The Ragged Optimist 98
Coming Up
It’s Sunday morning. The sky is blue, the old market square outside the bookshop where The Ragged Optimist lives is full of life, and the buds on twisty branches of the old London Plane tree are just about to open. Any day now.
Yesterday, The Ragged Optimist had a ride on the little steam railway at Kemsley, outside Sittingbourne. There were young foxes, wandering across the tracks and watching the train, and rabbits running ahead of the train, and magpies with mouths full of sticks. It also snowed, for just a few minutes, out of nowhere.
It’s a turning point. Something’s rising. New things are happening. Enjoy yourself.
As always, here are some things to help you start this week with hope.
The Ragged Optimist is pulling together an evening as part of Words Change Things in Margate. Put Friday 1st May in your diary, and head for Marine Studios.
More events can be found over here, including Margate Zine Fair, and the Make Now Think Later exhibition that’s touring the UK. Recently, the Prince and Princess of Wales dropped in to see it.
Images of the UK’s wildlife are to feature on the next series of banknotes, after a nature theme was most popular with the pubic in a consultation last year. The Bank of England regularly change the designs, to protect against fraud. The idea of beavers on banknotes has really upset some people, but obviously - The Ragged Optimist approves.
Here’s a chance to win an exclusive ranger-led tour of our Exmoor beaver enclosure, plus a four-night stay in a National Trust cottage. A proper beaver experience, spotted by Philippa.
North Somerset Council has partnered with Somerset Wood Recycling to transform wood from Birnbeck Pier that cannot be reused into furniture.
Which reminds The Ragged Optimist of the lovely recycled materials used in this Edinburgh flat.
In recent weeks there have been a flurry of sightings of the large tortoiseshell butterfly in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Dorset and Cornwall. it was believed to be extinct. Spotted by reader Anthony.
Northwoods is a Scotland-wide chain of landholdings, all committed to nature recovery and share a vision for an ecologically restored landscape. New research shows that on their rewilded land, habitat for birds increased more than fivefold, while the numbers of bumblebees and butterflies rose over tenfold.
Did you know that St Patrick’s Day, 17th March, is when you should plant out your seed potatoes? And then peas on St Benedict’s Day, 21st March? Found in Telling The Seasons, a Common Ground book by Martin Maudsley.
Dominic Gregory’s Lifeboat at the End of the World is a raw and gripping first-hand account of what it’s like to volunteer aboard an RNLI vessel, given particular poignancy serving in a station saving refugees trying to cross to the UK in small boats. He’s talking about the book at an event in Margate this month.
‘Share what you’ve learned, not just what you’ve made.’ Spotted following a link sent by reader Bernadette.
‘Floating Upstream: The Many Lives of Stewart Brand’ - for about twenty years, everywhere I go, Stewart Brand has been there already.
lovely, and encouraging as always.