steepholm

I've now got the photographs of our Steep Holm trip from Dru. I've put some of my favourites under the cut.

( Steep Holm sights )

Ever the flibbertigibbet, I'm off again now for a few days, to revisit my friends Ronald and Ana (and others) on the Gower Peninsula, where we'll be devoting the weekend to the myth of Perseus, a subject about which I know little more now than I did at the age of 10 - but that's all about to change. I will be netless until Sunday, and until then I leave the digital world in the capable hands of you, oh friends list.

I went back to Steep Holm yesterday for the first time in two years. It is not only my namesake but an Antaean grounding place for me, and in the past I've always gone alone. Yesterday, however, I persuaded my friend Dru to accompany me - and I'm very glad she did, not only for the pleasure of her company and her superior knowledge of plants and birds (she is an artist of both in words and pictures), but because I didn't have a camera with me, my phone having bust a couple of days ago. Luckily Dru has a good one, and I'm hoping to get some pics from her in due course that I can post here. For now, I'll just mention that it was a lovely day - sunny but not too hot, and that we saw seals, hunting peregrines, and (of course) thousands of very angry seagulls, as well as views from Glastonbury Tor to the Brecon Beacons and everything between. In August apparently, the gulls will break ranks, one half flying all the way to west Africa, the other a few miles up the Severn to Gloucester landfill site. I'm fairly sure I could tell by the look in their eyes which gulls were which.

Then home for a fish-and-chip supper. A good day, all told.

In other news, I see the ECHR has upheld France's ban on Islamic face veils - or indeed, any full face covering, as the French government is quick to point out, though we'll see how many motorcyclists are arrested for wearing full-face helmets in the next year before deciding on the disingenuity of that one. The BBC report adds:

No such general ban applies in the UK, but institutions have discretion to impose their own dress codes.

I find this confusing, though. To borrow the example they used in a recent training session on equalities legislation at my place of work, a restaurant chain that insisted all its employees wear baseball caps would be guilty of indirect discrimination against people (such as Sikhs) whose religious beliefs made it impossible for them to comply. How is the ECHR's ruling not also an example of indirect discrimination of just that sort?

I said I'd try to do a more extensive write-up of my Steep Holm day. This isn't exactly that, and there's quite a bit I've left out, but here at least are more photographs, which I've blended with some of the poems I wrote on the day (and just after). Hopefully it will "give you the feel", as Wordsworth was so fond of saying off-mike. There's a lot more to Steep Holm than the military, of course, but this set seems to have coagulated around that theme.

( Recycling )

( Rudder Rock )


( Low Tide )


( Blood is their Argument )