Don't try this one at home, folks

There are days that turn up from time to time when nothing happens that is noteworthy or even amusing. Today, the 30^th of March. has been like that so far… and I’m wondering if the fault is mine or the day’s. It would be wrong to blame the day, I think, so it must be me. I must be in that sort of mood… which gets me thinking that if I can write a halfway decent thing today, then I can write it any day.

In the morning I walked up the river with the doggs, as I do most mornings. Another dead toad in the pool, which is always a little dispiriting, although I have a feeling that the toads like it that way; it seems to be part of their cycle. Often this watery death is accompanied by some bizarre copulation, three or four smaller toads hanging on to the bloated body of the dead toad and all rolling around in a clump in the water. It’s not the sort of copulation that’s to everybody’s taste. I would be grateful if anybody who might know what exactly is going down here, could let me know and thus illuminate my darkness.

I was reminded of Woody Allen saying, ‘The thing about sex is that when it’s good, it’s really good; and when it’s bad… well, it’s still pretty good.’

I wonder if the toads see it that way… or spiders, of whom the male in many cases, gets eaten by the female. A quick trawl through the murkier reaches of the internet merely demonstrates that there are even worse things that can happen. Let’s not go there.

As I wandered up the river musing to myself on the pleasures and dangers of copulation, I heard a nightingale in the tamarisks, the first one of the year. Aiming my ears at the spot, I didn’t see where I was going and stepped on an unfortunate snake sunning itself by the water. With an inaudible oath it shot out from beneath my unfeeling flip-flop and slithered like a rocket into the river. Everything you read urges you to wear stout walking boots in rough terrain, but thank heavens I didn’t, or it would have been curtains for that poor snake. It only goes to show: you shouldn’t believe everything you read.

Post-prandial rather than post-coital, but a great photo by Andrew Phillips