picnic – Dan Q

Water Science #2

Back in 2019, the kids – so much younger back then! – and I helped undertake some crowdsourced citizen science for the Thames WaterBlitz. This year, we’re helping out again.

We’ve moved house since then, but we’re still within the Thames basin and can provide value by taking part in this weekend’s sampling activity. The data that gets collected on nitrate and phosphate levels in local water sources – among other observations – gets fed into an open dataset for the benefit of scientists and laypeople.

It’d have been tempting to be exceptionally lazy and measure the intermittent water course that runs through our garden! It’s an old, partially-culverted drainage ditch¹, but it’s already reached the “dry” part of its year and taking a sample wouldn’t be possible right now.

Two children wearing wellies stand in a ditch, breaking ice into chunks. — The ditch in our garden is empty 75% and full of water 25% of the time. Oh, and full of ice for a few days each winter, to the delight of children who love smashing things. (It’s also full of fallen wood and leaf detritus most of the year and JTA spends a surprising amount of time dredging it so that it drains properly into its next section.)

But more-importantly: the focus of this season’s study is the River Evenlode, and we’re not in its drainage basin! So we packed up a picnic and took an outing to the North Leigh Roman Villa, which I first visited last year when I was supposed to be on the Isle of Man with Ruth.

Dan kneels on a striped picnic mat with a 7-year-old and a 10-year old child alongside some sandwiches, iced fingers, Pepperami, fruit, and pretzels. — “Kids, we’re going outside…” / “Awww! Noooo!” / “…for a picnic and some science!” / “Yayyy!”

Our lunch consumed, we set off for the riverbank, and discovered that the field between us and the river was more than a little waterlogged. One of the two children had been savvy enough to put her wellies on when we suggested, but the other (who claims his wellies have holes in, or don’t fit, or some other moderately-implausible excuse for not wearing them) was in trainers and Ruth and I needed to do a careful balancing act, holding his hands, to get him across some of the tougher and boggier bits.

A 7-year-old boy in a grey camo coat balances on a blank over a large muddy puddle: he's about to attempt to cross a log to a gate into the next field (which also looks pretty wet). Ruth, who doesn't much like featuring in photos, has been digitally-removed from this one (she was standing at the far side ready to catch the balancing child!). — Trainers might not have been the optimal choice of footwear for this particular adventure.

Eventually we reached the river, near where the Cotswold Line crosses it for the fifth time on its way out of Oxford. There, almost-underneath the viaduct, we sent the wellie-wearing eldest child into the river to draw us out a sample of water for testing.

Looking into our bucket, we were pleased to discover that it was, relatively-speaking, teeming with life: small insects and a little fish-like thing wriggled around in our water sample². This, along with the moorhen we disturbed³ as we tramped into the reeds, suggested that the river is at least in some level of good-health at this point in its course.

A 10-year old girl wearing sunglasses and purple wellies holds her skirt up out of the water as she wades up the muddy bank of a river carrying a tub of water. — I’m sure our eldest would have volunteered to be the one to traipse through the mud and into the river even if she *hadn’t* been the only one of that was wearing wellies.

We were interested to observe that while the phosphate levels in the river were very high, the nitrate levels are much lower than they were recorded near this spot in a previous year. Previous years’ studies of the Evenlode have mostly taken place later in the year – around July – so we wondered if phosphate-containing agricultural runoff is a bigger problem later in the Spring. Hopefully our data will help researchers answer exactly that kind of question.

Children stand around at a riverside stile while a colour-changing chemical in a vial does its thing. — The chemical experiments take up to 5 minutes each to develop before you can read their colours, so the kids had plenty of time to write-up their visual observations while they waited.

Regardless of the value of the data we collected, it was a delightful excuse for a walk, a picnic, and to learn a little about the health of a local river. On the way back to the car, I showed the kids how to identify wild garlic, which is fully in bloom in the woods nearby, and they spent the rest of the journey back chomping down on wild garlic leaves.

A 7-year-old wearing his coat inside-out and as a cape runs excitedly into a forest path overgrown with wild garlic. — Seriously, that’s a *lot* of wild garlic.

The car now smells of wild garlic. So I guess we get a smelly souvenir from this trip, too⁴!

Footnotes

¹ Our garden ditch, long with a network of similar channels around our village, feeds into Limb Brook. After a meandering journey around the farms to the East this eventually merges with Chill Brook to become Wharf Stream. Wharf Stream passes through a delightful nature reserve before feeding into the Thames near Swinford Toll Bridge.

² Needless to say, we were careful not to include these little animals in our chemical experiments but let them wait in the bucket for a few minutes and then be returned to their homes.

³ We didn’t catch the moorhen in a bucket, though, just to be clear.

⁴ Not counting the smelly souvenir that was our muddy boots after splodging our way through a waterlogged field, twice

Marks & Spensive

Sometimes, the opportunity arises to troll the real world. And these opportunities are too good to miss. Earlier this week, I found myself in Marks & Spencer, buying some food and wine for a “carpet picnic”-and-Angel date-night-in with Ruth.

The grand total at the checkout came to £26.38: I’d precalculated this and was ready: as the number came up on the checkout I handed over a “£5 off when you spend £25” voucher, and a £20 M&S gift card.

“That’ll be… £1.38,” said the assistant, as I packed my shopping into a bag. Behind me, a young couple had joined the queue, behind me, and had clearly overheard the price. The looked stunned.

Naturally, then, I made sure that they saw the wine, the cakes, the fruit, the bread products, and everything else as I carefully loaded it all into the bag. “£1.38, wasn’t it?” I asked, as if I were double-checking, reaching into my wallet.

Catching the gaze of the shoppers behind me, as if I’d only just noticed them, I spoke to them as the cashier counted out my change. “It’s a great special offer, this one,” I said, “All of this for £1.38. Bargain!”

And then picked up my bag and left, watching the gobsmacked couple as they tried to work out how I’d managed to get 95% off the value of my shopping. Delightful.

It’s the little things, really.

A Punting Story

This story actually relates to an event that happened in mid-2010, but I only recently got around to finishing writing about it.

Once upon a time there was a boy named Dan.

Dan lives in a big house with his friends Ruth and JTA.

(their other friend, Paul, lives in the house, too… but he isn’t in this story)

One day, Dan and Ruth and JTA went on an adventure. They packed up a picnic with all their favourite foods.

Big soft sandwiches, teeny-tiny sausages, cheese-with-holes-in, and a big box of chocolates. Then they got onto a bus.

Soon, they saw a big, wide river. “Let’s get off here,” said Ruth. JTA pressed the button to tell the bus driver to stop.

At the river, there was a man with all kinds of boats: boats with pedals, boats with paddles, and boats with poles.

“Can we borrow one of your boats?” Dan asked the man.
“Okay,” he said, and gave Dan a long pole.

Ruth and JTA got into the boat and sat down. Dan stood up on the very back of the boat. It was very wobbly!

Dan used the pole to reach all the way down the bottom of the river, and pushed the boat along. It was hard work!

They found a shady tree in a park, stopped the boat, and ate their picnic.

They drank some fizzy wine and felt all bubbly and dizzy. Soon it was time to get back on the boat and go back along the river.

One time, Dan almost fell into the water! But luckily he didn’t, and he, Ruth and JTA got back safely.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Busy Weekends Part II

Following up on my post about the weekend before the weekend before last – here’s what I got up to the weekend before last (i.e. the weekend after that). You can see why I’m confused:

Ruth’s Family Picnic

The weekend before last, JTA and I joined Ruth and her family at their “annual family picnic”. This family reunion really shows quite how numerous Ruth’s relatives are, and I’m pretty sure that even she had to stretch her memory to recall everybody’s names as she introduced me (and, sometimes, JTA) to them all.

This year, they’d held the picnic in a wonderful National Trust-managed country estate called Cliveden. If it weren’t for the roasting temperatures, it could have been better still, but the sheer heat made it exhausting just to be sitting down, never mind walking around and climbing trees. Nonetheless, we got the chance for a good explore of the grounds, found the Secret Garden (their mistake was putting signs to it), and clambered around on the remains on the Canning Oak, a tree that lived hundreds of years and was a favourite spot for former Prime Minister George Canning… but which had been felled in 2004 after its roots threatened the structure of the slope on which it stood.

Apart from the ludicrous temperatures – suffered mostly during the journey in the sauna that is the car – it was a fun little trip. There was only one moment of awkwardness at the revelation that both of the men Ruth had brought with her were her partners. It’s often a difficult thing to bring up with more-distant relations, especially when you’re not sure who knows what already, and you don’t want to hide anything from anyone but there are few social norms about how you’re supposed to say, “So, you know what the deal is with us three, right?”

One response, though, was particularly fantastic, and so I thought I’d publish it here: upon being introduced to JTA and I as “her fiancé, and her other partner,” a particular relation of Ruth’s replied “Lucky you!” That’s a nice, positive response that I can get behind.

I’m Still In Aber. Yay.

[this post has been partially damaged during a server failure on Sunday 11th July 2004, and it has been possible to recover only a part of it]

I’m still in Aberystwyth, which I thought was a good thing even before people who don’t have the same benefit complained [Alec complaining, Ruth complaining, Adam complaining] about it. Aberystwyth is great this time of year – it’s still a little too early for the tourists to arrive, but it’s warm and sunny and feels like springtime.

Sadly, I still have heaps of work to do – Simon, my boss, is breathing down my neck… not to mention the fact that I need to pretty-much finish my dissertation over the Easter break. And an assignment. And start my revision. And train for Malawi.

As Claire reported, we went for a picnic up Pen Dinas at the weekend, followed by an evening of board games in Rummers and back at The Flat. The game we played in Rummers, ‘NTropy’, is really particularly good – you have to build unstable structures with sticks such that other players are …

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Claire wrote:

Well, the clocks have gone forward and the sun has come out. Something tells me there’ll be no more snow for a while. Yesterday, Dan, Paul, Bryn and I went up Pen Dinas (large hill south of aber with monument atop it) and had a picnic. The food was good, the company better and the sunset… well it was just another sunset really. I’ve realised that i can’t remember ever having seen a sunrise. Maybe one of these days I’ll be up early enough, and up a hill, and I’ll see one. Ah well.

After the picnic we went down the hill to Rummers, where we played silly games, first Cluedo(Paul won), then a game called Ntropy where the aim is to place sticks on a stick structure without any sticks falling off. Sounds simple but it got really tactical during the second game. Two random people joined us that time, so we had six players and only a few sticks each. It was tense, but Bryn won (again). We are goin to have to find a copy of that game so that we can finally beat bryn!

Then the last orders bell rang, and we returned to the flat, where we played Lord Of The Rings: the board game. It’s surprisingly good, given that you play cooperatively against the rules to try to get the ring to Mordor. I was Pippin – impetuous.
Now it’s morning and I have a headache from all the beer and a backache from the rolling down hills head over heels. Nevertheless, it was a good day.

Banks

It seems that NatWest now only open during the hours at which I am at work. Yet somehow I’m expected to deposit my paycheque. This makes no sense.

Mostly, I’ve been watching Futurama and drinking good beer. On Saturday, Claire and I went up to a forest North of Dolgellau and ate sandwiches and failed to find climbable trees. And I twisted my ankle. In any case, after a week of working late and coming home to evenings with everybody-in-Aber-I-know, it was good to spend some time alone with her.

I should be coding Three Rings, or Kit will shout at me. Better get on.