Yesterday I rigged up my new toy …. the “trail-cam” I’ve just acquired with the principal objective of observing the hedgehog in the garden. This morning I had the exciting task of seeing if the system worked. Sure enough, there were pictures …. but why so many? It seems to have been quite busy out there last night, with cats and mice as well as the hedgehog. Looking through the shots it struck me that all of this activity was related in a systematic fashion. Hedgehogs are very messy eaters, and there are bits all over the place after they have finished. Along come the mice, then, to clear up the left-overs. The activity of the mice, of course, attracts the cat …. I now look forward to the prospect of actually seeing the cat hunting.
My sketching spree continued today, fully justifying the amount of time I’m spending watching the World Snooker Championship, from Sheffield. Today’s portrait was of Steve Davis (as a commentator, of course, as he retired some years back.) I think that I can say that there has been come improvement in relation to my first attempt, and I’m encouraged to continue the exercise. It is a great way of testing drawing skill.
Of course, the truly momentous event of the day was my hair-cut …. the first in many months. Really I do feel that I have been permitted to rejoin civilisation. It has been quite remarkable the psychological significance of what might appear, on the surface, to be such a small thing. It has certainly given me pause for thought about the problems that must be experienced by people who have some kind of physical or psychological characteristic that constantly and unavoidably reminds them of their inability to meet standards of “normality”.