Bath City FC (England)

My minor obsession with the teams who play in black and white began a few years ago when I first stepped onto the terraces of Twerton Park - the historic home of Bath City FC. As an exiled West Ham fan in the West Country I'd turned into somewhat of a ground hopper, touring all the local grounds within easy rail travel distance in the search of some footballing thrills.

Living in Bristol but working in Bath, I'd pass City's ground on the train every day and always thought I'd have to make the trip one day. Indeed, my mate Jimmer at work had been badgering me to come along, saying that if I came once I'd be hooked for life. I chortled under my breath, thinking how quaint it was that someone apparently smart and grown up could get so obsessed by a team languishing in the Southern League.

But then one fateful Saturday in September I bit the bullet and went along - and it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. It was a meat and spuds early season game against the now sadly demised Kings Lynn, who held City to a slightly undeserved draw. But there was something about the ground, the players, but most of all the fans - seemingly sparse as they were - that instantly got under my skin... and as Jimmer warned, I was hooked.

I didn't go to every game straight off, but as the season progressed I became a more frequent visitor, and by the end of the term, as it became more apparent that the stripes were going to make promotion to the exhalted heights of the Blue Square South league - the second tier of Non-League football in England - I was even going to the away games too.

It was a great season to start following them, and the more I went, the more I discovered what in interesting club they were.

They formed way back in 1889 as Bath AFC, having a brief spell as Bath Railway before settling on the name Bath City for keeps a few years later. For much of their history Bath City have been in the upper echeolons of the non-league system, narrowly missing out on election to the Football League proper on a number of occasions - most notably in 1977 when as Southern League champions they missed out on a place in the big 92 by three measly votes to a little outfit called Wigan Athletic.

The stripes have got a grand FA Cup tradition too, having reached the fabled third round on no fewer than six occasions, beating full time opposition the like of Crystal Palace, Millwall, Notts County, Exeter City, Southend, Cardiff City, Hereford, and most recently fellow stripes Grimsby Town along the way.

Past players of note include the legendary Charlie Fleming, a Scottish international who had spells at Sunderland and East Fife, who scored a club record of 216 goals in 300 appearances. Former Blackpool and England ace Stan Mortensen had a spell in Twerton at the end of his career, and Jason Dodd, Tony Book, Paul Bodin and former Lavian international captain Andrejs Štolcers have also graced the hallowed turf.

There was also a young chap called Bobby Zamora, who spent an exciting month on loan to us from neighbours and one-time tennants Bristol Rovers back in the year 2000. His run of six games saw him bag eight goals, and marked him as true star for the future.

City also saw the greatest living Frenchman, Eric Cantona, visit the club in 2009. Sadly he didn't pull his boots on, but came to promote his film Looking For Eric, directed by staunch Stripes fan Ken Loach, who frequently holds premieres, benefits and film nights for the club.

For a little team who never quite made the big time Bath City have a long and proud history, and one of the most loyal, supportive and, to be fair, slightly bonkers fanbases in the country. If you're ever passing through town and there's a game on, make sure you get yourself down to Twerton Park. You might not see the kind of Rolls Royce football you see on the telly, but you'll experience a team with passion and grit, and share the terraces with a right friendly bunch.

Come on you City Boys!

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The Pleasure Dome

The garden pod is at its best right now. Everything is in full bloom and ready for transplanting outdoors. I've repotted them all so they won't have to slow down for having cramped roots. The poet's jasmine is in full bloom again; the huge gardenia standard with the braided trunk burst open two days ago. After a dreadful winter of aphids and spider mite and whitefly, the insect forces have finally succumbed to a manageable level. Pyrethrins don't work at all for me any more; the insects chortle and frolic as they bathe and breaststroke in insecticide. More effective is organic clove and thyme oil, and it makes the greenhouse smell delightful when the spices mingle with gardenia and jasmine. But better than that is cold water, sprayed on the undersides of the leaves where pests hide. So simple, so beneficial, so nonpoisonous. Once I got the hose hooked up things started looking up for all my plants.

I love going down to the greenhouse to clip and prune and tidy things up, to water and sniff and breathe and banish the bad guys. Bill bought the little thermopane dome at a garden show years ago; it was a prototype display model that never went into production. Pity that. I count the Garden Pod as the best (material) gift anyone's ever given me. If you've always wanted a little greenhouse, just....DO IT. You only live once.

Bill took some nighttime photos of me in the greenhouse, reveling in out-of-season blossoms and fragrance, that bring to mind Coleridge's Kubla Khan, which I excerpt here, minus its second stanza which is all about war:

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted

As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover!...

The shadow of the dome of pleasure

Floated midway on the waves:

Where was heard the mingled measure

From the fountain and the caves.

It was a miracle of rare device,

A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw:

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

Singing of Mount Abora.

Could I revive within me

Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 't would win me

That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,

And all should cry, Beware! Beware!

His flashing eyes, his floating hair!

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes with holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

that's the huge poet's jasmine bush at my feet. Now imagine that with hundreds of blossoms, all stinkin' up the night air...all dome photos by Bill Thompson III

The Award-Winner's Painter

As distinguished from "The Award-Winning Painter," a post title you will not see on this blog... I have a little niche as an ornithological award painter. I get commissions to paint presents for people who are getting awards in the ornithological field. Awards for lifetime achievement, extraordinary contributions; conservation awards. It’s a really nice niche, because I get to paint pictures for very special people, those who've been singled out by their peers as extraordinary. I also enjoy it because it’s all hush-hush and everybody’s excited to see what I come up with.

One such award was given just this past weekend by Bluebirds Across Nebraska, an amazing bluebird conservation organization, to Nebraska bluebirder Sandy Seibert, who initiated a program and came up with supporting materials for bluebirders to take a kid along on their routes as they check their bluebird houses. What a great idea. You never know what little switch might get thrown in a child’s mind, what spark kindled and lit. Here's the pledge for participants:

I pledge to take a child (son, daughter, grandchild, niece, nephew, neighbor’s or friend’s child, etc.) along with me to monitor my bluebird trail as often as possible during the nesting season. I promise to explain to this child the importance and value of monitoring a bluebird trail. I will plant a seed of love for bluebirds and nature in this child’s mind and nurture that seed in the hopes that this child will someday follow in my footsteps.

Among the supporting materials given to the child in the TAK-Along program is my husband's Young Birder's Guide to Birds of Eastern North America.

Obviously, I'm down with that. So I wanted to give Sandy, a warm, wonderful woman whom I happen to know, a painting that would highlight what’s best about kids combined with bluebirds. I decided on the moment of discovery when a box is opened and its contents revealed—that Christmas morning feeling of finding turquoise eggs or big ol’ healthy baby bluebirds looking back at you.

I needed a subject. Hmmm. I happen to know a beautiful boy who really digs that moment. I sought no farther than my own boy Liam.

Compared to a lot of paintings I’ve done recently, this’n was a breeze, nice and small, with subject matter I could really connect with. Might as well throw a few of my favorite things in the painting, hoping they’re a few of Sandy’s favorites, too.

An untroubled blue summer sky. Hayrolls. Slanting late afternoon light with gold touching the grass in streaks. Liam looking in a bluebird box. Well, I'd add that. This reference photo was taken along my bluebird route, a place I'll visit today, finding eggs in box after box.

Start the painting with a spray bottle and a nice wet field, and stroke the blue on it. Turn the painting upside down and tilt it so the color concentrates toward the top of it, just like it does in the sky. Let it dry tilted.

Lay in the sun gold, so it can shine through the grass and in some places stand alone.

Bring on the meadow green, leaving the sunlit parts pure bright gold.

Start on the trees, making sure the sunlit one has a gold underpainting.

Leave some skyholes in the trees, and tickle in the deep shadows. Only the deep shadows will tell you the sunlit parts are bright.

Oh, goody! Hayrolls! And their cast shadows. More detail in the trees, with branches and trunks now.

Liam’s for dessert.

Oh, but what color to make his T-shirt? I plan a few different colors, and paint them on a piece of tracing paper to see what looks nice.

I like them all, but Phoebe, Bill and Liam all think the red is a bit of a cliché. I decide to understate it and leave his shirt white.

A little more detail on the box and on his clothes and face. It’s perilously hard to paint a boy two inches tall and make him still look like your child. The less fussing about the face, the better it comes out, I find.

Being careful first to cover that perfect sky with craft paper, I spatter the grass in the foreground for a nice, unstudied effect and decide the painting is done.

Congratulations, Sandy, and thanks to you and your Take a Kid Along program for opening the world of bluebirds to some very fortunate kids.

The Bad, Bad Parrot

Bill and I love to spend these ravishingly warm spring mornings birding together. It's my favorite thing to do practically in the whole world. I try to imagine what life would be like if I were married to someone with only a passing interest in birds, someone who would respond to my shout of "Gnatcatcher in the prune hedge!" with "That's nice, honey..." instead of roaring up the stairs to see. I can't imagine it. I feel thankful to have a mate who loves so many of the same things I do: music, the outdoors, birds, writing, travel, (yardwork), bizarre humor. May we never lose sight of how rare that really is.

We were out on the deck this morning watching tree swallows circling overhead when we heard a crash from Charlie's private room, a glassed-in room off the studio. "Chuck's raisin' some hell in there!" I laughed, figuring he'd shoved a spray bottle of Glass Plus off his counter or something. He likes to keep his countertops clear. He's always up to something, rumbling around in there.

Bill being packed off to work with his lunch and a kiss, I turned to morning chores, going in to collect the bird dishes. I'm keeping a little female American goldfinch who I found under our feeder on March 16 with a broken hand, probably courtesy of our resident sharp-shinned hawk. She's all healed up now, as good as she'll get after I taped her wing so it would heal mostly straight. I knew when I saw the injury to that delicate hand joint that she'd never fly again. It's the same injury that kept Vanna, a Savannah sparrow, in my studio for 17 years. Because I'm not up for having another longterm boarder, Pippi goes to her forever home at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History tomorrow. (No, she's NOT going to be a specimen--she's going to live in a spacious outdoor aviary with other Ohio birds. How could you think that??)

Pippi was fine. She puts up with Charlie sitting on top of her cage and shredding her papers. They're friends, and he'll miss her when she leaves.


Charlie, on the other hand, was up to absolutely no good.

I've been using a lot of note cards lately to send thank-you notes to all the kind people who donated to the Zick Health Fund. Charlie thought he'd personalize them.

This is what a parrot in the house is good for. Practically good for nothing.

Over the course of the early morning, Charles had completely unloaded my cabinet.

Call it nest excavation behavior, slightly misdirected.

Oh, he was soooo proud of his handiwork, sputtering and squawking and hollering in glee.

What do you do with a macaw who's been so very, very bad? You ask him to step onto your hand, put him on his perch stand, kiss him with a very loud smack (which he imitates at the same time) on his soft warm cheek skin, tell him he's a horrible blight on your life, a veritable nest of vipers, and laugh. Then you kiss him again and get down and salvage what you can while he tries his best to poop on you from above.

What else can you do?

I trust that these last bunch of posts have shown that I am no Pollyanna; no, I don't always find the good in every situation, nor do I reliably bob back up smiling when life rains on me. But even though he destroyed a bunch of really nice note cards and some photos, Charlie did me a huge favor. Among the things in the box he unloaded was a check register that includes my first deposit on his purchase, made on December 27, 1988: $250. Ack. I'd thought I bought him in 1986. So we have at least two more years than I'd thought to enjoy him, and he turns 22 this summer. When I think about having paid $750 for that bird...sometimes I think the breeder should've paid ME to take him! Most of the time I think that. If you're thinking about buying a parrot, don't. Adopt one, rescue one, but don't feed the breeding industry by buying one.

Besides that fond memory of having scraped together $750 in three installments to pay for him, he alerted me to a forgotten stash of precious print photographs that need to be shared. Brace yourself for cuteness:

Concrete evidence that, as parrots go, Charlie is a very good parrot indeed. This is Miss Phoebe, circa 1998.

Charles and Phoebe were the best of friends before Liam arrived, when she needed a pet she could cuddle and love.

He taught her gentleness, even with his immense power. She is gentle to this day.

Don't miss the little bunny I've drawn on her hand...

Even I look at these photos and marvel, but they were that close. I couldn't get near Phoebe when she and Charlie were playing. She was all his.

And he is a good, good parrot, a very naughty one, but dear.

Fluffernutter for the Dog-lover's Soul

Dunno about you, but I'm ready for a Chetfix.

I'm ready to think about anything other than rabies. I'm ready to live again, to work myself to the bone digging in the dirt and weeding and tilling and planting. Which I've done all day (Saturday) and with the help of my Garden Mule (Bill) we got the garden tilled and the peas and lettuce in. I then moved on to weeding and fighting invasive running bamboo that a gardening "friend" gave me about ten years ago. Hah. With friends like that, who needs enemies? It took me two hours to dig it back out. It had sent 8' runners a foot below the surface in every direction, like a metastasizing vegetal tumor, but I think I got them all. You dig and pull, dig and pull until you finally unearth the pointed tip of each iron-strong runner. The lawn looks like a bomb went off in it, but better that than going down in history for having introduced variegated running dwarf bamboo to Washington County. I am convinced that, left unchecked, it would cover the earth. Garden Chimp Tip: Avoid it. And burn the runners when you dig them up.

I got my first rabies prophylaxis shot on Wednesday afternoon and I have to say that the fat syringe full of evil-looking magenta liquid scared the bejaysus out of me, I mean, knowing that that stuff was going right into my bicep was not fun. But the nurse was skilled and the needle was fine and sure and begorrah it didn't hurt at all. Not only didn't it hurt, but I was never sore afterward. So I'll have another this Weds. and the Weds. after that and then I can help bats if I want to. All by myself, just me and my antibodies working together. I'll buy a welder's mask for Liam if he wants to watch. "Thank you" sounds so flaccid, so limp, for what you've done. I have about a month's worth of thank-you notes to write and a big fat donation to the Ohio Wildlife Center to make because you guys went nuts, you really did, and I got my inoculations paid for and then some. So the then some goes to OWC, because they're REALLY helping people and wildlife, and on the grand scheme of things I'm just fooling around, writing about it, making it sound like I'm really doing something when I'm not.

Speaking of fooling around, you haven't had a Chetfix for an age and I need one too so here is a portentious post about a dog chewing on his foot. It is heavy with meaning, drama and life-or-death choices. No, wait. That's not this post. This'n's fluff. Fluffernutter for the dog-lover's soul.

Ever wish you were your dog? With nothing to do but soak up the sun and think about...nothing?

This seems like a good time to chew my foot.

It is a delicious foot, tasting of grass, popcorn and pee pee.

I feel bad that you cannot chew your foot. You are not flexible enough to do that, or many other pleasurable things that dogs can do.

oink oink oink oink
the sweet click of toenail on tooth

They do not call me Little Cat Dog for nothing. I am clean and catlike, and I never need grooming because I groom myself. I always smell like sunshine.

Except when I fart. Then I smell like Satan's ceegar.


I chew my Nylabone, and get little crumbs of it all over Mether's Guatemalan bedspread. But she hasn't made the bed today, so maybe she will not notice. Mether buys me the gummy Nylabones so I do not break my teeth. Katdoc says the hard Nylabones are too hard and will shear off my molars. We do not want that. Mether is happy to clean up all the Nylaboogers I make so I do not break my teeth. Even though I am a strong chewer she buys me the crumbly puppeh bones. She loves me.

By the way, did you know that Katdoc is going to get her very own Boston terrier? I like to think that I, Chet Baker, had something to do with that. I am an ambassadog for the breed. My breeder Jane says I have sold more Boston terriers for her than Mether will ever know. Because mine is the finest breed of doggeh, and Jane is the finest kind of breeder, I believe that is a good thing.

My charm is irresistible.

Nylaboogers are a small price to pay for bringing laughter and solace to writers with bad judgement.

Everyone needs a doggeh to snuzzle

to nap in a spot of sun.

It is important to have someone around you with nothing to do, someone with nothing on his mind but kisses and cuddles, if you are to make it through the day. My job is being here for Mether, 24-7, 365, and I am very good at my job. But Mether does so many things that helping her get through her day is tiring, and now it is time for my mid-morning nap.

Good day and Happy Easter.