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A Large Blue Butterfly...isn't it smashing?

In this blogposting…
*AGM XXIII
*Ryan Cross
*Wildlife Report
*the Real Ian Robinson
Proceed with caution…

AGM XXIII…
...will take place at 1100 next Wednesday 26 January at or near Grey’s Monument in Newcastle ( - indoors if wet).

The first four or five minutes of the AGM will be spent putting the world to rights. After that, it’s every man for himself.

If there are agenda items you’d like the AGM to cover, please take a clean sheet of white A4 paper and, using black ink only, write down the list of topics. Fold the paper over three times so that it fits in a DL envelope - the long, thin ones (but with no windows). Carefully seal the envelope down and then throw it in the bin.

Only if you follow these instructions carefully and precisely will a splendid time be guaranteed for all.

RYAN CROSS
As Hildie has already noted, our mysterious man in Alton - Ryan Cross - has finally revealed himself. As you can see on the right, he has joined the screaming hordes of unhinged and deeply confused people who have outed themselves as Truckshunter Followers. Well done, Ryan. Keep taking the tablets.

Interestingly, if you click on Ryan’s photo in the grid of Followers and then click on his name when it comes up, you’ll see that he’s a regular tweeter. That is to say, he tweets a lot. On Twitter. Firing messages off to the great and good (and also the not-so-great and not-so-good) as if his life depended on it - which it might.

To be honest, I’m not quite sure what (or why) Twitter is, let alone how it works. It’s made me think, though, that perhaps we truckshunters (who naturally pride ourselves on keeping abreast of the latest valveless digital technology) should join in.

What do you think?

WILDLIFE REPORT
Round about this time each year the National Trust publishes a kind of end-of-year report about the state of British wildlife from information they gather from various conservation groups. Interestingly, this year’s report isn’t too bad at all, considering.

Despite what you may think, 2010’s weather was fairly average, specially compared to the really bad years that went before it. And this return to ‘normal’ seasonal weather has benefitted wildlife immensely…

*the cold winter of 2009/10 enabled animals to hibernate properly;
*the warm Spring and early Summer created ideal conditions for insects and led to good berry crops in orchards, woods and hedgerows;
*generally, butterflies, birds of the tit family, and bats all benefitted - although crane-fly (‘daddy-long-leg’) numbers are still worryingly and mysteriously low;
*the heath fritillary on Exmoor, Cumbria’s netted carpet moth, and puffins on the Farne Islands all did very well in 2010;
*there was also an unusually large number of queen wasps (although I’m not exactly sure who this is good news for);
*it was a good Spring and Summer for many flowers - they weren’t overgrown by vigorous grasses;
*bluebells were still in flower at the end of May;
*the Large Blue Butterfly had its most successful year ever in Somerset;
*and mammals generally entered the winter of 2010/11 in good shape - specially badgers, deer, and the wild sheep and goats of Cheddar Gorge.

Let’s hope the weather’s just as kind to our wildlife this year.

WOULD THE REAL IAN ROBINSON…
As everybody knows, Ian Robinson isn’t my real name. I was reminded of my waywardness in this respect when I read about the annual report of the Legal Deed Poll Service (LDPS) the other day.

Apparently, the number of people changing their names by deed poll rose by a staggering 80% last year. That’s 90,000 people morphing from Fred Smith to Emperor Kermit Canute Featherduster - or the like - and all for just a 13 quid fee.

David Lennox, from Aberdeen, became Her Majesty The Queen to raise funds for a cancer charity, while Jane Nash, from Manchester, is now Miss Jelly St Tots after a ‘friend’ bought her the name for her 40th birthday.

And John Denton, from Lowestoft, has become Willy Wonka - again, to raise £5,000 for charity. It sounds like an extreme step to take to raise just £5,000, doesn’t it?

This has made me wonder whether I shouldn’t go the whole hog, as it were, and drape my sorry life with a decorative and ear-catching new name myself.

Quaker Oats? Montmorency Bismarck Furniture? St Joseph of Arimethea?

In fact, if I were to take that final leap into a new identity, there’s really only one name worth the candle.

You may remember the erstwhile ‘confidante’ and paramour of the Tipsy Duchess, whom God preserve. He was a rapscallion. A rogue and a mountebank. And his name was….

The Rev Unseemly Dogposture.

That’s worth 13 quid of anyone’s money. I might just give it a try.

Almost anything's better than the name-changing suggestion we once received from a Blue Bus listener, which was to take the name of your first pet and add your mother's maiden name to it. In my case, that would have produced Titch Todd. ('Titch' was a hamster.)

Ask yourself: would you have listened to The Nightshift in quite the same way if it had been presented by Titch Todd?

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com