Dam it

Well, aren’t you all lucky? My close-to-home outdoors plan for today has been foiled by rain, so you get a post.

I’m going nowhere for the next three days. It’s a long weekend, Victoria (yes, that Victoria) Day, and mad mainlanders, who were exhorted by the health authorities to stay the fuck at home, jammed the ferries yesterday. Not sure how many were heading here and I don’t want to find out. So no real newspaper for me to read in bed tomorrow morning. I can live without it for one week.

A couple of weeks ago, during a safe, socially-distanced visit to Rhodo Dave and Tomato Jan, they told me about their favourite spot on the island. Yet another place of which I’d never heard. Joe, of course, had heard of and visited this spot and yesterday, like so many other places, he introduced it to me.

The place is a large pond, which is home to a colony of beavers. Depending on where you live, you may or may not know much about beavers. (As I explained to Joe yesterday, Canadian beavers were only ever exported to Britain as hats – a fashion craze which wiped out European beavers in the 17^th century and decimated the North American beaver population in the 18^th century.)

Beavers use bark and twigs and small branches from trees to build the dams in which they live.

Unfortunately for beavers, they can’t climb trees to get to the twigs and branches, so they have to use their teeth to do this.

Unfortunate, also, for the trees. (Insert wow emoji here.) I mean, seriously, how long does this take?

Lexi, who’s always happy to pose for a picture (in exchange for a treat), enjoyed the walk.

So did I. (Mind you, Lexi enjoys every walk.) I cannot wait – although I must – for the lockdown and travel ban to end so I can show visitors this pond.

Obviously I downloaded the beaver-eating-tree footage from the internet. All other photos were taken by Joe with his mobile phone. Oh, wouldn’t it be luverly to have such a portable camera to carry around in a pocket? Guess what?!? An old mate in Blighty (the one who’s been the only useful bastard during my agonising transition to this bloody Mac) has just packaged up and posted his old iPhone6 to me. Soon (depending on the vagaries of the postal systems) I will also be able to take photos that can actually be transferred to the Mac without having to use my tablet. Hurrah!

What about Joe, you ask? Well, he didn’t take a photo of himself, so here he is in 2014 in his first appearance as a pantomime villain in Will Shakespeare the Panto.

Unbeknownst to Joe, he was born to play pantomime villains. Indeed, he has done so in most pantos since.

Oh, and FYI…

I’m confident that during the rest of the day I must have taken at least 412 other steps, so well done, me. You’re supposed to do this every day? Okay, fine. But once a week has to count for something, right?