moonvoice (ravenari)

We went to Hamelin Bay while we were down south.

I was...not well. Not even well enough to walk our normal way through the dunes. So we had to go down to the boat ramp instead and explore the beach there.

It was so windy the sand stung our faces. I still liked it though.





( There's more where that came from )

So, about two days before we were due to fly out of England, I got to meet with someone who I have known - through my artwork - for nearly 10 years. I've known her for so long that I was actually meant to meet with her six years ago, the first time we travelled to the UK, but I was just too exhausted and frazzled at the idea of meeting so many new people.

This time I marked it as a priority.

I apologise that there are not more photos of the penguins themselves. The truth of the matter is that most of the time was actually spent interacting with them, and not taking photos, because to get close and personal means risking all your belongings (they are, after all, wild animals). And that secondly I spent so much time just chatting happily with Zoe and I lost track of time and we spoke like we'd been old friends who had met over curious Humboldt penguins many, many times before.

And now about the Humboldt's themselves. (Any information I get wrong is due to my own dodgy memory and not Z). There's about 95 at Penguin Beach (the oldest building at ZSL London Zoo and Heritage listed), and all have names. Most are named after media figures, including drag queens like Courtney Act. London Zoo have also made some forays into being openly Pride supporting, including having the banner 'Some Penguins are gay, get over it' among other things. Zoe is a big part of this.

The penguins had their own say whether they wanted to meet us or not. There is a back entrance where they can come and see what's going on, or ignore us. They can self-determine whether they get any attention or not, and decide what sort of attention they like. They are all highly individualistic and it is hard not to compare them to cats after a while, in terms of their different natures, how they interact, and when I said this in some amazement to Zoe (framed as 'I can't believe I'm saying this but they sort of remind me of cats'), she said that it makes sense, given they're social animals with no strong sense of hierarchy, and that she thinks they can be very catlike as well.

We were visited by about 15 of the group, who were all *very* excited to see us (I was stepping over penguins that were clamouring around my feet to check us out). We were allowed to pet the ones that wanted to be petted (males preferred the chin and females preferred the belly, from memory, but it could be the other way around).

There were two 'naughty' ones - Gypsy and Charlie, who honestly I LOVED, but you couldn't put your hands near them, because they bit. Not maliciously, they just...I mean, they can literally only explore things with their beaks, unlike dogs or cats who also have paws, flippers and their tiny feet do not make good exploratory devices. And their beaks are strong, because penguins. Because they were the most curious, they also bit the most. All the penguins can potentially bite, but they are very clear with their boundaries. If they don't want attention, they walk away. If they want more attention, they come closer. I asked whether petting damaged the feathers, and Zoe explained that - unlike parrots - the penguins can self-direct the physical attention they receive, and as a result of that, their feathers are in good condition (though they were going through varying stages of moult while we were there).

Charlie screamed at me for not petting him, while he leaned against my jeans (I have photos of this), Tif was delighted when they started attacking her coat, and Glen had the time of his life. I have decided there is a particularly great feeling to having a penguin leaning heavily against your jeans, gazing up at you, while you chat with a senior zookeeper about life, the universe, how sadly little zookeepers make, how many reptiles Zoe owns, and how amazing the world can be at times.

For anyone curious, you can see more about Humboldts and Zoe here at her Instagram account, the latest video includes some of the 2019 youngsters, who have yet to be named. (I know she wants to name one Groot, lol). She has a lot of lovely videos of her with the Humboldts, and earlier than that you can see her work with reptiles too.

Now onto the photos.


Meet Charlie. One of the 'naughty' Humboldts. Who watched me like this for a huge chunky of time, while leaning into me and pressing his flippers into my jeans.

You will notice his beak is a little skewed. A parent stepped on his egg before birth, and crushed it, and they rushed him to the Zoo veterinarian to save him, which they very much did. But as a result of the crushing, his beak is wry-billed, and he bites much harder than the rest of the penguins. One of the reasons he's so curious and 'naughty' in the first place is because he was entirely hand raised.



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I don't have all the names of these birds, though I did end up getting most of them (I generally take photos of name cards when I can see them, it's just that there weren't always visible name cards or available and/or there were too many name cards to get photos of).

I need to clean all the boxes from around the piano, including a whole bunch of Ziwipeak venison that Maybe may not be eating anymore? We'll see!


White Pelican.



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At the end, we stayed around Barnet (though specifically in Cockfosters) which was our last week before we were to drop the car off at Heathrow (at which point we experienced a terrifying attempted carjacking where a car literally exploded into flames next to us while an incredibly drunk man forced his way into the car and attempted to get us to drive to a mysterious location for a mysterious amount of time) and catch a cab to Gatwick.

I have good friends in Barnet, and though I was skeptical we'd get to spend much time seeing Tif and Kuba, in the end we saw them nearly every day, treated to incredible Polish hospitality, watching Miś and watching Glen and Kuba play VR. Tif did the cover for Blackwood, and has also done several banners for my Fae Tales universe, and we actually met through her reading my series and reaching out. She does amazing book cover work for HarperCollins in London (yes, that HarperCollins), and otherwise freelances.

On a whim I've also decided to put all of our other food photos in this post. Mostly because I got hardly any photos of Cockfosters or Barnet.





( More under the cut, including some quality Tom of Finland - also, some photos of meat behind the cut. )

This was a small museum but it was absolutely packed with artefacts.

So there will be two posts filled with pagan altars and other bits and pieces.

It's funny you know, I felt zero connection to the ruins and structures of the building while walking around them, but I felt something different while in the museum and I can't help but feel that's because this is where all the altars are.





( More under the cut! )

Hadrian's Wall was very much on Glen's bucket list of places to visit, and as he really had a very stripped down list, I had to make sure it would happen. As it was, it sort of happened in the middle of a lot of driving (from Aberdeen down to Carlisle), and we were aware on the day that it might not be possible.

But it turned out to be a really good break, honestly, and it was only forty minutes away from the Premier Inn we ended up staying at.

I know we could have gone to like, 'just a section of wall' but I thought it would be good to find an actual site and museum for Glen, so he could get a better sense of the experience. So I landed on Cilurnum, built in 123 AD.

I was very tired at this point (tbh everything from Inverness onwards, was a continuing theme of precipitously heightening exhaustion), and I honestly spent most of the time either slowly meandering (I never got to Hadrian's Wall, it was too far a walk), or sitting down, contemplating how much more I could do if I had a wheelchair (something I have come to contemplate a lot more since). I would have skipped the museum entirely if Glen hadn't come out to show me the photos of the interior, and I realised I would regret not having a look.

But for now, the exterior. It's all a bit out of order, and I haven't written down the names of what every location was, but basically was a Roman fort, and the best preversed Roman cavalry fort along Hadrian's Wall. It started off for cavalry and later became given to infantry.

Hilariously, the whole thing was buried because the rich twat that used to own the land wanted a smooth and uninterrupted view down to the river. His son then became an archaeologist, and in a giant fuck you to his father, unburied the entire thing when he inherited the estate.


A tiny Glen waving in the distance.



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Blessed Winter Solstice (and Summer Solstice, for those in the Northern Hemisphere).

Today, Mum and I went to Dome Cafe, as is fairly normal for us on a Friday morning. I also finished the season finale of Sarazanmai and cried over it and then watched it again and then cried again and then watched it with Glen and cried a third time. It was really good. Also I cry really easily at things.

I'm slowly reading The Book of Dust by Phillip Pullman and I finished a book on Orkney Folktales last night and am now reading Letters From Hamnavoe by George Mackay Brown.


Loch Morlich, Glenmore.



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The last batch of Orkney photos before we move onto Aviemore.

Tonight we played Dungeons and Dragons with our team (ridiculously named Brongeons and Brogons), and a hilarious night was had. I brought homemade banana bread (with chocolate chips) and Anita brought apple crumble.

This weekend I think will hopefully be pretty quiet. It's been good to post these pictures up slowly, and process them all. By the end of it, it'll be close to 40 posts, but you'll have only seen the very tip of the iceberg, given I took some 5,000 photos. (Too many, obviously, lol).





( Some of my favourites under the cut. )

We stayed in Kirkwall while we were in Orkney, which I really liked. There was the neat little fandom touch (I wrote a Bull/Cullen Dragon Age: Inquisition fic, and researched Cullen's base of Kirkwall a lot, and one can't help but feel it was partly based on the town itself), which was partly why I wanted to stay there.

We ended up in a lovely detached flat behind a family home, and the hosts were really generous and kind. They gave us access to their washing line (which was sorely needed), and while we were on restricted hot water (it only operated at certain times), it worked out fine.

One of the nights we stayed, I had a craving for Chinese and was getting sick of fish & chips or sandwiches or any of the other instant, simple things we ate (I ate an awful lot of fruit, especially raspberries, because they were so cheap compared to here). There was the main stretch, which had a single Chinese place. I was on Google Maps just moving it around and looking at what there was, when I happened to notice a Chinese place in the opposite direction of the town, where nothing else was except houses.

On a whim, I looked them up to see the reviews, of which there were plenty, and they were all very positive. It turned out the local Chipenese (Chippie x Chinese) was something of a staple for the locals, who highly recommended that ferry loupers (tourists) not be put off by the fact that it's a demountable at the back of a home, and it's tiny. So Glen went and lo and behold they had a full Scottish chippie menu (replete with white, red and black pudding), and a full Chinese menu.

And they deserved all the positive reviews, it was amazing.

Tbh everything in Orkney was often better than I thought it would be, which given I went in with really high expectations, was like...pretty unexpected actually.


A very quiet main street in Kirkwall, on Easter Monday, as we searched for lunch.



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I have never been on a car ferry before, and Glen and I were both pretty nervous (I think it's one thing to do it with your own car, and quite another to do it with a hire car). Tbh, boarding was super easy on the ship Hamnavoe which was a very nice ship, and honestly the whole process was extremely smooth and easy from start to finish.

Because I get pretty bad motion sickness, I ended up staying on the outer deck once we took off and hadn't really dressed for this. (I was warmly dressed, but that wasn't really enough to deal with the Firth between Orkney and Scotland, and my hands went numb as I took photos). Even so, it was worth it. The trip is fairly short (only about 45 minutes from Thurso to Stromness), we had a mild swell on the way there (and even milder on the way back) and it was relatively quiet on the ship as we were travelling in on Easter Sunday.

Orkney was honestly like something out of a Studio Ghibli movie, and I've never had that experience before. I'm sure I will attempt to explain some of it in the next few posts and I'm sure I'll fail to convey it, but anyway, here is the trip in.



This mild fallstreak hole phenomenon appearing in the altocumulus made me extremely happy.



( I think I'm in love with the sea )