don't confuse the narrator

food for thought

According to news on the BBC website, the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition have issued a draft report saying that recommended daily calorie counts may have been wrong for the last 18 years.

I don’t know when we first started talking about calorie intake, but back when I was a child – long before the current figures were set – I’m pretty sure the daily allowances being discussed were far higher – around 5,000 for men and 3,500 for women. Since 1991, though, they’ve been down at 2,000 calories for women and 2,500 for men.
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notes for a November poem

The trees are ragged with Autumn. The wind nags
and worries scabby leaves. I see the skyline fray;
black scraps tear off to become
a join-the-dots of rooks that threads
across unbroken grey. Virginia creeper
pours an oxblood waterfall
down the garage wall and yellow tears drift
under the willow. No still small voice
commands me from the prunus.
The pine trees fluff green fur and mist
purls over the estuary.

Published in Envoi 142 some years ago, and clearly based on November in the UK, not in Spain. Today, though, is unexpectedly wet and autumnal, so it seems a good time to post it.
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autumn strawberries

Not all the local flora is as reminiscent of my childhood as yesterday’s plane trees. This, the madroño, (arbutus unedo), is called a strawberry tree in English, and, although it’s been introduced elsewhere as an ornamental shrub, the only part of the British Isles where it’s native is Ireland.

fruit on strawberry tree — Not my kind of strawberry

plane speaking

I find it very strange – though in some ways, quite comforting – that one of the most popular trees in public gardens and plazas in this part of Spain is what I thought was a London plane. Perhaps even more strange is the fact that the Latin name is Platanus x hispanica. Why should a London plane be “hispanica“? Not to mention the questions arising concerning their relationship to plátanos, which is Spanish for bananas.

crouching tiger, wary cat

The cats don’t often come inside the house, but I was sitting reading beside the log fire last night and thought I’d see if they wanted to join me. The one in the photo is the tamest of the lot and, on the rare occasion he gets the chance, he’s usually very happy to settle into an armchair and make himself at home. I’d forgotten that we’d rearranged things in the kitchen, though.

cat and tiger — A cat can look at a king

Almost the first thing he saw when he came in was the tiger statue. He then spent over twenty minutes stalking, reversing and approaching with caution from different angles, before deciding that he’d really rather go back into the cold and dark of the garden than spend time in the same place as that fearsome creature.