I saw it lying in a puddle on a morning walk
around Trent Park with my Mum in May while in UK to celebrate her 80th
birthday. It caught my eye because of its berry colours contrasting against the
black mud of the wet cinder path. A dropped buff, those tubular pieces of
material that have a hundred and one uses, from neck warmer to scarf or hair
band. I picked it up, wet and muddy, and shoved
it into a plastic bag in my jacket pocket. I guessed the previous owner was more
than likely female due to the colours of the buff. Whoever they were, they were
definitely white haired since I found a scant few still clinging to the material.
Once washed and dried, my find looked almost
new and I felt chuffed with my rescue buff. From London, folded in my increasingly
battered rucksack, it travelled back to Portugal
where it started its new life around my neck on my Summer Solstice motorcycle ride.
The evening of the longest day of the year, blessed with a fantastically full moon
was spent riding my motorcycle around the curves and along the stretches of the
secondary roads from Vila Real to Valpaços, then on to Chaves and then home.
The working day had its normal dose of ups
and downs. A job interview coming up (good), possible work towards the end of
the year (good), a refusal for funding (bad) based on the pettiest of reasons that
only a truly sour academic can think up (not agreeing with the list of
authors). Have a nice day.
Pushing my bike out of the garage, up the
ramp and onto the pavement, I then kitted up. Although late afternoon, the day
was still hot and the sweat broke across my back as soon as I zipped my leather
up and pulled the buff over my nose and mouth.
Riding a bike forces me to focus on
manoeuvres and read the road, taking the bike into and out of bends at the
right speed and angle, shifting my weight and leaning, gears down then up. The
petty politics of the working day fall away as I hurtle along. A small minded colleague
will, after all, always be a small minded colleague. “So it goes” to quote
Vonnegut, although the meaner part of me hopes that one day, the person in question
will get a taste of their own medicine.
The heat of the day begins to ebb as my ride
unfolds; the delicious pockets of colder air that sit under trees and at the
bottom of valleys where water runs now spread and meld together as the sun
falls and I ride into a cooler twilight. During the ride, I find that the rescue
buff is just not long enough to cover both
nose and neck. This is not good for protection against bugs, dust and debris that
I meet head on while riding (I've already sustained a bee sting on the collar bone
this year from riding with my jacket open and wearing no scarf). The smell of cut
hay invades my lid as I ride past freshly mowed fields, together with a fair number
of small flies, most of which ended up lodged in my nostrils since my visor is
half open because of the heat and the buff is too short. A rethink: no worries,
the buff will do for hiking, cycling, fieldwork and general use, but definitely
not biking.
After returning, I remember pushing the buff
back onto the top of my head to keep my hair out of my face after while parking
up the bike. From there, after getting home loaded down with gear, the buff disappeared.
I couldn't find it anywhere, but was pretty sure it went into the wash. I
searched in the clean laundry pile, bags, jacket pockets, clothing and drawers.
I poked around in the van and the garage where the bike is parked. Nothing. I
started imagining it was continuing its travels and moving on to its next
location and owner. Feck, I must be getting soft. It eventually reappeared this week,
under the bed sheets, after I had given it up for lost. It must have got caught up in the sheet in the
wash and made up with the change of bedding. And there it stayed while I searched
in vain.
Now we are reunited, but it'll be going back
to UK this summer with me and my better half when we drive up through Spain and
France to travel around BREXITING UK where we will carry out voluntary work for
some River and Wildlife Trusts and do a little wandering. With the sorry state of sterling, we'll be better
off this time around compared to past, blisteringly expensive visits, which have
curtailed many activities, even eating out.
This time we will be travelling through a country
in the initial throes of massive and highly controversial political change. How
will these environmental charities that we plan to work for cope with the looming
loss of substantial European funding that has been used to restore habitats and
landscapes in a way that optimizes provision of multiple benefits via swathes
of ecosystem services? What will their future be after being cast adrift from the cornerstone
European Birds, Habitats, Floods and Water Framework Directives? Who will assure protection of the environment, protected spaces, water and air quality during the the timesof economic downturn that are already unfolding? This is subject matter for another,
far more pondered post, but I will be very interested to see what River Trust staff,
conservationists and volunteers ( i.e. the public) - the backbone of these organizations - have to say and, natch, pass it on to you.
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