Posted by martin on June 13, 1998 at 17:38:52:
In Reply to: Under the Stars posted by Ian Edmondson-Noble on June 09, 1998 at 09:42:37:
Re. Ian E-N's "why I'm here", I made a curious discovery on my way home from the AGM. I went for tea with my old dancing teacher, with whose family I first discovered the north-west coast of Scotland, camping in Torridon Bay. I mentioned that I had been to the TARS AGM, and she replied: Oh yes, I taught the Altounyan girls when they were in the Lake District. It's a small world!
A better answer to "why I'm here" is actually nothing to do with AR, though a memory triggered by Adam Quinan's contribution on Loons in the last Signals. As a boy of about eleven, I spent an idyllic summer on a lake in northern Ontario. The weird cry of the Loons is one of many memories of a summer even Nancy might have envied. We were four children, who had grown up together on the Quantocks, and gone out to Canada at about the same time (my tenth birthday). Our days started by collecting grass snakes and shipping them to an island in the lake, because the mother of two of the children was terrified of snakes. We reported at breakfast our daily quota (for which I seem to remember we were rewarded), and never mentioned that most of the snakes swam back to the mainland faster than we rowed! Our evening task was to catch supper, in a small bay where the trout were so plentiful that they were caught almost as quickly as we could bait the hooks. In between there were any number of discoveries - that porcupines shoot their quills (painful discovery!), that skunks are only funny for the one who hasn't got too close, snapping turtles (though none of us got snapped!), moose, black bear. With the privilege of a summer like that behind me, how could AR not enter the blood.