Jonathan Littlewood

The FUNGAL x FOREST level of BALL x PIT with only a couple of enemies left and the boss strength meter at zero.

Just BALL x PIT freezing at the moment I was finishing off the boss in the FUNGAL x FOREST for the first time.

#notHappyBunny

A Rana temporaria is sitting on a weathered brass sundial mounted on the top of a pond wall. The frog has wet yellow-brown skin with black mottling. It is sitting side-on to the camera. There is part of a petal stuck under the frog's white chin.

Relaxing on our pond wall on a warm July evening. The frogs clamber up through an iris to get from the water onto the wall. After decades of frog-watching, we have still not found how they climb back up the wall from the garden when returning to the pond. #frogFriday

A tiny baby hedgehog is comfortably sitting in the palm of a hand. Its front paws are splayed, and each tiny claw can be seen clearly.

A tiny baby hedgehog is held in the palm of a hand. It is drinking from a small bottle of milk with an orange teat. A tiny set of white lower teeth can be seen gripping the teat. One clawed front paw is resting against the person's thumb.

One of the members of our local archery club volunteers for a hedgehog rescue charity, and some years ago, she was hand-rearing a hoglet which needed feeding every few hours. She couldn't leave it at home, so she brought it to our archery meeting, where I was lucky enough to get these photos.

Very wise advice...

An adult European Hedgehog, Erinaceus europaeus, poses for the camera. It is exploring a very dodgy piece of lawn. There had been a lot of rain during the day, and so a variety of worms and slugs to be hunted.

I had a look around the garden in the early hours to see if there were any of our amphibious friends to photograph for #frogFriday. Instead, I was thrilled to bump into this fine fellow. Since our neighbours cleared the bushes from their garden, we've seen precious few hedgehogs in the area.

A Rana temporaria frog is sitting on a concrete tile and looking up towards the sky. The frog has a dark brown body with lighter brown limbs. His throat and chin are white. There is a large green leaf across the foreground, hiding the frog's back legs. Two large green ceramic frogs make up the background.

A rather haughty expression from this handsome frog who had probably just seen something interesting and fluttery while sitting on the wall of our pond. #FrogFriday

Never thought I'd say this. It's
gonna be harsh and might
give you angry feelings when
you see it. I've come
up with one simple life rule:
Never ever (I know you're
gonna, but please don't)
let yourself feel stupid when
you look at the first words
down the left side of this post

A juvenile Rana temporaria is sitting on a concrete tile at the edge of a pond, side on to the camera. It has a dark brown back, with a lighter brown side, both mottled with black patches. The frog's lower body is tinged with green, and its lower jaw and throat are white. There is a dead brown leaf in the bottom right corner of the picture, and blue pots provide the background to the top corners. There is an out-of-focus green stalk along the left edge of the photo.

I just had a quick look around the pond before searching for a #frogFriday photo in the archives, and this frog popped out of the undergrowth and conveniently posed for me.

England is now experiencing a significant Covid wave, after 10 months of relative quiet The latest Covid situation in England and a look at where NHS services are as we head into winter

After a long pause, I've just done another England Covid & NHS update as we head into the autumn/winter season.

TLDR: we're in a significant Covid wave now, the NHS is stretched, get boosted if you're eligible.

christinapagel.substack.com/p/england-is...

Tawny owl

Six weeks ago, I picked up a year-old tawny owl with a broken leg off the main road near our home and dropped him off at our nearest vet.

After a few days, I received one of the most bizarre phone calls I’ve ever had, asking “So when are you coming to pick up your owl?” 🧵

The front cover of a book shows a line drawing of a ramshackled wharf on the left of the picture. There is a dried mud flat in the foreground, with a wooden jetty behind. A small steamboat has been propped up on top of the wharf. To the left, four storeys of buildings in poor repair are piled up on each other. One of the buildings has a lookout tower on top with a klaxon on its roof. Everything described has been coloured in teal. In the distance, there is a city with a few towers sticking up from the skyline. A building with a partially destroyed dome dwarfs the other towers. The city is coloured in yellow. The pale sky above has the partial shadow of a Chinese-style dragon swooping above it.

I'm halfway through the wonderful "Gogmagog" by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard.

UNREAD There in a stack Of irresistible potential Mainly unread But don't ask "Why do you still buy When so many words are not touched by your eyes" Because before the spine is cracked Without my fingers touching pages, the ideas leak and spread around the room Seep through the ears And into the synapses while I sleep Listen carefully You'll hear the hum Of future thoughts becoming present

For those accused of having too many books Robinince.com #poetry #poem

OpenStreetMap map of Southwold with nearly all the publicly accessible streets overlayed with purple walk tracking data collected by a Garmin watch.

Why, yes, I did take one or two walks around Southwold... (Map courtesy of citystrides.com)

Waves breaking on a sandy beach seen from above. The waves are coming from the left and running out of energy towards the centre of the image. The waves are thickly flecked with spume on the left side of the picture. On the right side of the picture, water is running back from a yellow brown sandy beach. The spume is stretched into linear patches as the water withdraws.

Last walk along the beach at Southwold.

The backs of seven beach huts are lined horizontally across the image. Three are striped in white and various shades of blue. The others are white, grey, teal, and bright yellow. Each has a central window, covered in a shutter in most cases. There is a low brown concrete wall in front of the huts. The top three-quarters of the image is just blue sky with a few white clouds. A single juvenile herring gull is flying to the left of the image and is directly above the bright yellow hut in the centre of the picture.

One of the Southwold beach huts I regularly pass is invariably occupied by three or four people, each engrossed in a book or e-reader and often cradling an alcoholic beverage. Every time I pass them, my mind turns to retirement and my tsundoku pile that is now longer than my life expectancy.

Three red levers, a blue one, a black one, and two more red levers are visible in the image. Each has a white label with the number of the lever and a summary of its use, as follows: 3. Woodside Up Starter 4. Up Home to Platform 5. Up Home to Loop 7 6. FP Lock for 7 7. Loop Points 8. Loop Down Starter 7 9. Siding Ground Signal 10 A couple of cloths are hanging from the levers; these are used to protect the metal levers from being corroded by sweaty hands.

Some of the levers in the lever frame in the East Anglia Transport Museum's signal box on their narrow gauge track.

Two trams and a trolleybus at the East Anglia Transport Museum. On the left is a black tram painted with a silver grey skull on the front, and the words "Terror Tram" in large red letters down the side. Its destination indicator says "Coastal Tour" and it has the number 634. In the centre is a double-decker tram painted in bright red with cream window frames. Its route indicator shows 38, and its destination is shown as "Abbey Wood via Old Kent Road". It has the number 1858. On the right is a brown double-decker trolleybus with cream window frames. Its destination is "Barming Fountain Inn" and it has registration "LCD 52". Suspended above the vehicles is an intricate net of cables from which they pick up electric power.

The East Anglia Transport Museum (eatm.co.uk) at Lowestoft is a fantastic experience - rides on trams, trolleybuses, and a narrow gauge railway, and loads of exhibitions, reconstructions, and engine sheds to explore. Run by enthusiasts who were very happy to chat, it was a great day out.

A black and grey beam making up the top of the breakwater runs horizontally across the image just above the centre of the frame. There are three Herring Gulls on the left, two sitting on the top of the breakwater, and one standing while adjusting its feathers. A fourth Herring Gull is sitting on the right-hand side of the picture. In the centre of the image, heavily corroded metal sheeting hangs from the beam into the water. The tops of the sheets are mottled brown and black, and less than 50% of the original metalwork is still present. Nearer the water, they are more intact and covered in green and black weed.

Detail of the breakwater at the mouth of the River Blyth at Southwold.

A view from the stern of the 1893 Southwold Lifeboat "Alfred Corry". The hull is wooden planking painted white with a red buffer just above the waterline. The gunwhales are painted white and have "Southwold" and "Life Boat" painted in gold. A natural wood tiller is attached to the white painted rudder and has some ropes attached to it. Parallel to the tiller is one of the two masts laid flat along the length of the boat; the top is nearest the camera and has a wooden pulley block attached.

The Alfred Corry Lifeboat museum at Southwold (alfredcorry.co.uk) is a fantastic little museum which is well worth a visit. Although small (it's the old Cromer lifeboat shed), the museum is packed with information about the 1893 Southwold lifeboat that saved 47 lives.

Three frogs are floating at the edge of the pond, hanging onto the blanket weed along the edge. Their heads are above the water, but their bodies and front legs are visible under the surface. On the right is an adult Rana temporaria with reddish skin and yellow spots. In the centre is a juvenile with darker brown mottled skin. At the top left is another juvenile with darker skin on its head. A wooden beam, some dried leaves, and a green rope cross the bottom left corner of the image.

Here's a small selection of frogs from our garden pond, circa 2011. #frogFriday

A black bird with a black beak and a white rimmed eye with a beady black centre. Behind the eye, the feathers are a lighter grey. It is sitting on a piece of red brick protruding from a castle wall. Its perch is covered in black, white, and green algae and moss.

And here's one of the Eurasian Jackdaws (Corvus monedula), who came to take a closer look.

A section of a tower at Framlingham Castle. At the bottom of the image, the structure consists of stone rubble cemented together. Along the right edge, the external stonework is visible. At the bottom centre, a Tudor red brick fireplace leads up to an ornate cylindrical chimney made of red and black bricks. Sitting on top of the chimney stack, two Jackdaws keep an eye on the visitors.

The current Framlingham Castle, dating back to around 1213, is the second or third on the site. In the Tudor period, decorative chimneys, most of which were dummies, were added. This is one of the few functional chimneys, and is a good demonstration of the architecture's development.

A wooden groyne runs from the bottom left corner of the image towards the top right. Six bollards stick up from the breakwater, with the last one sporting a red warning sign. Across the top of the image, a wave of brown water is breaking into whitewash. Spume has collected in the lee of the groyne, piled up almost as high as the wooden boards.

With my wife still unwell, I couldn't go far today, but it was an excellent opportunity to enjoy a rather blustery Southwold beach. The wind sent large mounds of spume racing across the sand to collect against the breakwaters, while the seabirds thought better of flying and kept to the beach.

I was visiting Sutton Hoo with my wife, who is a jewellery maker, and hadn't visited before. She was enthralled by the techniques used to create the intricate filigree with embedded garnets that decorate many of the pieces on display in the museum.

Replica of the Hiberno-Saxon helmet found in the boat excavation at Sutton Hoo. The original is in the British Museum. The crested helmet has a vaulted iron shell, a full face mask, deep cheek-guards, and a solid neck guard. The helmet was covered in ornately decorated tinned bronze panels created by a master craftsman. Mainly silver coloured, the helmet is decorated with bronze coloured highlights on the nose, eyebrows, and moustache. Garnets highlight the lower edges of the eyebrows.

A quick trip down the Suffolk coast today to visit Sutton Hoo. I last visited this fantastic site a couple of decades ago, and since then, the museum has been redesigned, and part of Edith Pretty's house has been opened to the public. The early Hiberno-Saxon art is simply stunning.

An embroidered town emblem from the ceremonial robes of an Aldeburgh alderman. The badge shows a three-masted Tudor ship with white sails, red crows-nests, and an English flag topping each mast. The vessel has a stylised brown hull with a creature's head for the figurehead. There is a scroll above the ship reading "Aldeburgh", a blue sea with waves below, and a gold coloured ring surrounds the whole badge.

Flower beds and grass are in front of a 16th-century hall with two tall ornate chimneys. The bottom storey of this end of the hall has a stone wall, because it includes gaol cells, and the upper floor walls are brick.

At Aldeburgh, we visited the small but perfectly formed Moot Hall Museum, a 16th-century timber-framed hall which is still the meeting place of the Town Council. I also stumbled across a signed copy of Tim Berners-Lee's "This is for Everyone" in a local bookshop. I'm a real sucker for signed copies.

Autism does not need to be cured

Ableism does

The end

An adult herring gull is sitting on the roof of a yellow caterpillar-tracked bulldozer, abandoned on a pebble beach. The machine was originally bright orange, but years of weather exposure have stained and corroded it to reds and blacks. There is a pile of lobster traps reinforced with brightly coloured cord in the bottom right of the image, while a blue box full of rope is visible in the left corner. The sea is visible beyond the beach on the left of the photo.

And here's another Aldeburgh herring gull for your delight and delectation.

The ends of three decaying wooden boats are sitting on a pebble beach. One, in the foreground, has blue gunwales, while the other two, in the background, have red gunwales. The boats' hulls were originally white, but are weathered and stained. There are various white, blue, and yellow plastic boxes used for storing fish are strewn around the boats. A juvenile herring gull with brown feathers is standing on the stern of the middle boat. An adult with white plumage is just visible behind a yellow box in the foreground.

For today's constitutional, we nipped down the #Suffolk coast to Aldeburgh, a town that has a large population of remarkably well-behaved herring gulls. We had our lunch sitting on the pebble beach, and though we could feel beady eyes on us, there were no attempts to make off with our sandwiches.

A painting of George Orwell in front of a BBC microphone, looking towards the viewer on the white wall of Southwold Pier. Some famous lines from his works are quoted beside him. "Good writing is like a window pane" "Big Brother is watching you" "Nothing exists except through human consciousness" "It was a bright cold day in April, and clocks were striking thirteen."

"Big Brother is watching you", Southwold Pier, 2025