Gwyneth's personal blog

Friday 24th September, luminous cloud burning off. So far, it's going to be another day of autumn sunshine, no sign of the high winds.

Haha! I've finally found a practical use for those Twitter and Facebook accounts. I can pester people! When NGOs hopefully ask me if they can contact all the people in my email address book, to spread the word on Drop The Debt and the like, I always turn the idea down. It's intrusive, it's chugging, and it would only look like spam. But Facebook and Twitter, that's different.

Last Saturday, harvest foraging from Robertsbridge to Bodiam, retracing a springtime walk we made when David & Ruth &co were staying just over the border, but this time driving to Robertsbridge as the Kent trains are being routed via Hayward's Heath at weekends, and that's a Ryanjourney. Why do the papers and the BBC always say there's "a bumper crop" of nuts and berries? It'd be a strange September if the hedges weren't full of sloes (we picked our share) and blackberries, hips and haws and crab-apples. Actually, this year the apples have been disappointing so far; sharp and late. An old pasture thick with dark green fairy rings delayed us, plentiful supplies of field mushrooms. I hoped for boletus, "edible and delicious" in the heathy woodland, but found only interesting non-edible species. On the way back, despite the helpful due west sunset arrangement of the equinox, and a high-sailing three-quarter moon, we got a little lost. The bowl on the right holds specimens of a beautiful Amanita, called The Blusher (not eaten) picked in Wennow Wood in deep twiglight. The other handsome devil, probably an Agaricus, I couldn't positively identify, except it wasn't as I'd hoped a Parasol variant, so we didn't eat that one either. I'm not careless with my fungi (famous last words).

What luxury to be lost in a wood on the Kent Sussex border in deep twilight. To find your way out to a lane, and walk down the hill to the river in the moonlight, pale strawbales in the glittering shorn fields; to the convivial lights of a roadside village pub, and pass like ghosts. . .

Animal Alterity I have to take issue with Sherryl Vint over the Eqba's righteous cleansing operation on planet Earth. Far as I can tell, if you invent imaginary aliens who are going to hygenically dispose of 6billion surplus humans for you at a stroke, that is a sentimental solution. How about if you imagine the Extreme Greens as people like us, taking the job on? Six billion corpses, mm. That's quite a stink.

On the other hand, I have never read anything by Karen Traviss. She fit the old !SFnal Tomboy! profile so exactly, I thought I already knew her work well. . . I should give her a try, but clearly you don't start with Judge.

And last night (finally getting there) we watched the Tigers In Bhutan show. How lovely it was, and how thrilling. All those different big cats! And the pika, and the dried medicinal caterpillar with fungus growing out of its head. But I was afraid. Don't tell! I kept thinking. Don't tell! I just hope none of those dxxxxd Traditional Medicine tycoons were paying too much attention.