Fur real?

So, Friday was my first day volunteering at the London Wildcare Trust's hospital. I spent most of the time freezing cold and covered in poo. And I loved every second of it!

Image from the London Wildcare Trust's Facebook group

The hospital has three paid staff members, and the rest of the people there work for free, each volunteering their services for one day a week, sometimes more often.

I am already in awe of some of these volunteers. Several are retired, and their energy, commitment and drive is really astounding. For example, there is a lady - well into her 80s - who scrubs the outdoor fox enclosures from top to bottom, come rain or shine.

And on Friday, I drove with another volunteer - in her mid-70s - to buy huge bales of hay from a nearby farm shop, to be used as bedding. I insisted I carry the bales to her car (they were bigger than the two of us put together) but the lady still managed to grab one and make off with it while my back was turned. I aspire to be like that when I'm 50, never mind 75!

I was on outdoor duties, feeding the animals and cleaning out their enclosures. And guess which animals proved the feistiest?

- The foxes with their sharp teeth?

- The resident tawny owl with its pointy talons?

- The hedgehogs with all those spines?

Nope. It was the squirrels. Yup, the squirrels. Make no mistake - those tiny little balls of fur are ninjas in disguise.

Image via Pixdaus

The thing is, there are 60 squirrels recuperating in one large enclosure. And when I went in to sweep it out, I was told to be careful because 'they might come at you'. Gulp.

I heard stories of squirrels zipping up volunteers' trouser legs, hiding in their hoods and advancing in packs, with teeth bared.

By the time I was about to get inside the enclosure with my broom, I has remembered that scene from 'Hannibal' where the bad guy is thrown to the crazy pigs and eaten alive. I was even advised to throw some nuts in ahead of me, so the squirrels would be distracted and I'd 'have a better chance'. Eek!

So, I decided to tuck my trousers into my socks and put my two hoods up. Throw in a liberal covering of hay and you have some idea of what a prat I looked.

Then, with some trepidation, I passed through the two doors and locked each firmly behind me (the one thing worse than being eaten by squirrels is being responsible for the 'great squirrel escape'!). And then... dah-dah-daaaaaah!

...The squirrels started laughing at me. At least they made some very strange noises. In fact I'm convinced a couple were actually nudging each other and pointing at me with their little furry paws.

I like to imagine I have Dr Doolittle tendencies... but I think I was actually just the biggest ijeet they'd ever seen, and they felt sorry for me.

They sat happily pointing and laughing for a while, then got back to eating their nuts and dangling off things. And so I escaped unscathed.

Until next time....

Me, innit.

Hello! Where has the last week gone??

Actually, various bits of my week have gone into sorting out my own balls-ups - primarily related to this very blog.

You know when you think "I'll just have a leeeettle tinker with my blog template..." and then it all goes horribly wrong? Yup, that happened.

Image from here

I blame Zoe of Conversation Pieces. I saw her lovely category cloud and felt I just had to get me one of those. Goodbye to dull old category lists, hello to swarmy category goodness!

The only thing is, I somehow managed to delete all my freakin' gadgets along the way. Doh. I retrieved most of them in the end, but lost my blog reading list. Bummety-bum.

I've since been racking my brains to remember what was on it, and have built a new one - but it's suspiciously short. If anyone can remember who I've missed off this time round, please let me know!

Anyway, in other news, I've done another little presenting job. If anyone is curious about what I look/sound like (I am curious about bloggers I haven't met, but that could be just me) you can see for yourself in this (mercifully short) online video.

I'm talking about the glorious subject of cashback, so hold on to your hats.

I think I do alright until the hilariously long pause in the middle. And there's a minute near the beginning where my mannerisms resemble Bill Nighy's in Love Actually - can anyone spot it?

A rather unusual interview

Yesterday I had a presenting job. I also visited the London Wildcare Trust's hospital for the first time. Here's what happened.

I was up bright and early to film an interview for a consumer website I work for. I won't go into too much detail (it hasn't been broadcast yet) but it was about financial stuff. We were set to start filming at 9am.

The only slight complication was that I also had my London Wildcare visit set up for 2pm. And there was no way I was going to have time to dash home in between and pick up my nuts.

Hence, the nuts came with me to the presenting job. All 4kg of them.

Image via T-shirt reviews

For some reason I felt it might look less weird if I carried them all in a nice posh Fortnum & Mason plastic bag. The film crew and everyone else was lovely, and very good at pretending they didn't think I was a complete loony carrying all these nuts around.

In fact, everything went very smoothly until right at the end of the interview, when we were filming the 'nodding' shots.

These are, as the name suggests, shots of me or the interviewee nodding and looking interested and engaged. They don't involve any talking or sound; they're just filmed so they can be popped in between the main chat when the piece is edited and cut together. I say something; cut to shot of interviewee nodding and smiling; and so on.

Anyway, when one person's nodding shots are being filmed, the other person can talk about anything they want - it's just to give the 'nodder' something to listen to and nod in response to. And that's when I started telling him about the nuts.

I told him where I was going that afternoon, about the hungry squirrels with their little furry faces and about how desperately they needed the nuts. The problem was, the poor man became so concerned about the squirrels' plight that his nodding shots started to look really upset! So we had to do them again.

Second time round, he didn't look upset. In fact by that point, the thought of me hefting 4kg of nuts around had struck him as pretty funny, so he started laughing his arse off instead.

So much so that he actually had to ask for a minute to and go and compose himself. Did you ever have one of those moments at school? When you start giggling and then you're totally GONE. And the more you need to stop laughing, the more you can't.

We got the whole thing sorted eventually (by this time he'd set me off too - so I was only just holding it together when I did my closing chat). Anyway, I like to think I've pioneered a new interviewing technique. If Radio 4 is asking, I'm dancing.

I'll be mentioning the London Wildcare Trust lots more in later posts, so I'll keep it brief for now. Just to say that I loved every minute of my visit to the hospital yesterday afternoon - the facilities were excellent and very clean, and the staff and volunteers were lovely and extremely dedicated.

I've signed up to volunteer on 'practical duties' once a week (think scrubbing up fox poo and bandaging squirrels). I've also volunteered to help them with promotional stuff - writing some more copy for the website (getting children involved), helping to publicise the whole operation, and possibly running a Twitter account for them.

I'll let you know how I get on! And I'll also let you know if I (now known as 'the mad nut woman' in media circles) ever get another presenting job...