best part of the day: warriston revisited

23rd and 26th July. Another 2 visits to Warriston Cemetery. Just the edited highlights and hardly any chat because if this seems like deja vu to you, consider it from my perspective. Anyway it's better than working. And all these pics would otherwise end up in hard-drive afterlife in a drawer, lonely and never to be seen again. Might as well post them here as a quick record of late July, and who was doing what. Also there's a couple of green bottles Lucilia sericata mating that deserved pointing the camera at for amusement value, before they are forever condemned to the external hard-drive purgatory.

Much as it looks like the In Loving comma has forgiven my banana split, I think this was his brother and therefore was unaware of my faux pas. Unless that sort of news travels on the grapevine. Although without the ability of speech that would be quite the charade to try and convey without hands and fingers. (It's a fruit you've never seen growing in this country...) just using wings, legs and antennae.

large white

Also in the same area (let's call it the butterfly garden, although with the flowers there mostly faded, it is a shadow of its former self) was this large white which flip-flopped its way back and forth looking for love. Or maybe it had heard there were banana smoothies for sale. It has been a poor year for large whites so far although their numbers are picking up somewhat with a late surge. They settle less readily than small whites or GVWs making their photos here less numerous as well, although I am more keen to pursue them through the cemetery due to that rarity.

So there I am in the butterfly garden when I see this coupling on a leaf. Most insects reproducing (soldier beetles are constantly at it) I photograph merely as part of their activity, their behaviours. But there was something about this greenbottle wheelbarrow that was really comical. They weren't going at it, they were standing still, contemplating who-knows-what which allowed me to stack this image, getting the maximum focus depth of field. You're welcome!

speckled parasol

GVW

Up near the James Young Simpson gravestone (a knock out memorial 😖) this green-veined white was sat among the brambles. They often have more pronounced markings at this time of the year and this one was a good example of that. It moved to an unripe berry, and the trouble was, it then showed a couple of notches high on its rear wing. This perturbed my perfectionist eye and so I filled them in using photoshop. This is the sort of thing you can waste time on when untroubled by the working week, when every day is a lazy weekend day and you lose sight of whether it is a Monday or a ...what day are we on today? The danger is you do not feel an urgency to actually get any major projects underway because there is always plenty time for that later. What you need is to shake it all up and stay focussed.

before

Hence, the cold showers!

I read somewhere online that you need to shock your body and can use three ways to do this.
1/ hiit training. High Intensity Interval Training. (I currently do this with parkrun on Saturdays and other short fast run training. Often Tuesdays with Alan and Steve.) Basically run as fast as possible till your heart feels like it is going to explode. Keep this up for 20mins or until you die.
2/ fasting. This is problematic and I really only fast between meals but I am embracing the idea with an open heart and mind and will implement it any time soon. Any time soon.
3/ cold showers. For a month or more I have finished every shower by turning the dial all the way to the left and letting it blast cold water on my head and body while I leap around making monkey noises and marching. Also making fists and tensing your (fl)abs seems to help. It is hellish for about 12~15 seconds and then gets no worse and isn't so bad after all. Go on - give it a try!

Now before you accuse me of going all Wim Hof, can I just say Mary and I were doing cold water swimming long before people were drowning using the Wim Hof method. (Fifteen dead and counting.) (Do not try this at home!) (No really, I take no responsibility if you drop dead in the cold shower and never said it was a good idea. On your own head be it.) (Literally.) He is 3 years older than me but looks at least twice that. Also I watched a few minutes of him on telly encouraging unknown "celebrities" to sit in cold water and it is the sort of format that seems unlikely to get a second series. I kind of admire his low brow can do attitude and making a successful career out of being marginally more cold proof (insensitive?) than most folk and not much else. How can you say that? He has loads of world records? Well yes but they were almost all surpassed by proper athletes, except maybe climbing Everest wearing too few clothes because nobody wants that. Actually a barefoot half marathon in ice and snow is his only remaining Guinness World Record. (2hrs16mins - hey that's one for next Winter if we get a decent covering of snow.)

after - like new!

I suspect the cold showers will stop towards late Autumn. Our shower is fed from the attic cold water tank which must be something like 17~22' although the recent dull weather will have lowered that. I haven't had a thermometer in there with me while shaking and blowing but it feels warmer than for instance the water in Gullane Bay anytime outwith high Summer. I started this doing a few seconds, then a minute. Mary took it up to 2 minutes and then we did 3minutes each. It has retreated back to about a minute though as the only tough bit is the first 15 seconds.

However it does give a refreshing reset feeling (not unlike open water swimming) as you step out the shower feeling invigorated rather than humid and torpid. It wakes you right the fuck up. I think in this modern world it is easy to sleep-walk through much of life as large amounts of reality is kept at arms length, metaphorically speaking. Growing (and killing) the food we eat, getting out of bed in a warm room when it's Winter outdoors, travelling in cars rather than on foot or by bike and largely missing much of the stuff we could do to make ourselves more resilient. Fit for purpose.

It is despicable to see a human too fat to run a hundred yards for a bus, totally addicted to its mobile phone and needing a handful of pills to keep them alive because they could not be arsed doing a wee bit exercise or eating less and looking after themselves. You are welcome to disagree and fall into your grave before you are halfway through your 60s having cost the taxpayers an NHS fortune with your diabetes. And just because you were afraid of a little cold water?

(or you could just change the angle to hide the broken bits)

another large white

lots of new and fairly new speckleds out recently

So I sat on the grass between the O Section and the Crypts. The mother and child reunion crows came over and asked for peanuts. Andrew had also been thinking if we get this offspring crow into regarding humans as friendly food sources it will be handfeeding in no time. When I say no time I mean quite some time. Watch this space. Although both mother and offspring respect the 7 foot minimum distance crow regulations they will do a cautious side step and reach to within 5' if you toss peanuts short. The father stood back and watched from a distance. I tried to throw a few long distance peanuts and he reluctantly joined in from afar.