Beaver Water World

Tuesday May 7th 2013

On what looked to be a lovely, warm and sunny day, we went off to take a look at a place I never knew existed, quite close to where we live. It is called Beaver Water World, largely because it has some beavers, but I have to say we didn't see them - they didn't seem to be about during our visit.

It is an interesting little place, which has a small selection of animals, most of which have been rescued because they were unwanted pets. People seem to keep the most extraordinary things as pets, then get bored with them and want rid of them.

There's quite a selection of birds, most of which were behind mesh in cages and hard to photograph. The cages have to be so sturdy because a number of animals have been stolen. There was quite a selection of the sort of tropical bird normally kept as a pet - Budgerigars, Parrots, Lovebirds, Cockatiels. But there were also some more exotic things, like this gorgeous pheasant.



He was quite hard to photograph, as he ran so quickly up and down in front of me, demonstrating his colourful plumage.

There were some more unusual birds; the magnificent chap below is a Snowy Owl.


I think he was quite interested in the visitors, though he was right at the back of his enclosure and not easy to photograph.

There was another owl too - this rather imposing Horned Owl.



He too seemed interested in looking at the visitors, but he was also right at the back of his cage. And as you can see, the two ear-tufts are stuck underneath something, so I didn't manage a very good photograph.

Not all of the birds are in cages, there are some chickens which are allowed to wander about. Some of them were quite fascinating, notably a pair of what looked like very hairy chickens, which are called Silky chickens. I would have included a photo, but they were rather camera shy. One sat inside a bush, and the other was very busy preening its feathers; whenever it saw me with the camera, it turned its head away from me, so it just looked like a huge ball of rippling reddish-brown hair.

The other animals I had very little luck with photographing were the Long-tailed Lemurs. They have such lovely, friendly little pointed faces, and were scampering about or eating their lunch, so they would have made very good subjects. Unfortunately, one of them was stolen last year and they are kept behind glass. With the sun at the wrong angle, my photos are full of reflections of the trees around, and not worth looking at.

I had better luck with the Meercats.




I don't know if these were also rescue animals, but they seemed pretty comfortable here, though they are quite small and so perhaps quite young. There are only three of them. They took turns in standing sentinel though - and quickly saw off a big magpie which came in and wanted to share their lunch, which they guarded jealously.

After that, we reached the Beaver enclosure, but the beavers were not out and about, I'm afraid. However, in a field close by were a couple of Muntjac Deer.



I think there were more than two, but the others were inside their little shelters, so we couldn't see them.

After the outdoor animals, we went outside to look at the reptiles, of which there are rather a lot, kept in extremely tropical conditions. These were all unwanted pets, and it really amazed me that somebody would think a crocodile or a boa-constrictor would make a suitable pet. I could - just - understand somebody thinking they would like terrapins or toads and then wanting to get rid of them when they proved uninteresting or got too big. But who on earth wants to keep a crocodile - especially in this country? And there were 2 of them, from two different homes that didn't want them any longer.

As well as the boa-constrictor, there were two pythons, one very big and one absolutely enormous, with a body as thick as my thigh. It is hard to believe that people would want to keep such a thing in their home.

There were quite a few iguanas, of which this was the biggest.


And he certainly was big; his body was two or three feet long, in fact I think he was bigger than the smaller crocodile!

There were quite a few Tropical fish to admire as well, the place sells exotic fish and fish tanks as well as small animals like rabbits, mice and gerbils. They also sell pond plants and fish for the garden pond. We though about getting some for our pond, but we'd need to get the pond pump working. And I think any fish might fall prey to passing herons - or even the huge black birds which we regularly see in our garden, rooks or possibly ravens, I'm not sure which.

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Old Bailey Again

Friday May 3rd 2013

Friday May 3rd was the day appointed for the next hearing at the Old Bailey in the proceedings related to the killing of my cousin. The previous week, we had been there for a very short hearing to discuss jurisdiction over the accused. The conclusion was, as we had expected, that the suspect would be tried here first, and afterwards go to Germany to be tried for the killing there.

This Friday morning, my sister and I had an early appointment to meet the Crown Prosecution Service before the hearing, so we were told in advance what was likely to happen today.

We have had to change judge. This is because our original judge has had a promotion and is about to become a judge in the Court of Appeal. (I knew about the promotion already, as I found it when looking up details about him on the web earlier in the week). He will no longer sit at the Old Bailey, but only in the Courts of Appeal. So this time we had the Recorder of London, who is the most senior permanent judge of the central criminal court.

What happened in court was fairly short. The accused was on video link from the secure hospital, and I have to say he did not look at all well. He had had a rather radical haircut, what my sons call 'No 1 all over'. In January, he had short wavy hair and just looked like a fairly ordinary well-educated young man. Now he looks mad, and also very big and threatening; he seems to have put on a lot of weight and his face looks puffy, probably from the treatment drugs. He now looks the kind of person you'd cross the street to avoid! I found it quite disturbing that the video screen was directly facing me, in a court room which wasn't very big, and he seemed to be staring straight at me. Of course, he was staring straight at the camera, and anyway, what he can see is the judge, not me. But I found it very unsettling.

He was formally arraigned - he was asked to plead. He pleaded not guilty to murder, guilty to manslaughter. This plea was accepted, because I understand that he is now diagnosed, by both prosecution and defence psychiatrists, as a paranoid schizophrenic. There was a mention of the killing in Germany, and we learned that a European arrest warrant had been issued but not yet executed. I imagine that's because everything is waiting until this case is over.

The CPS barrister then requested a postponement until May 28th, when, if all is in order, he will 'open the facts of the case' in court. This means he will explain in court exactly what the accused did, and will detail Douglas' injuries. He told us privately we could leave quietly if we found it too upsetting, but he has to do this because it needs to be a matter of public record. They should then be able to move to sentencing, which will be a hospital order and a restraining order. The restraining order prevents his release, if the doctors deem him to be no longer deranged, until his case can be considered again.

Nobody was ready anyway - some of the papers were missing! I think the courts need to employ some better quality filing clerks. The judge complained that he hadn't received one of the three psychiatrists' reports. The defence was missing some of the relevant statements. Worst of all, the Clerk of the Court asked the accused to confirm his name and he couldn't, because it wasn't his name! For some reason, she had his first name down wrongly.

Anyway, it was over this time in under half an hour. We just hope it can all be over and done with next time, at the end of the month. He'll remain locked up in a secure hospital once he has been sentenced. When the Germans are ready with their case, he will go to Germany to be tried there, as long, the judge says, as the German authorities can assure him that there will be no danger to the public in the move. Everybody considers him dangerous, so he will not appear in court at all, he will always be just on the video link. It is possible that he'll be incarcerated in Germany, in fact I hope he will.

There were some journalists in court, so we were not entirely surprised the next day to read some newspaper reports. Not one was accurate! It was quite interesting to compare reports from newspapers here with those in German newspapers. I was surprised to learn that German newspapers never identify suspects or victims by name, so accounts of the killing in Germany are very much less sensational than you would find in a newspaper here.

I am now being very careful what I say In this blog. The suspect has told the British police what he did in Germany, in fact one of the German papers says (this is a translation) 'In his interview with British authorities, the suspect didn’t just speak about the attack in London, but also admitted attacking a woman two weeks earlier in his hometown. During the course of a further interview he was able to describe the sequence of events of the killing in such detail that the investigation authorities have no doubt that he committed the act.'

However, I understand he has refused to speak to the German police - they came over here specially to interview him - and I am told he has refused to give them his fingerprints or DNA. So, in case he pleads not guilty in Germany and there is a trial over there, I am not saying too much in public.

My sister and I are not finding this easy. She finds she has lots of issues with anger management. I worry about walking down the street now, especially in London; I try to be aware of who is around me all the time. And I'm not longer relaxed about the crazy person in the street or on public transport, in fact I take evasive action. I feel Douglas might not have been so vulnerable to attack if he'd been able to see. I find it very hard to believe I'll never see him again. And of course, we both find it difficult not being able to make any plans when we don't know for definite when we need to go to court.

The other thing we both dread is Douglas' killer being classed as 'no longer dangerous as long as he takes his medication' and being let out in two or three years. We don't want him coming back to London again! Apparently, German regulations governing mental health patients who have committed violent crimes are different, so we are hoping he won't be let out to do it again.







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More days out

End of April and the beginning of May

With the start of some better weather, we've been able to go exploring a bit around the Oxted area. We had hoped to visit Titsey Place, which is a historic manor house situated at a short distance to the east of Oxted, but we discovered it doesn't open until mid-May. So we had to content ourselves with a walk around the estate.

There are two walks to choose from - the long one and the short one - but they both start by climbing a very steep slope to the top of the North Downs. The view from the highest spot on the trail was absolutely superb, down across Surrey and rolling green fields towards the South Downs and the sea.



Fortunately, it was a clear day, and many of the trees and hedges on the trail are still bare of leaves so we were able to appreciate the wonderful view. Titsey House is the big beige irregular block on the left of this photo. We'll go back again soon to do the long walk, we only managed the short one this time. And we'll go back when the house is open, as it dates back to the mid 1500s and sounds very interesting.

A few days later, we decided to take a look at Staffhurst Wood, which is only a few miles away, and which I thought might be a likely spot for bluebells. Staffhurst is thought to have been wooded continually for at least a thousand years, though this changed in the 1930s when much of the wood was felled for timber. More recently it has been managed to try and bring back something of its former character and It is now designated a Local Nature Reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

The trail is circular and is supposed to take about an hour and a half. It took us slightly longer, partly because we kept stopping to take photos. The bluebells were everywhere, under the trees and in all the open clearings.



and I could see they were mostly English bluebells, not Spanish ones.

Some of the bigger clearings were described as being like the original ‘assarts’ or forest clearings cut in this area, probably during the thirteenth century. In some there were ponds, though all seem to have been dug quite recently.



This rather pretty one was the smallest.

Another reason we were slower than expected on this walk was that some of it is over bridle-ways which had been badly cut up by horses' hooves during all the recent rain. Although it was mostly dry underfoot, the surface was so badly cut up it was hard to keep your footing. However, other parts of it were on a good hard surface, which made things easier. Some of it used a narrow tarmac road which was built during the Second World War when the wood was used to store ammunition. Other relics of the war include various defensive ditches and a hard track made of bricks and rubble from the London Blitz, which were recycled to provide foundations for a light railway system to serve the ammunition dump.

It is sad that such ancient forest was destroyed in the 1930s but at least I suppose it is on the way to being restored now.

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March and April

March and April 2013

Dear me, I see it is two months since I wrote anything!

I see from my calendar that March was quite a dull month, only enlivened by Paul returning from Colorado on 7th, and by my having various meetings and a few days of work. One of the work days was cancelled because of the snow! March was bitterly cold, and the snow was quite deep on a couple of days. I could probably have reached the place I had to visit - I seem to remember it was Watford - but heaven knows how long it might have taken. And I wasn't at all certain I would be able to get home again. The colleague with whom I was supposed to be travelling lives in Hastings on the south coast, and she was snowed in and had no trains at all! Fortunately, the snow didn't lie for long, only a few days - though it killed off all the lovely spring flowers which had been poking their noses out of the ground.

Paul went up to Manchester on the 22nd of March to help with DIY, and I followed on the 26th, and we stayed for Easter. Unfortunately, our grandson had tonsillitis which we both caught, so then we took it in turns to be quite ill. The doctor in Manchester said our grandson only had a virus, so of course we were too intimidated to dare to consult our own doctor when we became ill for fear of being sent away with a flea in our ears for having the temerity to turn up at the surgery with a virus.

We returned from Manchester on April 2nd, neither of us feeling at all well, and had to unpack, wash, iron and pack up again to spend two weeks in our London apartment, which was between tenants. Paul wanted to do some minor repairs there, and I wanted to visit various galleries and exhibitions. Neither of us achieved what we wanted. Paul wasn't well, and anyway went back up to Manchester to give more DIY help. I was so ill I ended up at an emergency GP centre, had to be given antibiotics, and spent the 10 days from the 5th to the 15th ill and in bed.

Our daughter-in-law and grandson had been to France and came back on Eurostar, stopping off in London for a weekend visit on Friday 5th. My son came too, so they could have a weekend in London, but I was too ill to appreciate it and Paul wasn't much better. My sister had to come and help out!

I was finally more or less better by 15th, and Paul had returned from Manchester in time for us to pack up and move back to Oxted, as new tenants were arriving at the weekend. Paul had lots of DIY back in London before the new tenants moved in and I had to concentrate on unpacking, washing and ironing as we were due back in Manchester for our grandson's birthday on April 21st.

It doesn't seem long since he was a tiny baby, but now he running everywhere and chatting away nineteen to the dozen. Thomas the Tank Engine is quite a favourite at present, and even has to be taken to bed, which cant be particularly comfortable. His speech isn't always entirely clear though, which makes for some interesting misunderstandings - he told Paul he had been playing with Thomas, but Paul heard Tennis rather than Thomas, which resulted in a conversation that became progressively more incomprehensible to them both until I put them both out of their misery by explaining what he'd really said.

We finally returned to our own home for a few days on April 22nd, though I still had a couple of days of work. Thank goodness the weather at last started to improve, and we are starting to see more signs of spring.



This is the big white Magnolia near our south-facing windows just an instant before it started to shed its petals. There's a pink magnolia just a little further down the garden, but it's difficult to catch it at quite the right moment, as some petals have already fallen before all of them have opened.



The Rhododendrons will be flowering soon, and we'll have been here a year - though it only feels like about 5 minutes because we never seem to stay in one place for long.

One lovely sunny day we paid a quick visit to Chartwell, which used to be Winston Churchill's home. It's only a short distance away, so we had a nice walk in the gardens just before they shut. They are absolutely lovely. This is the view over the lakes he created - he was quite a landscape gardener.



Close to the lakes, there's a statue of him and his wife Clementine



I felt I would quite like to sit on a bench there myself, it was so beautiful.

When Churchill got older, he preferred to stay closer to the house - the lakes are at the foot of the hill. Many photos were taken of him beside one of the fish ponds close to the house.



If your screen isn't too small, you should be able to see the chair where he usually sat. It's always left in that position, where he liked it. The tree in the background, smothered in white blossom, is far better than anything we have in our garden.

What we do have in our garden is a visiting fox! Here he is, on the lawn outside our windows.




I think he's quite young. And I'm not sure what he's staring at in such a bemused way.

I've finally upgraded my iPad and the wonderful BlogPress is working again, so I hope this will post!

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