An Elephant Returned A Ranger’s Reading Glasses Undamaged. Jock had been studying a herd of elephants around the Limpopo region of South Africa for some time and hadn’t noticed his missing reading glasses until he returned to the lodge as usual one evening. He vowed to scour the bush for them the next day, not…

How to make your own flock of milk-bottle birds instruction video 🦅 Shortly after we moved from Botswana to England, I received a call from one of the mothers at our daughter’s new school, asking whether I would help make plastic milk-bottles into a flock of birds as a sort of eco statement. The vision…

We moved back to England after living in Botswana for eight years in 2021 and I got some part-time teaching assistant work for the first three months. On this particular day, I rang the buzzer for my afternoon shift. After a few moments, the head mistress opened the door dressed in an extremely tight (some…

“Mafia just means family. And we look after our family.” Anon African Honey Bees defend themselves fiercely, and our lives depend on it, as they pollinate our flowers and crops. These tiny bees have been our allies for a very long time, as this cave painting demonstrates. I listened to a Ted talk by Noah…

I don’t have a Go-Pro, so I strapped my phone around my head with a fitness band to get footage of a large monkey mistaking my feeble attempts at fitness for spectator sport. I had just begun my routine lock-down run, when a male vervet appeared out of nowhere, grabbed an apple from the bird-table,…

An article about Nelson Mandela’s fitness regime inspired me to start running around the outside of our house during lock-down. Despite being in jail for 27 years, Nelson managed to keep fit, convincing me I could certainly give it a go. First, I pick a play-list and immediately go to a happy place when Dizzy…

We were relaxing by the pool at a hotel in Johannesburg when we noticed a particularly noisy weaver bird dismantling the nest he had built, ripping this strand and that strand with such fury that the whole thing fell from the tree – plop! Into the pool. The bird’s frustration was palpable. It paced endlessly…

Our miniature sausage dog Rory can be a moody little bug*er, but it was definitely more than sulking this time – so we took him to one of our local vets, Laetitia Gaudeux. B2 came with me, holding him on her lap for much needed calm and support – I love that little guy, he…

Who am I to tell YOU how to be more eco-friendly? I’m just an ordinary person who had a weird moment with cling film. The memory is hazy, but Donald Trump had just come into power and I was thinking that’s terrible for environmental issues, when self-judgement kicked in. ‘Everyone wants to change the world,…

I was frantically scouring the shelves at The Crazy Store when I bumped into my daughter’s P.E. teacher, looking similarly harassed. She and a friend were looking for 50th birthday decorations, what was I doing?  ‘Buying fake treasure…and wondering where to find live earth worms for my friend Andrea’s compost bin.’ I added, as a…

When I accidentally upset a friend, I called another friend for advise. She’s a professional counsellor and explained the Karpman Drama Triangle, where-by two people continuously switch between three roles – victim, persecutor, and rescuer.  I didn’t exactly understand but basically, your friend tells you a problem and is the victim. You jump in to provide a…

I once got told I had a good face for comedy (?) and now I know why! I spent the last half-hour killing myself laughing. Thankfully, the rest of you don’t look quite so silly, and there are actually a couple of decent ones of me somewhere. Ahhh, what a night. Thank you, Mimi. And…