I went out for a walk today with Caroline. Mid afternoon. Lovely fresh afternoon, shortest afternoon of the year on the day that was supposed to be the last day ever. So it looks like I survived the end of the world again.
Apart from discovering that the world didn't end, I also discovered that Big Bang Theory has canned laughter. I didn't notice it last night, but I do now watching more episodes. Fortunately the programme justifies the discomfort. Now back to the end of the world.
Just out of curiosity I googled "end of world predictions" and came up with lots of weird stuff. I'm not going to bore you with it all some of it is quite wacky. It seems that religious types are prone to predicting the end of the world. So far they appear to have all been wrong, if anyone knows of anyone who got it right, let me know. But I reckon there are enough people out there willing to believe in the apocalypse that it is worth getting it wrong, just so scare up another few prayers.
http://www.bible.ca/pre-date-setters.htm is the address of a great big list of predictions from the past. As you can imagine from the bible.ca bit, it is a Usaian site and just a bit oddball from a conservative Irish perspective. But it seems that Christians get a real kick out of having the fear of godly wrath thrust upon them.
My own god would never do anything like that, even to frighten me. My god knows that it wouldn't particularly bother me. If it is inevitable and nothing I can do will change what is going to happen, then I couldn't be bothered worrying about it.
So anyhow, we made it through and to celebrate we went for a walk on the lovely Carrick Mountain overlooking Glenealy. I've always had a fondness for this hill. I worked on it and in the forest nursery that was once at the Ballymanus entrance. That was a long time ago, but the mountain is still there and so are most of the gum trees that were and still are so fascinating. Trees with deciduous bark and non shed leaves. Only the Aussies could get something so mixed up.
If the Usaians are paranoid and pretty simple, the Aussies are just totally absurd. The early settlers did weird things to their animal breeding programmes. These early geneticists actually managed to cross breed an otter and a duck. This is GMO gone mad.
Carrick is also the only other place where I have seen a Jay in the wild. They are a beautiful sight to behold. The other place was in my parents front garden, where a neighbour's dog had managed to trap one under a thick bush. I had to rescue the bird and managed to get a really good look at it. It looks a lot like a magpie, only the magpie is monochrome. The Jay is like a card carrying member of gay pride, it is beautiful and magnificently coloured. Maybe it wasn't a Jay, maybe it was a gay magpie. But it just goes to show how diversity enhances our lives. I let the bird go later.
We brought our four legged wannabe aardvark with us. Kerry is a cross between a springer spaniel and a labrador. She is what might be described as a malteezer, dark on the outside and blonde on the inside. This dog is a bit stupid. Half blind and relies on her sense of smell or at least enjoys smelling things. She runs around with her nose stuck to the ground sniffing.
Its really funny when she comes to an interesting smell. Her brain is so badly damaged from what ever it is she sniffed in the past, that her nose stops immediately it comes into contact with a new smell, but the legs keep going forward. I've seen her fall over and somersault before her legs stop. I'm sure if she was running, she would turn herself inside out.
Anyhow, Carrick had a host of new smells for her. Caroline and I walked about 6.5km, but I guess the dog did at least twice that as she picked up the trails of various bits of wildlife that had crossed our path. She was forever disappearing into the woods either side of the track and thrashing about. I wonder if she caught anything?
I mentioned her being half blind, it is not that she can't see, it is just that she doesn't see. I took her for a walk one evening some years back and watched as she picked up the scent trail of a cat. She ran along, nose glued to the ground right up to a thick fencepost. She sniffed all around the post and ran off on little trips to one side or the other. Finally, she shook herself and trotted on up the road, looking for another scent.
It never struck her tiny little mind that the reason she lost the cat scent trail was because the cat had only gone as far as the post and had been sitting on the top of the post looking down on her the whole time. A malteezer dog to the core. If the cat had been bothered, she could have leaned down and smacked the dog across the head, she was only about three feet above the ground. After the dog ran off, I went over to the cat and gave her a good rub around the ears and nose and she purred happily at me for not giving the game away.
When I caught up with the dog, I gave her a good sniff of my cat flavoured hand to freak her out a bit.
Oh, yeah, the walk! It was a grand walk, clear sky and good views until a bank of fog rolled in off the sea and filled in all the low lying bits of the scenery and turned the hill tops into islands. By the time we came back to the car, it had turned pretty dark.
As for the cigarettes - never thought about them until I was back in the kitchen having a cup of tea. Normally I would have had a smoke or two to help me recover from the effects of exercise. But today, I had some arabica beans smothered in dark chocolate. Now that is an addiction I could get to like.
No comments:
Post a Comment