Work suspended

There is not much to report this week, as my services were not needed due to the snow.  The team is on callout. As I explained in my last post, they lend a helping hand to people who are stranded. The female member of the team had to go to Bakewell for 6.30 am (about half an hour's drive) to pick up and deliver a carer who looks after a wheelchair bound woman, in that condition  for 20 years. She can only operate her wheelchair by means of a mouth controlled lever, so obviously is reliant on her helper. I cannot imagine living in that state for that long, I am sure I would want to top myself.

But we had our Christmas lunch at a local hostellry. A very jolly affair, I like the team, they are an interesting bunch of individuals. 

One of the results of doing this work, is that I have got a lot more interested in wildlife in general, and have been doing a bit of exploratory work on the web to see what the team are involved with, (other than felling trees). There are a lot of reports and publications which describe the different projects that are going on, all really good stuff about preserving wildlife habitats, protecting and reintroducing species.  Overall, the work is very worthwhile and valuable, yet you can see in the greater scheme of things that it is low down on the list of priorities for funding.  I can imagine a bunch of councillors who never go out in the countryside dismissing the expenditure as a waste. The environment is always low priority, look what happened at Copenhagen and looks like happening at Cancun. And yet we ignore biodiversity at our peril. Understandably the team have some concerns about how the budget cuts will affect their service.

When my father died 18 months ago, I decided to plant a tree in his memory. I did this through the Woodland Trust, of which I am a member. As a result, I get emails about what they do. They have recently made available a new website, which catalogues all the woodlands in a specific area. It's a nice website, you can put in your own views about different woodlands. It is at Visitwoods.org.uk.


Finally this week, I was walking around our nearby lake and came across this rather gruesome spectacle. I don't know what kind of bird it was, possibly an owl, but I guess it was an example of the cruelty of nature. I suspect it was a sick or injured bird that got savaged by a dog. The path is popular with dog walkers.
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