Pregled posta

Badbury Clump, near Faringdon, Oxfordshire.

Hingefinkle's Logbook (Fifth Instalment)

How to Trap a Hydra
and how to let it go again

So precocious a child as you are, my dear little Alias, will, on reading the title of this chapter of my humble reminiscences, immediately set my manuscript aside and cry: “Why, Hingefinkle, that’s too easy! All you need to do is poke an eyedropper into the bottom of a pond, borrow one of Gladys Sparkbright’s microscopes, and you can have as many Hydras as you want, waving their stinging tentacles about in every which direction, and entrapping Pseudopodic Monsters and a Paramecium or two by way of entertainment. And to let them go again? Silly Hingefinkle, you needn’t even bother with walking back to the pond! You may look at them to your heart’s content and then, when you are satisfied, rinse the slide and cover-slip in the dishwater, and throw the dregs out the window into the drain, the bottom of which is quite slushy enough for a whole polyphagy of Hydras (for I presume that to be the correct collective noun) to remain well content!”

And I should be compelled to reply, “Hum, indeed, little Alias, but alas, the Hydra of my title is not the Hydra of which you speak, though admittedly it shares some characteristics with the diminutive form.”
“Oh?” you would reply interestedly. “You mean that there is a big type of Hydra as well as a little type?”
And then I should have to tell you that yes, there are at least two big types of Hydra in addition to the microscopic one: an ocean-going one having certain morphological affinities with the octopus (which does not concern us here), and a reptilian, swamp-inhabiting one (which has, as you shall soon see, concerned me very much). There are, I would add, two distinct traits which all three species - so different in so many other ways - invariably share, and which have made all three worthy to partake of the fearful name of HYDRUS. They are: a profusion of necks (and in the two more advanced species, heads too), and, just as notably, a determined voraciousness to rival that of the Higher Dragons. And before you besiege me with further questions, little Alias, I shall by your leave explain why it is so difficult to catch a Hydra, and moreover, why it is (or so I believe) downright impossible to let one go again without ensuing consequences of a serious and most regrettable nature.

*

Directly to the north of our little abode there lies, as you are well aware, a fen known in these parts as the Rancid Swamp. It is a most unprepossessing and unjust name for a place which is, as any sensible person would agree, absolutely fascinating. In the weeks following the twin failures of Agrimony’s alchemical experiment and the miserable affair of Gearsprocket’s Giant Leech, my friend was even more obtuse and intractable than usual, so that while he focused his ferocity on a spirited but entirely ineffective attack on the bureaucratic mechanisms of the local Druid Fraternity, I shoved a few necessary items into my pockets, procured some thigh-length leather galoshes (sealed with tar and hydrolised halibut giblet-oil) from the local tannery, and marched off on an expedition, firmly resolved to make a detailed map of the Rancid Swamp, and by my descriptions and depictions of what I found there, to rescue that great natural wonder from the odium of its ignominious name.

I was not to be disappointed. It is indeed a most marvellous - nay, a most mellifluous place, my dear little Alias. The air positively hums with the wingbeats of giant dragonflies whose eyes glow with a ghostly green light when alive (and continue to do so for a few hours after death), and of bright blue mosquitoes each with a proboscis two digits long. There are amphibians enough to stock all the kitchens in France for three millennia, including large, blind monsters the size of boa constrictors, living in burrows in the sphagnum. The big amphibians live, for the most part, by eating the little amphibians, of which there are a plethora: frogs, toads, newts, and boggle-eyed axolotls covered in bright purple blotches. The little amphibians live by eating a balanced combination of the smaller flying insects and the spawn of other little amphibians. There are sticklebacks the size of salmons, minnows the size of manta-rays, waterbeetles bigger than rowing-boats - hum - am I exaggerating? Nay, methinks not! - and the dragonfly nymphs are so ferocious that they regularly leap out of the water to gobble their parents. And in describing the amphibians, I forgot to mention the infinite and perplexing variety of tadpoles which wriggle about beneath the surfaces of the stagnant pools, gulping in vast quantities of water and filtering it for decomposed algae; and in describing the mosquitoes, I forgot to mention their larvae, which writhe about in the water like so many maggots, their breathing-tubes poking out above the surface like a forest of hypodermic needles planted by s

Taken at home in Salford Manchester.
I have been asked loads of times to do a shot of my cooking tools
This is a collection of Tools i have collected over the years as and when i needed them
this is just the stuff i use on a regular basis, I have a lot more.