Sunday 1 May 2011

Messing up Minsmere

Watch out! We childish home educators are about your countryside again, ruining it, and making it all messy!

Today we're up to no good on Suffolk's water margins. Crumpling grass and rearranging the stones all along the path. Now look what we've done. The pebbles are all out of place!

Yes, I am still cross with Victoriana. I am going to put forks in her spoon compartment, and give all her ornaments a quarter turn to the left. It will blow her mind.

Shut up, Grit. You have better things to say.

Like tell you that we are here, walking around RSPB Minsmere.


Ha! See how we travel incognito with an unsuspecting bunch of morning twitchers! They never realise how untidy we are! Look how we slip incongruously into the crowd! Us home-grown devious educational alternatives, driven by extremist ideas about natural learning, teaching pedagogy and educational philosophy. We're out there! Amongst you! Destabilising the social order!

Ahem.


I shall leave a raggedy torn end on her kitchen towel, then hide behind the airing cupboard door so I can hear her scream.

Because you only have to look here. This day is an example of how out of normal society we are! We have carefully mastered the art of doing what everyone else does on an RSPB walk, which is to look through a variety of optical instruments in various directions looking for birds and saying oooh.

Here we are, joining in with the surveillance operation on the white-winged tern.


You have to know what you're looking for. It isn't like any other boring bird you know. This one has white wings. And it's a tern.



Like us, it's out there. Somewhere. Messing up the sky and pooping on the islands.


Stop it Grit. Enough of this silliness. You are only proving Victoriana right.


Anyway, England is a more beautiful subject.


You should take one of these RSPB twitcher walks. They are very good. On the Suffolk Sandlings we ooohed and ahhed over the Little Gull, Sedge Warbler, Sandmartin, Goldfinch, Marsh Harrier, Avocet, and a Greater Spotted Woodpecker. (Quiet about that last one, because Tiger didn't see it. If she find out her sisters did, she'll smash the place up.)


We looked at plants too! But I won't list them in case I sound like a tedious guide book of lowland coastal heath. Really you need to come out here and walk about for yourself.

Just take my advice, and do not make any muddy footprints, and clear up your messy stones.

P.S. While you are out here, you must visit Dunwich with its fantastic local museum telling you a story of the medieval town under the sea.







In my defence, it had to come out somewhere. And better this than keying her Volvo.