in the necessary transferable skills to deliver in the new unknown TEFL role
• Losing my laptop
• Losing my cool
• Losing my mind
• Missing The Archers (though I’ve really gone off that lately, the entire cast seem to have been abducted by aliens and replaced with unconvincing replicants. What’s more, yesterday the descriptor of last night’s episode said simply ‘Susan makes a chilli’ so maybe this is an easy challenge to put in perspective….)
• Radio 4 in its entirety, obviously, Radio 4 extra when I’ve got insomnia (lack of)
• Yorkshire Tea (lack of)
• Silence (lack of)
• Missing my coach, flight, connection etc
• Missing my personal space
• Finding out my pound shop sunglasses are not UVA protective after all
• Loneliness
• Finding out where places are
• Oh yes, and finding out I’m not only out of my depth in the new job but exposed as being so.

Apart from that, all is tickety boo.  Bring the journey on!