The Thamesmead Grump

STROLLING DOWN THE RIVER

One of the joys of living next to the river is that every day you can be sure of something new.

Today, I decided to go and look at the birds on the mud flats but mis-timed the tide so all there was to see was a lot of Black Headed Gulls bobbing up and down on the water.

Okay, so there were lots of Teal, Mallard, Cormorants, Lesser Black Backed Gulls, Herons, Moorehens, Coots, Blue Tits, Starlings, House Sparrows, Great Tits, Chaffinches, Kestrels, a Little Egret and a Kingfisher but other than that, there was nothing much.

The afternoon was livened up a bit by some folks with  a couple of high powered model cars being driven quite expertly on the footpath. The dry, dusty conditions of the path were ideal for some spectacular stunts and I stood and watched for a while. It seemed like so much fun it must be illegal.

My next treat was a visit by a couple of naval vessels. First along was the BNS Castor of the Belgian Navy. This ship has been in the North Sea recently, testing some anti-pollution equipment for dealing with such things as oil spills.

BNS Castor

It was followed by the FGS Ludwigshafen am Rhein of the German Navy.

FGS Ludwigshafen am Rhein

They and many others are here for the Defence and Security international exhibition in London where the defence industry will be hoping to provide weapons to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Pakistan and Colombia so they can continue to terrorise their citizens and those of neighbouring countries.

Saudi Arabia for instance, urgently needs to replenish their arms stocks which are being used up slaughtering civilians in Yemen.

"Once the rockets are up,

Who cares where they come down?

That's not my department," says Werhner von Braun.

(Tom Lehrer)

Anyway, back to the river and coming down the Thames in stately fashion was the Tall Ship Tenacious which you can read more about by clicking the link.

BURDS

I thought I would treat you to some of the bird pictures I have taken recently on the river and in the Crossness Nature Reserve. 

 

 A Grey Heron perched on a pipe in the pond by the old pumping station. 

I could never find out why the water in this pond is bright yellow.

A Little Egret fishing and catching Dragonflies in the wader scrape pond 

in the Crossness Nature Reserve protected area

Here it is again

This is one of a pair of Kestrels that can be seen regularly now over the grazing marshes.

Take a stroll down there with a pair of binoculars and enjoy the free show.

A juvenile Wheatear getting ready to fly South for the Winter.

You may be interested to know that Wheatear is a corruption of the old Anglo-Saxon name for this bird which was "White Arse".

BANANAS

One of the latest loony food stories going round at the moment is that eating more than six bananas at once can kill you. Actually, the story has been going around for ages.

Comedian, Karl Pilkington picked up on this with one of his famous quotes "I've heard a fact, that if you eat more than six bananas it will kill you. I saw a bowl with seven bananas in it and thought, that's dangerous."

He has also discovered that "sitting in a bath of pineapple chunks can kill you" is another well documented fact.

What Karl Pilkington and others have failed to recognise is the genuine risk of radiation poisoning presented by Bananas. While the actual amount of radiation produced by an individual banana is quite small, a large number placed in close proximity to each other can create a critical mass, resulting in possible injury or even death to anyone unfortunate to be nearby.

Do any of you remember Three Mile Island, the Nuclear Power Station in the United States? This suffered a critical meltdown of it's core in 1979, allegedly as a result of a failure in the cooling system. What you may not be aware of is the fact that on the day of the accident, staff at the reactor were having a "bring a banana to work" day. The close proximity of a large number of bananas to the reactor core caused it to overheat with disastrous consequences.

What the Government doesn't want you to see

What is particularly worrying is that school children are being encouraged to take portions of fruit to school rather than sugary snacks in their packed lunch.  No-one seems to have done a risk assessment to determine the possible adverse health consequences of large numbers of bananas being kept in a confined classroom area, especially if the school is near one of those mobile phone masts where the deadly rays of the mast, combined with the radioactive emissions of the bananas could cause all the children to turn into mutants.

It has been suggested that this has already happened but the Government is covering it up.

You can read more about the consequences of eating too many bananas here.

MOON

This is a picture of the Moon I took the other night. A waning Moon takes more commitment as you have to get up at around 4:00am to see it.