By: Blonde Two
Blonde life often echoes family life. In family Blonde Two we never manage to have a pair of binoculars to hand when we need to: a) Look at a mountain instead of climb it. b) Spot our house from Haytor. c) Spy on people. The binoculars, it seems, are always ‘in the car’; unless of course we are in the car, in which case they are ‘at home’.
The Two Blondes’ Binoculars (try saying that after a pint of Jail Ale!) behave in a similar way. We usually both have them for team spotting at the Ten Tors finish, but don’t manage to be that Dartmoor organised at any other time of the year.
However, on day one of last week’s Gold DofE expedition, we realised that Blonde Telepathy had been working well. Both-Blonde-Binoculars were in Both-Blonde-Bags! This was great news as it meant that we could: a) Watch our team and their orange rucksack covers from afar. b) Work out that Dartmoor brown soil and orange plastic was not our teams. c) Not argue about who’s turn it was to do looking.
So found a spot on Beardown Tor where we could see a big section of Gold route, hunkered down out of the wind, and had a very nice time looking at Dartmoor. Most satisfying!
Orange plastic and binoculars are a theme this year – was observing birds on the cliffs at Beer and saw a very strange one with a black neck and head and orange body sitting on a nest; a trip home for a more powerful lens and I could see that it was a nest made partly of a Sainsbury carrier bag.
What you saw was a Shetland Creme Egg still in its foil wrapping. A mistake anyone could make.
I can assure you that if it had been a device of chocolate, we would have been out of our eyrie (sp?) and across the moor faster than a bolt of Blonde lightning. We Blondes can smell it you know!
It’s like watching the Dance of the Seven Veils. Except in your case it’s the seventy-seven veils. Or even seven-hundred-and-seventy-seven. Eventually software may exist (Perhaps it already does!) that will allow the post viewer to – as it were – turn the image round and view it from the other side. To confirm that which you wrote about eighteen months ago: Are we (ie, The Two Blondes) good looking? Yes I think we are.
Such overwhelming confidence that I’m prepared to accept it on trust. Who needs such software? Faith is what counts.
I’m aware of the binoc problem and have partially solved it this way. In one corner of our dining room is a sort of shrine. On an occasional table made by my great-grandfather sits my Remington portable typewriter, overtaken by superior technology but a memorial to the millions of words, hammered out for work and for leisure, on this side of the Atlantic and the other. Such ephemera! On the adjacent wall, hanging from a special wall-hook, is my Pentax 35-mm camera, similarly outmoded but beautifully constructed. Close at hand a mini pair of binocs, displaced by my x20 (or is it x12?) RSPBs, out of their carrying case, focused to my eyes, ready to identify any novel avian visitor to the garden. Last used on a greenfinch – not rare but more marvellous when magnified. Alas I do not have the resources to dot binocs all over Dartmoor but I hope I’ve shown willing.
You table, is I believe, the equivalent of our rucksacks. The only problem being that we Blondes have kleptomanic (should be a word if it isn’t) tendencies and our tables are getting fuller and fuller!
You are very right about greenfinches.
a similar thought – it’ll be ankles next, to be sure – something shocking
Never ankles Gimmer – think of the ticks!