Wordless Wednesday: Post

Book 8 of 2015: Strata by Terry Pratchett

Away back in January this year I decided to work through the remaining unread Terry Pratchett books that I have in my collection. I had started with The Dark Side of the Sun around a month beforehand and so tackled Strata towards the end of January.

Strata is a science fiction novel published way back in 1981 and is a kind of test run before he went all out with the concept of the Discworld. It follows the character of Kin, who helps build planets, as she is recruited to attempt to find a 'flat Earth'. So she travels across the galaxy with a motley collection of aliens in search of this mystery planet and the reason for its existence.

I do have to admit that I wouldn't class Terry Pratchett's sci-fi books among my favourites. I read The Carpet People many years ago and I really enjoyed that, but I just couldn't get on with The Dark Side of the Sun. Strata kind of bridges the gap between the two. I did prefer this one to The Dark Side of the Sun. It just felt more well-rounded and seemed easier to follow compared to the earlier novel.

That said, it did get a little trickier to keep up with during the second half. It wasn't a long read, but I felt like I was dragging my heels a little once I got past the middle. I feel like in the beginning Terry Pratchett was really good at setting up a story but then would end up with lots of tangled strands which he couldn't quite keep straight enough to give them all the same weight.

It's ironic that this is one of the things I love most of all about his later Discworld novels. He sets up all these strands and then gradually brings them all together to weave them into the end of the story. I think it's something which he took a while to perfect, but it's interesting to see that he was working on it right back in his earliest novels.

Strata is also full of little jokes and one-liners. It's just what I've come to expect from a Terry Pratchett novel. There are lots of little links to the Discworld books; the idea behind the Disc actually gets mentioned by the characters at one point! I caught a reference to a bar called The Broken Drum at one point as well.


Reading these early Pratchett books has shown me that he was playing around with the idea of Discworld for many years before it became the familiar place we've come to know and love today. I wish that I'd read these books many years before so that I could've asked him about them when I met him. I'd love to know more about when he came up with Discworld and whether he intended it to be a sci-fi story before it finally settled on the fantasy genre.

TV Series Review: Columbo

Several months ago Mr Click suggested that we start watching Columbo. We were on a bit of a detective jag having recently watched BBC's Sherlock and the American series Elementary so Columbo seemed like a sensible series to follow them up with. Plus it seemed long enough to take us through to the start of our Christmas viewing.

I know that I saw this every time I watch a programme that my husband has chosen, but I wasn't really all that keen to start with Columbo. I'd seen odd bits of odd episodes on TV in the past and I didn't think it was going to be that good.

As usual, I proved myself wrong and I did end up quite enjoying the series.

If you've never seen an episode of Columbo, it's slightly different to the usual format for a police procedural. Instead of a crime being discovered, reported and solved; the episode begins with the person who is committing the crime so we see how it's done and watch them try to cover their tracks. Then Columbo comes in and solves it all, proving it wasn't as perfect a crime as the bad guys thought it was.

I'll admit, I'm used to the common police procedural format, so this structure took a little getting used to. There are some episodes where Columbo doesn't show up for half and hour or more (most episodes run somewhere in the region of 90 minutes) which surprised me. After all, for a series called Columbo, you'd expect the title character to have the majority of the screen time, and that wasn't always the case.

The series spans thirty-five years from Columbo's first appearance to his last. Considering the longevity of the series, it's almost surprising that Peter Falk continued to play the character throughout the series (sadly the same cannot be said for the dog who was often seen as Columbo's companion).

What with it running for such a long time, it's really strange to see how Columbo goes from being so young in the early episodes, to so old in the later ones. It's especially strange when you consider that he continues wearing the same outfit for the duration.

Before we watched this, I had this idea in my mind of Columbo being this bumbling daft detective who kind of solves crimes by just kind of accidentally stumbling onto the solution. Obviously I was wrong.

Something you realise as you watch it, is that Columbo is pretty much playing an act the whole time he's investigating a case. He is a bit of a bumbling detective, but it's a show that enables him to get the suspects to lower their guard around him, so they give themselves away and allow him to expose them as the murder.

He picks up on teeny tiny clues that other people overlook and then keeps on pushing the person he suspects. Usually this leads to the suspect telling Columbo what they think happened, which means Columbo can tell they know more about the crime than they should. If you're a suspect in a crime and Columbo starts asking you how you think it was done, tell him you haven't got a clue and that's his job because seriously, if you talk, you'll just give yourself away.

Another easy way to figure out if someone's a murderer in an episode of Columbo is to check if they've been in it before. There are a few people who seem to crop up every five or six episodes and they're usually the ones who did it.

Ditto if you're a big name. William Shatner was in it twice and, most surprisingly to me so was Billy Connolly!

It was such a bizarre combo that I think it was easily my favourite episode. Billy Connolly always sounds like a favourite uncle to my ear, so having him be in an episode of Columbo and being not such a nice guy was a tough one for me to get my head around. It was such a strange mix for me, I couldn't help but like it.

The box set we have also includes a couple of episodes of the ill-fated Mrs Columbo. A series that ran for less than twenty episodes and went through about three different titles in that time. We watched the first one (thankfully only 45 minutes long) and then decided we couldn't put ourselves through that again and didn't bother with the second 'Mrs Columbo Bonus Episode'.

On the whole I did really enjoy this series, and I'm going to miss watching it in the coming weeks. We managed to time it pretty well because we knew we needed to finish the series by the beginning of November (when we start watching our Not-Quite Christmas films), so we've got a couple of weeks to get through. I think we were considering watching the first series of Outnumbered which is quite the change from Columbo.

And I think I've learnt my lesson now. When Mr Click suggests we watch a programme, I'm going to hold my tongue. Generally he's right and programmes aren't as bad as I think they are. Except Thriller, you were definitely wrong about that one, my dear husband!

Weekly Rundown: Not Mine

This week I had an appointment in Glasgow on Thursday. I'm always dubious about traveling at this time of year because the chances of the ferries being disrupted rise incredibly around this time of year. But the forecast was good; the weather was lovely.

Of course there's some slight disruption at the moment owing to the fact that the ferries are going to Gourock instead of Wemyss Bay while they do some work on the pier. It means that our trip to the mainland now takes an hour, rather than the usual 35 minutes. The plus side is that whereas there is only one train an hour from Wemyss Bay to Glasgow, there's three an hour from Gourock, so we can make back the extra travelling time on the train journey.

It was all going to be fine.

Until we saw the CalMac site on Wednesday. There was going to be disruption to the ferries on Thursday.

This caused a slight bit of panic and confusion. Especially when we saw that the Clyde was going to be closed to all traffic for a period on Thursday.

And why all these drastic measures?

They'd found an unexploded mine in the Clyde. It's somewhere in the region of seventy years old and given it's age they suspected that it may have been rather temperamental. So naturally precautions needed to be taken, including evacuating half of Gourock.

Luckily the first boats ran without any trouble. It was a good excuse to spend a little bit longer in Glasgow. I took advantage of not being able to get home to do a little more Christmas shopping. Obviously I can't say what I got here because it was for Mr Click and he reads this blog; you'll have to check back here towards the end of December to see what it was.

It was wonderfully wandering around Glasgow, not in a rush to get back, taking my time to look around shops that I wouldn't normally get to go into. We even visited Vodafone to get Mr Click a new SIM card since his phone hasn't been too good at talking to mine recently. We had Chinese for lunch and then casually made our way home afterwards.

There was a bit of a panic along the way. I checked the CalMac site on the way back, only to read that the train station was closed to all traffic. Luckily they changed their minds about that before we got in. But we still had a bit of a wait before the ferries were given the all clear to go.

It made for a pretty long day. You forget how much you rely on the ferries until something changes and it throws you out completely. On the whole, the extra time on the ferry isn't too bad, or at least, it wasn't the way when I had access to the free wifi so happily sat there checking the NaNo forums. On the way back it felt like ages because I was so tired and the wifi wasn't working for me.

As I had such a long day on Thursday, I'd planned to take it easy at the weekend with nothing more taxing than getting a haircut. Well, as so frequently happens, all did not go to plan.

It should be noted that I'm a pretty accident-prone person. I did, after all, manage to drive four and a half inches of wood into my thigh whilst teaching a class of Primary Fours maths; quite possibly the pinnacle of all accident-proneness. I can't deny that I often leave a wake of destruction in my path, not until a human version of a deep sea mine.

Well, as we were leaving the house for my haircut yesterday, I sat down on my beanbag to put my shoes on. Felt something tug behind me followed by a popping noise and a second later the front window's curtain and curtain rail landed on me. I'd inadvertently trapped the curtain behind the beanbag, which couldn't stand the pull so popped out of it's holder, the weight of which pulled the rest of it down.

My chair does not normally look like this.

Suffice to say, when I returned from my haircut, I quickly figured out how to get the whole shebang back together. It's as good as new, slightly less dusty even. My beanbag-slash-footrest is now banned from being left right in front of the window and all is right in the Click household again.


Until next time.

Film Review: The Return of the King, Part 5

Saturday means time for another instalment in our current film, The Return of the King. We're only a little way past the halfway point as well. I know I keep saying it, but this is a REALLY long film! I've decided to drag this film out to seven parts so we've got another two parts after this one, then it'll be time for the Hobbit films.

Last week Pippin sang a sad song for Denethor, Faramir took several arrows, Eowyn and Merry decided to go to war and things were generally miserable for everyone involved.

183. I'm no good at describing battles. There's lots of bad stuff happening. Things are being flung from both sides. Nazgul are flying overhead and grabbing soldiers while Pippin freaks out at the sound of the monsters.

184. One thing that's going against Gondor is that they've just got Men. Mordor has Orcs, Trolls and evil flying beasts. It's not really a fair fight!

185. Pippin's just sort of stumbled into Gandalf. Gandalf has to keep whacking Orcs to let Pippin get out of there safely. Gandalf is seriously badass.

186. Though it's lucky Pippin was there because the one Orc Gandalf didn't take out quick enough would've had his head if Pippin hadn't stabbed it.

187. All the same, Gandalf orders Pippin back to the Citadel, which is just as well because he's going to be needed there shortly.

188. Back at the gate to Minas Tirith, the Orcs are cracking out the heavy machinery. It's a giant battering ram shaped like a wolf which they're calling Grond.

189. But we have to wait to see what happens next because that's the end of this disc.

190. There's Peter Jackson on his boat again.

191. I love that there's just three of them standing up to a fleet of boats.

192. Oh, Orlando, shooting the director is not good for your career.

193. "This army!" Yeah, no one's going to mess with an army of the dead.

194. And back to Frodo. He really shouldn't have sent Sam away.

195. Gollum's all 'go on, go in, there's nothing bad in this dark, smelly, sticky tunnel, it's cool'.

196. This tunnel isn't really how I imagine it when I read the book, but I think it's probably closer to what a giant spider tunnel would look like.

197. If I was Frodo I'd be running in the opposite direction right now.

198. Aww, Frodo's all lost and alone now.

199. And he's just spotted all the dead things hanging from the ceiling. Probably not the sort of place you want to hang around in.

200. Meanwhile, Sam's taking a tumble down the staircase. It's a Shortcut to Lembas!

201. I get that he's angry, but why crush the food? You can eat that!

202. Where Frodo gets all tangled up in the spider web, that's what I look like when I walk through a cobweb.

203. After blundering around in the dark for ages, Frodo's just remembered Galadriel gave him a torch.

204. Now excuse me while I don't actually look at the screen for the next five minutes or so because there's a frigging GIANT SPIDER on the screen!

205. It's actually easier to watch this in the cinema than at home because you just look at a teeny tiny corner of the screen and ignore everything else going on. On a regular TV you can't help but see the whole screen at once.

206. Ugh! Frodo, she's behind you!

207. How is Gollum able to get through the tunnel without getting covered in cobwebs, but Frodo is covered?

208. Gollum's quick to put all the blame on the Ring for him trying to kill Frodo. That's like a child blaming a broken vase on their imaginary friend.

209. Oh, I forgot Frodo threw Gollum off the cliff there. I guess people who hadn't read the books would've been really surprised when he comes back at the end.

210. That's cool. Frodo falls over in Mordor and lands in Lothlórien.

211. What Galadriel is basically saying here is 'Frodo! Frodo! He's our man! If he can't do it, no one can!'

212. Horses on the screen, that means we're back to the Riders of Rohan.

213. Éowyn's pretty much prepared to go to her death. Poor Éowyn.

214. And now it's night time and Minas Tirith is still under attack.

215. Don't think those gates will hold much longer.

216. Denethor's completely flipped out now and is getting ready to bury Faramir.

217. But look, there's a flower on the White Tree! That means there's still some hope, right?

218. While Denethor's getting ready to end it all, Gandalf's taken over his job and is commanding the soldiers of Gondor.

219. I love that Gandalf tells the soldiers that 'whatever comes through that gate, you will stand your ground', then the gate opens and it looks like he's just had a wet trouser moment. I love Gandalf.

220. Ugh. Shelob's back again. *shudder*

221. Not watching the screen again.

222. Still not watching.

223. Still not watching.

224. And she got him.

225. At least after this next bit I don't have to worry about spiders again until the second Hobbit film.

226. Yay! It's Sam to the rescue. I love that he gets the heroic music as well.

227. Sorry, trying not to watch the screen again and there's not much I can say about growling spider and grunting hobbit noises.

228. I need to get me one of those lights to scare away spiders! That'd be really handy, especially this time of year when they keep appearing in my bathroom!

229. 'Don't leave me here alone. Don't go where I can't follow.' Heart broken.

230. Watch out, Sam. There's orcs about!

231. When the orc says 'What's this?' I can't help but imagine Arwen finishing up with 'a Ranger, caught off his guard?' Wrong film.

232. Back to Gondor where Pippin has realised what Denethor has planned for Faramir.

233. Denethor's well and truly lost it. And the Gondorian soldiers are so loyal to their Steward that they're not even arguing with him. You'd think they'd at least question the sanity of burning people alive.

234. Looks like the sun's just coming up now. That just means that the orcs can kill people in the city in daylight rather than the dark.

235. Now it's Gandalf to the rescue. If he can get past the Witch King of Angmar first.

236. Wow! His sword turns to fire. That's handy.

237. Gandalf really gets through staffs, doesn't he?

238. The Riders of Rohan really could not have timed that better.

239. I think Merry and Éowyn might be having second thoughts about their wisdom in joining the battle.

240. Théoden's gotten really into this now, hasn't he?

241. Random fact: lots of those riders are actually women dressed up as men. Well, in the aerial shot lots of them are neither, they're computer generated.

242. I love how the orcs suddenly realise that their arrows aren't stopping the charge. There's actual panic on their faces.

243. Denethor's giving himself and Faramir an oil shower. Sensible thing to do with all those lighted torches hanging around.

244. Aww, Pippin is so NOT a Fool of a Took in this scene. He's awesome.

245. And now Denethor realises that Faramir's not dead.

246. How does Denethor manage to get that far whilst on fire?

247. I'm no good at talking about battle scenes. The Rohirrim are fighting orcs and stuff. It's about what you'd expect.

248. Okay, I really like the Oliphaunts. I feel sorry for them because I don't think they're bad animals, they're just being used by bad people. It makes me sad to see them being hurt, even if they are computer generated.

249. I do feel sorry for the computer generated horses and people they're standing on too.

250. Oliphaunt dominoes. It's kind of like that scene in Dumbo.

251. Éowyn is pretty awesome here, she's pretty much single-handed takes out an Oliphaunt.

252. And then it nearly single-headedly takes her out too.

We'll leave things there for now.


Next week both Theoden and the Witch King meet their matches, Sam has to find Frodo and the remainder of the Fellowship prepare for their final battle.

Chapter-by-Chapter: New Moon, Chapter 1

I did honestly intend to post this last week, but I sort of used up all my energy and motivation just getting as far as the Preface, so I'm going to actually pick things up now. Perhaps I'll really enjoy it once I get started.

Perhaps I'll win the lottery tonight as well.

So, on with Chapter 1: Party.

What Happens?

It's Bella's birthday and she is in a proper grouch about the prospect of getting older. No one is allowed to mention her birthday and she definitely does not want any gifts. This doesn't stop anyone. Not only that. Alice arranges a party for her, with gifts and everything. Unfortunately open envelopes is very dangerous and getting a paper cut when you're surrounded by vampires may be bad for your health!

Thoughts as I read:

I'm going to guess from the title of this chapter that there's going to be a party of some sort. My prediction is that there's going to be some sort of high school party. Perhaps Bella and Edward are pretending to be normal high school teenagers and are going to attend it. Or perhaps Bella's trying to find a way to avoid it.

You know the traditional method for the beginning of a Twilight chapter. I'll give you the clue, it's the same way that 99% of your stories probably started when you were at primary school; with Bella either dreaming or waking up. In this case it appears to be the former:

I was ninety-nine point nine percent sure I was dreaming.

The reason for this is that Bella is looking at her dead grandmother who is currently very much not dead. Either Bella is dreaming or Grandma Marie got turned into vampire before she died, in which case Carlisle Cullen is probably to blame.

Then Edward shows up and I have no idea what is going on. This must be a dream, the dead grandmother is the first clue but suddenly they're somewhere sunny so it can't possibly be Forks. Edward is sparkling all over the place. And Bella notices that there's something odd about her Gran, the odd being that Gran is actually old Bella and this is actually all just a dream.

She's dreamt that she grew old while Edward continued looking like a hot guy in his late teens. Does this mean that Bella is scared of growing old? She wants Edward to turn her into a vampire not just so they can be together but so that she can stay a pale and clumsy teenager for the rest of her life. Seventeen wasn't that bad a year for me, but I can't imagine being stuck at that age forever.

Also, random thought that just occurred to me. If becoming a vampire amplifies your latent talents, what talent would Bella end up with? Think about how dangerous Bella is now when she tries running; now imagine the chaos she could cause if she ran at vampire speeds!

Correction to the above. Bella wants to be eighteen forever. She's just woken up to discover it's the thirteenth of September; her birthday. She is now officially older than Edward. Except, y'know, he's still going to be about ninety years older than she is. What she's unhappy about is the fact that in actual years of physically aging, she's now older than he is and she's just going to keep on getting older, unless he does her a favour and bites her.

Bella's clearly been spending too much time with Edward because his mood swings seem to have rubbed off on her. She tries not to cry while her dad gives her presents because she's like, totally ancient now. Her mood takes an upswing when she gets to school and sees Edward and Alice, apart from her annoyance at the fact they've clearly got her a gift against her will.

Alice helpfully lets us know what Bella received from her parents, since she 'saw' it in one of her visions. Her mum sent a scrapbook and her dad gave her a camera. It'll be cool if they become a plot point later in the book.

We reached Edward then, and he held out his hand for mine. I took it eagerly, forgetting, for a moment, my glum mood. His skin was, as always, smooth, hard, and very cold. He gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. I looked into his liquid topaz eyes, and my heart gave a not-quite-so-gentle squeeze of its own. Hearing the stutter in my heartbeats, he smiled again.

'Liquid topaz eyes'? I don't know what that means. It's giving me a mental image of someone with really bad hayfever and watery eyes.

Bella comes out and says it; she's not happy about it being her birthday because she's older than Edward. Technically unless he was turned the day before his eighteenth birthday, then she's been older than him for a while. She's still dead set (no pun intended) on being his vampire bride, though by the sounds of things Alice knows something Edward doesn't because she placates our clumsy heroine with a reminder that a year or two isn't going to make that much difference in the long run.

I guess I would feel differently about this plot if I hadn't been inadvertently spoiled years before I even decided to read it. I know that sooner or later Bella is going to get turned so I'm just hoping it doesn't get dragged out too long.

Bella can't honestly understand why anyone would want to stay mortal when they had any other opportunity. You should read some Tolkien, honey. Watching everyone you know who isn't immortal dying, watching the world making the same mistakes time and time again without having the power or influence to stop them, living the same old life and knowing that it's never going to end. Immortality is not all it's cracked up to be!

The Cullens have apparently organised some sort of birthday party for Bella. Ah, that'd be the titular party then, wouldn't it? She starts making excuses why she couldn't possibly go, but these guys aren't going to take no for an answer. Edward pretty much puts her foot down. And who doesn't love a man who tells you just what you're going to do, even on your birthday. That's so romantic!

Attention is never a good thing, as any other accident-prone klutz would agree. No one wants a spotlight when they're likely to fall on their face.

So just. Don't. Go. Tell Edward you're not going and that's final. Jeez.

The next page is a discussion of money; namely Bella's parents don't have much, Bella has some which she's earning from a job in town just in case the vampire thing doesn't work out and she has to go to college, Edward has lots because Alice's ability to 'see' things is handy when you're playing the stock market.

Edward didn't seem to understand why I objected to him spending money on me – why it made me uncomfortable if he took me to an expensive restaurant in Seattle, why he wasn't allowed to buy me a car that could reach speeds over fifty-five miles an hour, or why I wouldn't let him pay my college tuition (he was ridiculously enthusiastic about Plan B).

Perhaps because it would get you out of his hair for a while? Possibly forever, if you found some college guy to obsess about instead.

We also learn that the 'older' Cullens have graduated now. I guess we won't see too much of Jasper, Emmett and Rosalie in this book.

School ends and Bella and Edward drive home together. She's in a cranky mood thinking about whatever it is Alice has planned for the evening. I don't feel sorry for Edward being on the receiving end of her crank since he gives as good as he gets. All is better when they reach her house. A quick snog and she's in a perfectly good mood and ready to go watch Romeo and Juliet for English class.

When the film ends, Edward starts talking about how easy it is for mere mortals to kill themselves compared to vampires. It sounds as though Edward contemplated ending his, well not life, undeath perhaps, when he thought that the tracker might have gotten to Bella. And so we finally learn a little more about the world of Twilight vampires. Edward's plan involved going to Italy to annoy a very old and power family of vampires called the Volturi. They're the ones Carlisle lived with for a while in the distant past.

This revelation causes Bella to tell him off because even if she was dead, she wants him to go on without her. She points out that if things were the other way around he wouldn't be impressed with her deciding to top herself if he ceased to exist. The conversation is interrupted by Charlie showing up with pizza. Bella's hoping that he'll stop her from going out but he's all for it and he wants her to take the camera to snap some photos.

I also think that Charlie has a thing for Alice:

"That's good. Hey, say hi to Alice for me. She hasn't been over in a while." Charlie's mouth pulled down at one corner.
"It's been three days, Dad," I reminded him. Charlie was crazy about Alice. He'd become attached last spring when she'd helped me through my awkward convalescence; Charlie would be forever grateful to her for saving him from the horror of an almost-adult daughter who needed help showering. "I'll tell her."

This is just awkward. As far as Charlie knows, Alice is a teenager. And I'm still pretty sure she has a thing for Bella, anyway.

On the way to the Cullens' house, Edward warns Bella to play nice, pointing out that the last time any of them had a proper birthday was before World War Two and it seems that this is an event they're all looking forward to. I bet Rosalie isn't. It turns out that even Emmett and Rosalie have come back from Africa. That's how big of a deal Bella's birthday is.

Bella does push Edward once more; what she really wants for her birthday is to be just like him. This does nothing to put Edward in a good mood, until she asks if he'll show up in the picture she took. Her camera has film in it? When was this book written? 2006? You could get cheap digital cameras then, why's she got a camera that takes film?

Alice has gone completely overboard with the party idea. I feel sorry for Alice. She's been stuck being a vampire for so long and she really just wants a shot at being a normal teenager. It must be so frustrating for her having to put up with new best friend Bella who wants nothing more than to give up all the normal person stuff to be undead. I think if I was Alice I'd have slapped Bella by now!

We catch up briefly with Jasper, Emmett and Rosalie before Alice announces that it's time for presents. You'd think just because they're dead they could still celebrate their birthdays. Is there some rule against vampires having birthday parties?

Then Bella is handed a big bow with nothing inside it. They've gotten her a new stereo for her truck which Emmett is already installing. Next is Edward and Alice's gift. Whatever it is it's in an envelope, which gives Bella a paper cut as she opens it. The single drop of blood is all that it takes to drive Jasper into a frenzy. He's suddenly lunging at Bella and Edward has to jump in between them. This is very dramatic.

Edward sensibly pushes Bella into a glass table to save her from Jasper's fangs; the table shatters and Bella ends up with rather more than just a paper cut.

Dazed and disorientated, I looked up from the bright red blood pulsing out of my arm – into the fevered eyes of the six suddenly ravenous vampires.

I'm not too worried about her. They controlled themselves when they found her bleeding out after the tracker got her. Plus there's still another twenty-odd chapters to go. Bella's going to survive this.

Finish This Book: Collecting

Occasionally when I'm working through this book I come up against a stumbling block, something that delays me somewhat. Sometimes it's a case of waiting for the right day to do a task, or the right tools, or a decent internet connection so I can look something up.

This was one of those pages.

It explains that a detective may collect things in order to document their research. So that's what you're instructed to do: Collect things from your immediate environment.

Now I started out intending to just grab things from around the house, taking 'immediate environment' to mean the area around the chair where I sit to fill in my book. But then I did the second part of the activity which was to find out the meaning of 'naturalist'.

The cliff notes answer is:

Someone who studies natural history; someone who studies plants/animals in their natural habitat.

And I realised that I'd probably have to leave the house for this one.

I took advantage of the nice weather and the fact that autumn has struck with a vengeance and grabbed a bunch of leaves on the walk towards Kerrycroy.

I got a pretty nice selection and I think they're a good representation of the plants which grow around the estate. It's an accurate documentation of of my immediate environment. I've taped them all into my book; I was prepared to grab some litter as well to stick in but I only found an old Styrofoam cup. When the tourist season ends the amount of rubbish lying around the estate dramatically decreases.

What sorts of things do you think you would collect from your local area?