A Walk and Unexplained Things

I decided on Monday night that, regardless of the weather next morning, I would resume my walks in the Castle Grounds. So I was a little less than enthused when the day broke wet and windy although, to be fair, at 4℃ at least the temperature had increased. So, waterproofs duly donned, I set off with the aim of being back at The Woodlands for my coffee just after opening time (10am in the winter).

I set off with my face into the wind and rain and chose a route into the trees and eschewed the coastal path. After a few hundred yards along a path into the woods I stopped to blow my nose and turned my back to the direction of travel for a few seconds whilst I did so. When I turned back there were two people about 20 yards in front of me. I was rather puzzled because there were no paths joining in that 20 or so yards and they hadn't been there before I turned round. I just wondered and carried on at the same pace as they were walking.

They appeared identically dressed. They both had dull peacock blue hooded jackets with the hoods up. The person on the left as I looked at them was slightly shorter. They were not holding hands so far as I can recall.

We walked on and then I looked down for perhaps 10 or 20 paces as the rain was in my face. When I looked up again they had disappeared. They were not on the main path. They would have reached two other paths off to the left and right. I had a clear sight down both for far further than they could possibly have run in that time, never mind walked. There was nowhere else for them to have hidden.

Some things in life may just never be explained. 

On the topic of unexplained things like Pixies here are the pictures of the book The Adventures of Pip as suggested by Rachel in a comment on my last post in case they jog any memories.

1948/9 Edition

1968 Edition

The Adventures of Pip

This morning as I put away Archie and Mehitabel (a book by Don Marquis) having just re-read the piece of blank verse entitled a spider and a fly (the verse is not only blank but contains no upper case characters nor punctuation) which I was going to send to a friend.  My mind then wandered to what the fly had been saying in justification of its existence.  Then I recalled that I knew about flies and germs from Enid Blyton’s book The Adventures of Pip (written in 1948) which I had read when I was knee high to a grasshopper and from which I had learned so many things.  In fact it is a testament to the book’s author that I can remember much of what I learned and can actually trace it back to that book.

A propos this morning’s thoughts I learned that a Bluebottle (a large fly in case they are called something different in the US) carried germs from rubbish and dung heaps and deposited them on our food and so on.  I also recall that, as would have been usual then, good triumphed over evil and a Robin ate the Bluebottle. 

But I also learned that some trees (I think it was a chestnut) had buds covered with sticky stuff to prevent them freezing (although it didn’t explain about the chemistry involved – and at around the age of 5 I wouldn’t have understood anyway); that caddis larvae covered themselves with bits of vegetation to prevent tadpoles eating them; that male sparrows had black bibs'; that Blackbirds have bright yellow beaks; that you could tell the weather from the Scarlet Pimpernel; that the Hermit Crab had no shell so used discarded shells from other creatures.  There was also something about catkins and lambs tails but that’s a bit hazy.  There was so much more but all things have to end somewhere.  So this post ends here.