Jon Downes: Still on the track...........

For those of you who are interested...

2008-07-01T06:22:00.000-07:00

This also includes the last appearwance of `Flump` our Chinese softshell, aho - despite all our efforts - died last night. She is now being overly aggressive and biting all the other inhabitants of Turtle Heaven....

Good hunting Flump.

Open gardens, poorly turtles and other things

2008-06-29T01:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the first day of the bi-annual Open Gardens weekend. I have always enjoyed this event, but yesterday was more than slightly fraught.

I have just spent a happy half hour listening to British Sea Power and leafing my way through Menagerie Manor by Gerald Durrell trying to find a specific quote that seems ridiculously appropriate to describe the events of yeasterday. But Sod's Law applies (as it so often does), and I can't find it. But the quote reads something like this:

"Animals, like humans, get ill. But they seem to choose the worst possible time in which to do so".

Flump, the softshelled turtle who has been living quite contentedly at room temperature (in the summer) in my varied premises for five or six years, decided yesterday (in front of a party of old-aged-pensioners from Ilfracombe) that it was time to get a chill and become seriously ill. Luckily (for everyone involved) we had a couple of friends of mine from the zoo mafia on hand, and crisis was averted. This morning she is back to her old self, she tried to bite me, and has tucked into a dinner of prawns like they were going out of fashion. But it was not an auspicious way to launch the first public outing of the CFZ museum.

For, after two years of the top of the CFZ grounds looking like a cross between a particularly unsalubrious building site, and a First World War battleground, the CFZ Museum is finally open for business, albeit in a fairly rudimentary state.

We had about 40 visitors, and even sold a book, so we must be doing something right, and I am limbering up for day 2 of the Open Gardens weekend, which starts in about fifteen minutes..

Hey Ho, Let's Go!

For those of you interested..........

2008-06-25T09:27:00.000-07:00

Here is this year's Weird Weekend poster.....

....and yes it IS a little girl dressed as Captain Beefheart!

HERE WE GO, HERE WE GO, HERE WE GO ad infinitum

2008-06-20T03:41:00.000-07:00

Life is too bloody complicated.

So much is happening at the moment that it is almost too much to take in, let alone document on my sadly neglected bloggything. However, the boys are off to Russia amidst a flurry of terrorist alerts and other high jinks that I am not - at present - at liberty to talk about. You can follow their adventures on The Expedition Bloggything . They leave tomorrow evening, and I expect the first bulletin, telling us that they have, at least, made it through immigration at Moscow, early on sunday.

I am sitting in the office at the zoo at the moment. All the staff have become very fond of Richard in the short time that he has been Head Keeper, and are anxiously looking forward to news from the expedition.

In the midst of this, building work on the museum is just about completed, and we have moved the first four exhibits in; Flump the Chinese softshell turtle, Myrtle the Amboina box turtle, one of our amphiumas (Gumbo), and the alligator softshell. I am sitting here atb the zoo frantically trying to work out where to put a second softshell that we recklessly said that we would have months ago....

And on top of everything, my new book `Island of Paradise` is out next week.

Bloody hell I am exhausted...see u soon

More on the Mystery Animals of the British Isles series...

2008-06-05T06:18:00.000-07:00

Mike's book is being printed as we speak. I am extremely pleased with the cover, so here is a sneak preview...

The publishing information for the first volume is as follows:
ISBN: 978-1-905723-29-4
Title: The Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Northumberland and Tyneside
Author: Hallowell, Michael J
The book will be available in the next few days.

We are proud to announce the authors of the next few volumes, which will be published in the next twelve months or so:

The Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Kent by Neil Arnold
The Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Dorset by Jonathan McGowan
The Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Staffordshire by Nick Redfern
The Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Co Durham and Humberside by Mike Hallowell
The Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Greater London by Neil Arnold
The Mystery Animals of the British Isles: Devon and Cornwall by Jonathan Downes

I hope that you will agree with us that this is an extremely worthwhile series, and I hope that you will decide to support us...

Light at the end of the bleeding tunnel

2008-05-13T03:24:00.000-07:00

This has been a ridiculous year so far! I took on far too much work at the end of 2007 and I just simply haven't stopped. As of today, so far in 2008 we have released:

10 books
2 issues `Exotic Pets`
1 issue `Animals & Men`
5 20-30 minute webTV shows
14 live broadcasts
1 full length documentary (am hour and three quarters)
plus I have written original music for most of the above.

I am bloody exhausted!

However, there is light at the end of the tunnel, and I am nearly in a position where I can rest back on my laurels and shout WOO HOO at my own cleverness.

One thing is sure: I am never gonna take on a workload like that again! However, a lot of it has been one offs. For example, the Yearbooks. This year I have restored, and remastered (and in several cases drastically re-edited six of the CFZ Yearbooks (with one left to go), and these will never have to be done again. By next week I hope that the entire run of CFZ Yearbooks from 1996-2008 will all be out inmatching paperback editions, and that I can then quietly forget about them.

The next regular book to come out is an exciting one, and the genesis of this particular project goes back over twenty years!

More years ago than I care to remember, my first wife bought me a birthday present. It was a book about the mystery animals of Britain and Ireland, and I devoured it avidly. When I finished, I was horribly disappointed. It had covered the mystery cats of the country in some depth, as it had done with the black dog legends, and a smattering of more arcane `things` (as the late, great Ivan T. Sanderson would doubtless have dubbed them) such as the Owlman of Mawnan, and the Big Grey Man of Ben McDhui. But there was so much that I knew that the author had simply left out.

Where were the mystery pine martens of the westcountry? Where were the Sutherland polecats? Where was the mysterious butterfly known as Albin’s Hampstead Eye? This was an Australian butterfly, the type specimen of which was caught in a cellar in Hampstead (hence the name) but no-one knows how or why? Where were the butterflies, moths, birds and even mammals known from the British Isles on the basis of a handful of specimens only? And where were the local oddities; the semi-folkloric beasts only known from a specific location.

Although at the time I had no pretensions to being a writer, I started to collect information from around the country, and with the benefit of hindsight it is probably with my disappointment with my 27th birthday present that the seeds of what would eventually grow into the Centre for Fortean Zoology were planted.

Nearly twenty years later to the day, I was sat in my garden at the Centre for Fortean Zoology [CFZ] in North Devon, sharing a bottle of wine with my wife Corinna, and my old friends Richard Freeman and Mike Hallowell. The subject of my disappointing 27th birthday present came up, and someone suggested that we do our best to redress the balance. CFZ Press, the publishing arm of the CFZ, has become the largest dedicated fortean zoological publishers in the world, and we are now in the position to put my vague daydreams of a couple of decades ago into action. We decided that rather than trying to publish one enormous tome covering the mystery animals of the whole of the British Isles (which, by the way, geographically, if not politically, includes the Republic of Ireland, but excludes the Channel Islands) we would be much happier presenting this vast array of data in a series of books, each covering a county or two. Then we realised the enormity of what we were proposing: The series would probably end up being something in the region of forty volumes in length!

However, never ones to back away from a challenge, we decided to go ahead with the project, and now - six months later - the first books in the series are being published.

It seems fitting, that - as he was there at the inception - Mike Hallowell should have the honour of being the author of the first book in the series. I am glad that he is, because it is a stonker!

We argued the toss for months over how we were going to format the series. For a long time we were intending to have a rigid format for all the books, somewhat akin to the Observer’s books of the British countryside. But then we decided `No`. There are as many kinds of researcher as there are mystery animal, and it would - we felt - be more in keeping with the ethos of the CFZ, if we allowed each researcher to present his or her findings in their own inimitable style. The books, therefore, will reflect the character of the individual author.

Some will be poetic verging on mystical. Some will be matter of fact scientific. Some will be from the point of view of a naturalist, and some from the point of view of a folklorist. Some will be short, some will be long. Some will be full of scientific theorising, and some full of metaphysical speculation. But one thing is sure: Whoever gets one of these volumes for their 27th birthday present…..

....They won’t be disappointed!

In other CFZ related news, the museum really is nearly finished. The first birds will be going in the aviary block today, and - all things being equal - the first exhibits will be going into the museum building itself at the weekend. It will be another few weeks before it is respectable enough to receive visitors, but once again there IS light at the end of the tunnel.

Soon the CFZ (or at least me, Graham, Corinna and Oll) will be able to get back to being researchers, rather than builders and printers. Richard, however, is off on another expedition imminently, but THAT is another story...

Guyana: The Savage Land

2008-05-05T13:21:00.000-07:00

At last! The Guyana movie - our first feature-length documentary was finished a week ago, and it has taken this long for me to get it online. I am very proud of the results, and I hope that you enjoy it as well....

It was easy, it was cheap, go and do it...

2008-04-04T09:00:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time, when the world was young, or at least when I was, there was a spectacularly inept punk band called The Desperate Bicycles, who released a magnificently pointless single called The Medium was Tedium. The music was skeletal, based around a one and a half chord organ riff, echoed by a deliciously inept bass guitar line. The main crux of the lyric, indeed the only crux of the lyric, was that anybody could make a record - "it was easy, it was cheap, go and do it!"

The band maintained that the only reason that they formed was to make a record, and show that anybody could do it. It was the perfect visualisation of Andy Warhol's oft repeated concept that "anybody can be famous for 15 minutes".

I don't think that even Warhol himself ever visualised the current state of affairs with the mass media, whereby not only can anybody claim their allotted 15 minutes, but that the media would feed upon this, and become completely out of control. We now live in a world where not only can anybody become a star, but the people who do become stars seem to do so by virtue of their overwhelming mediocrity.

Paris Hilton is a star for Christ's sake. The bar has become that low.

But all this has been said before. The Internet is full of middle-aged men like me moaning into their computers about the depressing state of affairs which is the world of faux celebrity, a well-known band half my age recently released a song which bemoaned the fact that "everything is average nowadays", and one other middle-aged git adding his two penn'orth to the argument will make not a jot of difference. I am rapidly turning into my father. I remember, back in 1973, when my father was the age that I am now, that he was wont to spend Sunday lunchtimes complaining about the world which the younger generation had created, and although as I approach 50 years old I find myself becoming more and more of a cliche every day, I don't want to go the whole hog just yet. Okay, each year there is less and less that I want to watch on television, and the little bits that I watch by mistake seem fashioned with only one idea in mind; to give people like me high blood pressure and incipient apoplexy, but I can always read a book, and usually do.

No, the reason that I'm bothering to write this blog entry, is not so that I can vent my spleen upon media nonentities such as Paris Hilton, Jade Goody, and their ilk, because I have a far more serious adversary than merely taking pot shots at a gaggle of ill-educated, slutty, and vulgar nonentities. My bete noir is the media itself. And more exactly, the people who work within it.

I have been making films for TV companies around the world for 15 years now, and whereas, a lot of the time, it has been an exciting, and even uplifting experience, ever since the beginning I have noticed a particularly disturbing syndrome within media types. Furthermore, this syndrome seems to be spreading faster and faster, and threatens to become almost ubiquitous. Media people - on the whole - have absolutely no fucking manners!

I have spend most my adult life doing my best to be a gentleman, and although anybody who knows me will be perfectly aware that on occasions I have been, and will continue to be, incredibly rude to some people, I have always remembered my father's axiom that a gentleman is somebody who is never unintentionally rude to anyone.

I certainly have always done my best to treat eyewitnesses, and fellow researchers courteously. I am perfectly aware that when making films things don't always run to schedule. However, if I'm going to be late, or - worse - am going to have to reschedule, I will always make sure that the person whom I am inconveniencing has a convincing apology, and quite often a bunch of flowers.

One would have thought that this would be standard practice within the media. After all, logic tells us that a service industry so ephemeral would have to rely - to a greater or lesser extent - on the goodwill of its consumers.

Ha bloody Ha!

Over the past 15 years the mass media has brainwashed its audience so thoroughly that practically everybody in this poor benighted country has only one ambition - to be a star! When I was a kid in primary school if you had asked a class of seven-year-olds what they wanted to be when they grew up, some would have wanted to be soldiers, some train drivers, some farmers. I wanted to be a monster hunter, and to own a zoo. These days the vast majority of the poor little sods want to be television presenters.

An acquaintance of mine has an eight-year-old daughter. She has two imaginary friends (like little girls have always had), but with a difference: her imaginary friends are Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie. Two brainless little pop tarts. The cult of celebrity is so ubiquitous that it has even infected the voice recognition software that I'm using to dictate this rant. Whilst the software does not recognise the words `praying mantis`, or `katydid` the names: `Paris Hilton` and `Nicole Ritchie` are hard wired into the original programming.

Because the mass media - knowingly, or not - have now got the vast majority of the population of the United Kingdom exactly where they want us, they can do exactly what they like, and they can treat people in as cavalier a fashion as they wish.

We get approached by TV production companies at least once a week, and at least once a month a representative from one of these companies comes to visit us, and promises us the moon on a stick. They all want to do the same thing. They all want unparalleled access to one of our expeditions. They all want free access to our - after nearly 20 years - sizeable archive of photographs and video footage. They all want to spend hours interviewing me and the boys about what we do. And they quite often - because cryptozoology (another word which the voice recognition software significantly failes to recognise) is lumped in their eyes together with the more colourful aspects of the lunatic fringe - want to film us wearing silly hats, jumping out of bushes, or parading around the garden wearing pith helmets.

I am always polite to these people, and when - occasionally - I am mildly impressed by their professional pedigree, I co-operate with them to a certain extent. I refuse to do anything stupid, and forbid the boys to do anything stupid either, but on at least four occasions in the last 12 months, I have put in large amounts of time and effort into helping someone from a media production company to put together a programme submission.

On each of these occasions, the producer/director/researcher has gone back to London, and - over the next week or so - followed up his visit with a string of long and exhaustive telephone calls. On each of these occasions, I have been assured that the senior commissioning editor from Channel 4/Living TV/BBC2/Animal Planet/Discovery Channel has assured them that the decision-making process is a mere formality, and that we are just about to be the subjects of a lucrative, and career changing TV documentary. On each of these occasions, the telephone calls have simply fizzled out, and I never hear anything from them again.

On other occasions, they make appointments, and simply don't turn up. When they do turn up, it seems that the days of being paid for contributing to a TV documentary are a thing of the past. If I had a fiver for each time I am told "we can't pay you for your photographs, but we may be able to put your website in the credits", then I would be significantly richer than I am now. If these people looked as if they really were running on a tight budget then I might feel sorry for them, but they turn up in expensive cars, wearing clothes but I certainly can't afford, and boasting about their expense account lunches, the limo that takes them into the studio, and the fact that they flew to Los Angeles the week before last for a commissioning conference.

Well screw you. I have had enough of being exploited by an increasingly soulless and self-serving hegemony. I, too, am a filmmaker. A film we put out last year has been seen by over 30,000 people - the sort of viewing figures that some minor cable TV channels would kill for. Over a thousand people a month watch my monthly WebTV show - not astounding figures, but perfectly respectable, especially when one considers that it is made on a budget of practically nothing. Things are only going to get better. I am rapidly beginning to think that I don't need the mass media. And when I look at the mass media, and the soul destroying, vapid nonsense that it spouts out for an increasingly undemanding audience of morons, the more I begin to feel morally uncomfortable with being a part of it.

The conventional record business has collapsed. Musicians and songwriters now know that they do not need to sell out to what George Harrison once described as the "old grey buggers of Manchester Square" in order to sell their music. Authors, and small publishers like ourselves have discovered that we no longer need to put ourselves through the soul destroying process of kowtowing to a major book publisher in order to get our books into the marketplace. We no longer have to submit to editing by focus group, stupid changes of title in order to fit in with the dictats of somebody else's marketing department. And we no longer have to accept royalty rates of 25p for each book sold. We can do for ourselves. The Desperate Bicycles were about 30 years too early, but now what they said in 1977 is true. It is easy. It is cheap. We can go and do it for ourselves!

In October 2006 we were in the Lake District making a film called Eel or No Eel about the giant eel sightings from Windermere and Coniston water. The local BBC telephoned me out of the blue and insisted on speaking to our health and safety officer. What on earth are you talking about? I asked. "Well, if you want us to come out on the lake with you, in time to make it on this evening's news, we will have to review your health and safety procedures". What on earth you talking about? I reiterated. He repeated exactly the same thing. I knew nothing about any scheduled TV appearance and told him. "But of course you want to be on television" he insisted, "otherwise what would be the point of you being here?" I told him that I didn't care whether we were on television or not. And tried to reason with him that we were there on a mission of investigation, not on a search for spurious sell publicity. "But everybody wants to be on television" he insisted, "let me speak to your health and safety officer".

"No" I said, and put the phone down, and returned to the task at hand.

Two minutes later he phoned back. "Everybody wants to be on television" he insisted in an increasingly hysterical voice. "Don't be so bloody stupid" I said, and turned my telephone off.

Two hours later, the crew who had driven like madmen from Manchester turned up completely uninvited, and once again insisted on viewing our health and safety procedures. Half an hour later an enormous truck festooned with satellite dishes turned up, and then a sports car containing a blonde bimbette who was planning to make amusing comments about our activities for the studio audience.

"But I don't want to do an interview" I said. "Before we start, can I see your health and safety procedures", she said. "I am not interested in appearing on your programme" I said. "But everyone wants to be on television", she said with what she fondly imagined was a winning smile. I will draw a discreet veil over what happened next. But like Rottweilers on an inner-city housing estate, they got most of what they wanted. With the worst possible grace I gave them an interview.

A few weeks ago I had an unfortunate experience with a camera crew from one of the Bristol based TV stations who wanted to talk to me about mystery cats. Springing it upon me that they needed to film that very afternoon, and they insisted that I be in Somerset at three o'clock. This is impossible, I said, because it is a two-hour drive, and I had an appointment in Bideford 1.30. This person would not accept this, and became increasingly rude. When I finally arrived - at 3.45 - he had forgotten his laptop onto which I was going to transfer some video footage which - by the way - I was letting him have for nothing. He insisted that I give him my portable hard drive which he would return sometime in the next few days. I refused. It contained a number of pieces of sensitive information, including stuff I needed that very evening. He just wouldn't understand that I am not one of these people who do anything to get on television.

Yesterday I spent all afternoon waiting for an American TV crew to come and talk to me about licensing some film. They did not even do me the courtesy of telling me that they weren't going to turn up. This morning a man with a silly name telephoned my wife, and said that they would be coming today. No apology. No asking whether it would be convenient. She said that I would phone them back. I haven't bothered. If they do turn up I am not quite sure what I'm going to do.

Today I feel as mad as a bag full of cheese, and am in no mood to suffer fools - or anybody else, for that matter - gladly. If they do turn up unannounced, and uninvited, then I am sorely tempted to play them The Medium was Tedium and to tell them to commit a biologically unfeasible act of self procreation.

However, my wife is nicer than me, and is the only person in the world who can tell me what to do, and she will probably tell me not to do it. And I always do what Corinna tells me...

Living on borrowed time

2008-04-01T06:55:00.000-07:00

Well, according to a website that I visited yesterday, I am living on borrowed time, and should really be dead.

I am 48. I smoke, despite the fact that my boozing days are behind me, I still drink alcohol on average more than once a week, I am at least five stone overweight, and I have a history of recreational drug abuse. I should, apparently, be dead.

Yesterday, when I read this edifying and uplifting snippet of information, I was in the third day of the worst cold that I have had for ages, and was quite prepared to believe that my death was imminent.

Today, I am not so sure.

Not only is my tiresome virus in retreat, but the sun is shining, issue 34 of Animals & Men is being enveloped up as we speak, my blasted book is finished, and just awaiting a foreword from Biffo, I managed to finish episode seven of `On the Track` in the wee small hours, we have just posted out the first trenche of sponsorship request packs, and Graham is just about to start painting the outside of the museum. Jon's in his office, and all is reasonably right with the world.

But it gets me thinking about mortality, or more particularly, about current thinking on the subject.

My mother drank reasonably regularly, but never smoked a day in her life. She died of lung cancer aged 79. My grandmother smoked like a chimney, and drank like a fish for years, and died aged 85 of an illness completely unrelated to either of her habits. My father is one of the only two men I have ever met who could drink both me and Graham under the table, (Tony Shiels is the other) and was merrily mixing sherry and morphine together every lunchtime until a fortnight before his death aged 81.

A fellow traveller in the cryptozoological rat race died a few weeks ago aged a few years younger than me, and as far as I am aware, he was teetotal.

I'm not quite sure what point I am trying to make here, or, indeed, if I am actually trying to make one at all. It was quite a shock to read that my race should, statistically at least, already be run, but in the cold grey light of dawn, or rather in the bright, brisk sunlight of April Fool's Day in sunny north Devon, it does not seem anywhere near as frightening a prospect as it did yesterday.

My life has carried a government health warning for years. I have achieved a fair amount, but only scratched the surface of what I intend to achieve. My father refused to die until he finished his magnum opus on the history of modern Africa. I intend to follow in his footsteps, light another cigarette, and tell the grim reaper to sod off until I'm ready for him.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the website I found was only in April Fool's prank from my doctor, anyway. Everybody knows that fags, and the occasional slug of brandy in your coffee are actively good for you!

I'm back, I'm back, as a matter of fact...

2008-03-13T06:33:00.000-07:00

Apologies for having disappeared off the radar in the last few weeks, but things have been ridiculously busy.

The reissue programme of the CFZ Yearbooks is continuing apace. So far the 1996, 1999, 2004, 2007 and 2008 yearbooks are all available perfect bound, and the 2003 volume will be available in the next couple of days. I have to admit that I take a childish delight in typing ` Centre for Fortean Zoology` into amazon.co.uk and seeing all of them displayed there on the same page. I am very proud of the yearbooks, and am already soliciting articles for 2009 volume.

The Guyana expedition report has also been published, and I would like to apologise to everybody who has been waiting so long for it. However, I hope that you'll think it was worth the wait.

Last weekend we attended the second annual conference from BCIB (Big Cats in Britain) which was held at Tropiquaria - the small zoo in north Somerset which is co-owned by Chris Moiser, Jane Bassett, and my darling wife Corinna. I had the honour of been the compere for the weekend, and I believe that a great time was had by all. Sadly, Mark Fraser, the head honcho of BCIB was unable to attend due to a back injury. Poor chap must have been gutted.

Last weekend also saw the launch of the 2008 Big Cat Yearbook - the third in the series. For those of you not aware of these books, they contain a comprehensive list of every reported big cat sighting in the UK over a 12 month period, together with a series of articles written by various luminaries of the big cat research community.

My biggest news is that last night, after having worked on it, on and off for nearly four years, my new book - The Island of Paradise - is finally completed. It is, I believe, the most comprehensive book ever written on the subject of the mystery animals of Puerto Rico, and it tells the story of my two expeditions there in 1998 and 2004. Weighing in at over, 120,000 words, it is going to be a fairly massive tome. Because Nick Redfern accompanied me on the second expedition, and also because I have libelled him unmercifully throughout the volume, I am allowing him a right of reply, and, the manuscript is presently with him, so he can add his comments to the end of each chapter.

On a personal level, I am going through quite a strange time at the moment. At the end of last year, my consultant changed my medication, putting me on to a drug called tegretol. Backalong, as they say in North Devon, I was a nurse for the mentally handicapped, and as such familiar with psychoactive drugs. Stop that giggling in the cheap seats! You know perfectly well what I mean! Tegretol, or carbemazepine is a well-known medication for epilepsy, but in recent years it has been found to have two other uses; a palliative for trigeminal neuralgia, and as a mood stabiliser. It is this last property which has caused it to be prescribed for yours truly.

Well it seems to work. However, some of the side-effects are quite unpleasant. Whereas I have to admit that my rapid mood swings, and days of bleak depression, have been considerably curtailed, every day now when I wake-up, I feel sick, dizzy and disorientated. Sometimes these symptoms go off after an hour or two, and sometimes they last all day. This is a filthy bloody disease, and what makes it worse, is that I know that I may not end up dying of it, but I will certainly die with it. I just have to make a continual series of decisions; choosing between the living hell of the down times of Bipolar II, which are not with me all the time, and this new, debilitating ickiness which - more often than not - is with me 24/7.

I am sorry to be such a pain in the neck. Nobody wants to listen to (or read) a load of whingeing from some stupid bloody invalid. The way I see it, in life, you play the cards that you are dealt, and if you are me, you do your best to have a spare, and marked deck up your sleeve. However, it does help sometimes to have a good old moan when the cards are stacked against you.

I almost forgot...................

2008-03-13T05:58:00.000-07:00

........OK I did forget

2008-02-01T07:51:00.000-08:00

The latest one, and goodness me I have a hangover. Oll and I were still editing this magnum opus at 5.30 this morning. We had actually finished at about 1.00 but somehow the bloody file became corrupted and we had to start editing again from scratch.

Four bottles of vino later we finished, but we both feel a little frail today...

Well, it's that time of year again

2008-01-29T01:00:00.001-08:00

I really don't believe that we are coming up to our ninth annual Weird Weekend. It seems only yesterday that we were promoting (in an incredibly half arsed way) the first event. However, we know what we are doing a heck of a lot more now than we did back then, and the 2008 event looks like it is going to be a stonker.

This year's speakers include:

PAUL VELLA: Bigfoot for kids

RONAN COGHLAN: Theology of extraterrestraials

GEOFF WARD: Spirals in nature

JONATHAN DOWNES: TBC

RICHARD FREEMAN et al: Guyana 2007 Expedition report and results

DR KARL SHUKER TBC

JONATHAN MCGOWAN TBC

LEE WALKER: New Ferry after Dark

MIKE HALLOWELL: Invisikids

GAIL NINA ANDERSON: TBC

CHRIS MOISER: Tropiquaria Zoo - tales from a zookeeper

DARREN W RITSON & MIKE HALLOWELL: Tyneside Poltergeist case TBC

MICHAEL WOODLEY: classifying sea serpents

Dr MIKE DASH: Lake Monsters title TBC

TIM MATTHEWS: TBC

NICK REDFERN: Planet of the Ape-Men

PAUL ROSE: A year of monsters

OLL LEWIS: tbc

and more to be confirmed soon.

To give you a taster, here are some videos from last year's event, edited by my beloved nephew David. I really don't know what I would do without him...

errrrrrrrrm

2008-01-28T05:46:00.000-08:00

I really did intend to write more regularly this year, but I have been ill again! I don't know whether this bloody disease is getting worse, or whether I was just completely unprepared for this latest bout. My consultant changed my medication just before Christmas to Carbemazapine, which - from my days as a nurse - I recognise as an anti-epileptic. However, (and this I did not know) it can also be used as a mood stabiliser, and I have to say that (at the moiment at least) it is working fantastically.

I had the most untroubled five weeks that I have had in years, and I have felt saner than I have for a long time. But boy, when the disease hits, it bloody hits! I was practically catatonic on friday and saturday, and yesterday all I managed to do was to stagger to the computer and lose magnificently at Age of Empires until I went back to bed.

I would like to thank young David (with a fond Uncle-esque manner) for having edited the first batch of films from last year's Weird Weekend. They are being posted on the CFZtv site now, and will be followed by the site for the 2008 event, together with an online thingy to buy tickerts in the next day or so.

I am involved with the annual Big Cats in Britain [BCIB] conference on March 7-9 which is being held at Tropiquaria which, as regular readers will know, is a small zoo owned by our old friends Chris Moiser and Jane Bassett, together with my lovely wife Corinna. I urge you all to come, because not only is it an important event, but will be lots of fun as well, and a chance to see behind the scenes of a lovely little zoo.

Issue 3 of Exoric Pets is now available..

The final contents are:

3. EDITORIAL
6. THE NEWS: Year of the Frog (guest editorial)
10. ZOO NEWS
11. Ryedale A.S Christmas Tree project
12. CRYPTO NEWS
13. THE BUGNATION COLUMN
14. CLUB NEWS: British Cichlid Association; Phasmid Study Group
17. RIO CAUCA CAECILIANS: Lure of the Black Worm by Jon Downes
20. TALES FROM THE BUSH: BBC bloke in Guyana by Stephen Backshall
23. DECIDUOUS DARLINGS: Dead leaf mantids by Graham Smith
26. CLIMBING PERCH: Fish out of water by David Marshall
30. AMAZING ANURANS: Horned frogs by Corinna Downes
33. VELVET UNDERGROUND: Peripatus by Matt Baillie
36. A CHANCE IN A LIFETIME: Behind the scenes at Durrell Wildlife by Ben Tapeley
40. TREVOR’S TALES
41. EMONIC LUCY
42. A SILK PURSE: Trapdoor Spiders by Hugh Jeal
45. RAMPANT RODENTS: Pouched rats by Oll Lewis
48. PECULIAR PHASMIDS: Leaf insects by Janice Holt
50. THE EYES HAVE IT: Ocellated skinks by Graham Smith
52. KILLER IN THE HOME: Assassin Bugs by the Bug Doctor
55. HELP: I need somebody
57. BOOKSHELF

CONTRIBUTORS Jon Downes, Graham Smith, Graham Inglis, Corinna Downes, Janice Holt, Richard Freeman, David Marshall, Shaz Hagan, Dr. Darren Naish, Stephen Backshall, Oll Lewis, David Phillips, Matt Baillie, Lucy Henson, Trevor Smith, The Bug Doctor, Hugh Jeal, Ben Tapeley

Our first breeding success of the year...

2008-01-23T08:21:00.000-08:00

The west African armoured millipedes have bred, which is very encouraging. We were at the AES show back in September, when Graham and Janice Smith (who were sharing a stall with us) let us have a couple of pairs of these glorious creatures that were wild caught and had just come in from The Congo.

They were shagging themselves senseless, and continued to do so throughout the winter until the adults began to die off (we only have one, rather battered looking old chap left.

But look at this (using the cherry tomato as a size-comparison). There are at least a dozen of them and maybe more, but they won't reach adulthood for another 8-10 months or maybe more..

The first CFZ breeding success of 2008 (well, the second if you count Arabella's egg yesterday)

Aren't we doing well?

She's a big girl now

2008-01-22T05:11:00.000-08:00

The universe is a peculiar place - well, mine is anyhow. I am going through one of my bipolar blips at the moment, and I feel completely useless and as mad as a bagfull of cheese. However, life has to go on, and I still do my best to get out of bed and actually achieve something, even if that something is merely a pointless story about chickens,

Which it is today.

Those who know me will already be aware that I have somewhat of a fascination with chickens, and have had for many years. For my birthday last year dear David - my quasi-nephew - bought me a pair of chickens from his friend Chris. They were duly installed into a magnificent coopy thing wot we bought from eBay, and which Oliver - in hus usual fashion - immediately named 'Cluckberry Mansions'. Someone (I think it was Graham, but I cannot be sure) even fashioned a tiny TV antenna and put it on top of this veritable poultry palace.

I am always very find of Graham when he gets whimsical. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does it is a thing of wonder to behold. Remind me one day to tell you more bits of InglisWhimsy.

But I digress.

The two chickens were named `Arabella Cluckburton` and something else I gorget, because within a few weeks it became slowly obvious that Arabella and the other one were not sisters under the skin after all, but that the divine Ms Cluckburton was shacked up (cooped up?) with The Hon. Percy Feathergirdle (as Corinna christened him).

But that was mid October, and Arabella showed no signs of developing her secondary sexual characteristics. We even wondered whether she too was a he, and would turn out to be Lord Percy's gimp, or something equally tasteful.

But today we have proof of her femininity. My little girl has grown up! Arabella laid her first egg!

The proud parents

Arabella

Her first egg

I suppose it is irony really

2008-01-21T08:17:00.000-08:00

I spent a large part of the weekend persuading a good friend of mine not to close down his blog. The hyaenas of the internet had decided to harrass the poor bastard, even going so far as to post his home address up on a web forum somewhere together with some veiled threats. I told him that over the years, such people have accused me of being:

1. A heroin dealer (false)
2. A drug addict (sort of true some years ago, but it was nobody else's business)
3. A child molester (false)
4. An alcoholic (depends on your point of view)
5. A satanist (false)
6. A government spy (I think my anarchist credentials stand for themselves)
7. An employee of MI6 (lololol)

and all sorts of other stuff that I really cannot be bothered to talk about. On this very blog I was accused of spending all the CFZ money on drugs and alcohol. Richard and the gang have been accused of only being involved with the CFZ to get free foreign holidays.

This is all bollocks!

However, I told him, these idiots will continue to do stuff like that whether he takes down his blog or not, and so the best thing to do was to ignore him.

However, I know how he feels. In recent months it has seemed that every time I poke my head above the parapets, some bastard takes a pot shot at me. The latest are those jolly nice people at Wikipedia. Apparently (although my entry has been up there for well over two years), I am not notable enough for inclusion, and - because they suspected that I had written my own entry - they wouldn't believe a word I wrote.

OF COURSE I WROTE A LOT OF MY WIKIPEDIA ENTRY

That is because a great deal of what had been written about me by other people was complete nonsense. I am NOT 65 years old, I am NOT engaged to someone called "Lisa",
I DON'T live in Essex, and I have NOT written a book called "Owlman and other stories".

I have been keeping my entry, the CFZ entry, the Weird Weekend entry and several others up to date, because I truly believe that what the CFZ does is important. Very important! I don't do it out of self-aggrandaisment because fame and fortune are truly compoletely unimportant to me.

As far as the `notability guidelines` of Wikipedia are concerned, they have a whole section for `Scatwhores` for God's sake! Although as far as this section is concerned, I suppose I have a certain amount in common with them: I, too, take an awful lot of shit from people whilst I am trying to get on with my life's work.

Now, don't get me wrong. I believe in Wikipedia. I think it is a great, and even a noble concept. A free encyclopaedia that arrives at a neutral viewpoint through consencus editing is something that should be applauded, and it is something that I will continue to support.

However buys and girls. I want you all to do me a favour. Can you all log in to wikipedia over the next few days and add references and external links to my poagfe, the CFZ page, Richard's page, the Weird Weekend page etc. If enough of you do that then it will prove once and for all to these people that I and the CFZ do indeed exist, and that we are not all a figment of my - admittedly deranged at times - imagination.

Thanks guys.

PS: This is the end of the rant......... for now

HOWEVER THERE IS SOME GOOD NEWS

2008-01-08T04:44:00.001-08:00

Now I have got my self-indulgent feeling sorry for myself but out of the way, here is the best news for yonks.

We are proud to announce the publication of three new books:

The first is the 2008 Yearbook. When I first came up with the idea of the yearbook some thirteen years ago, I always imagined that it would be published either just before or just after Christmas each year, but as the faithful stwalwarts who have followed our activities over the years will attest, apart from the first volume (the 1996 YB) which appeared in December 1995, none of the subsequent ones have appeared before April. Until now, that is...

Wayhay! Not only is the 2008 Yearbook out on time (it actually appeared on the shelves last week, but the tragic events of recent weeks stopped me doing anything about it, but it is pretty damn good. The contents are:

INTRODUCTION by Jonathan Downes
A TRIO OF MYSTERY CATS AT LONDON ZOO by Dr Karl P.N.Shuker
THE STRANGE ANIMALS OF SWANSEA BAY by Oll Lewis
PLANET OF THE APE MEN by Nick Redfern
TOWARDS A POSSIBLE CAUDATA IDENTITY FOR THE MONGOLIAN
DEATH WORM: Introducing the 'plausibility method' for identity theory
formation amongst lesser known cryptids by Michael A. Woodley
CATS AROUND THE CAPITAL by Neil Arnold
ZOOLOGICAL CURIOSITIES FROM HARDWICKE’S SCIENCE GOSSIP
PART ONE - 1865-7 BY Richard Muirhead
ON THE TRACK OF ORANG PENDEK? by Nick Molloy
MADNESS, MONSTERS AND MORAR by Lisa Dowley
SOME NEW ZEALAND CRYPTIDS by Tony Lucas
SINGING MICE by Jonathan Downes
ARCHIVE ARTICLES FROM THE 1930s ON SINGING MICE
CFZ ANNUAL REPORT 2007

Everyone who preordered the book will be getting it this week, but it is now on sale HERE for the regular price of £12.50

The second book is Ethna's Journal the first novel by my darling wife. Ethna's Journal tells the story of a few months in an alternate Dark Ages, seen through the eyes of Ethna, daughter of Lord Edric. She is an unsophisticated girl from the fortress town of Cragnuth, somewhere in the north of England, who reluctantly gets embroiled in a web of treachery, sorcery and bloody war...

Well, of course I would have said nice things about it - whatever it was like - because (in case you haven't noticed) I love my wife, and will always support her in her endeavours. However, the book happens to be really good. It is very reminiscent (to me, at least) of Michael Moorcock, round about the time he was writing the Runestaff series, and Ethna - the eponymous heroine of Corinna's book - is considerably more three dimensional a character than Dorien Hawkmoon, and a damn sight more sexy!

I highly recommend that you give it a go. Buy it HERE

The third book, is the latest in the series of `Dark Dorset` folklore books. The synopsis reads:

Much of the intrinsic charm of Dorset folklore is owed to the importance of folk customs. Today only a small amount of these curious and occasionally eccentric customs have survived, while those that still continue have, for many of us, lost their original significance. Why do we eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday? Why do children dance around the maypole on May Day? Why do we carve pumpkin lanterns at Hallowe'en? What is Wassailing? And who is Father Christmas? All the answers are here! Robert has made an in-depth study of the Dorset country calendar identifying the major feast-days, holidays and celebrations when traditionally such folk customs are practiced. Some of these customs hark back to pre-Christian times, while others are comparatively recent innovations. The list of customs is an extensive one and includes Morris Dancing, Clipping the Church, Well Dressing, Love Divinations, Mumming Plays, Corn Dollies, Broom Dancing and many more besides. Included as a special bonus are thirty tasty seasonal recipes to try out, such as Cattern Cake, Plough Tide Dumplings and Mince Pies, to name but a few.This fascinating, easy to follow compendium is an ideal reference tool for anyone seeking a greater understanding of Dorset's annual customs and rituals and how to enjoy them. Join in and celebrate any day that takes your fancy! We certainly will!

Buy it HERE

Yuck!!!!!!!!!!

2008-01-08T04:34:00.000-08:00

After all the alarms and excursions of the last few weeks it is great to get back to some semblance of normality, and get back to working on all the things that I am supposed to be doing. At least, it WOULD be, if it wasn't for the fact that I have a cold! It is not even a particularly bad cold. It certainly isn't 'flu, or what my disgustingly sexist wife calls `man flu`. It's not the tummy bug that is sweeping across the nation, it's just a cold. And I probably caught it from Oliver, so it's all HIS fault.

And I feel horrid!

So there!
I am going to stamp my foot now!

YAH!!!!!

Normal service is, however, slowly being resumed as we speak.

Another Year, another video

2008-01-01T11:10:00.000-08:00

I thought that you all might be amused by the latest edition of 'On the Track', described by Biffo as our "monthly videobloggy thingy" which is a magnificent piece of semi-alliteration. It includes me doing my all singing, all dancing, Woolsery's Mr Entertainment bit at last year's WW, as well as some items of genuine cryptozoological interest.

Many thanks to all of you who sent messages of support to Corinna and me after the trajic events of Christmas Eve. Guys, believe me, they are very much appreciated.

My love to you all, and best wishes for a groovy New Year...

Strange Days

2007-12-26T06:43:00.000-08:00

This is a very peculiar time. Corinna is being magnificently brave, and I think that despite it all she is having a much nicer Christmas than anyone would have suspected. We all knew that was happened on Christmas Eve was likely to happen one day, and despite all of our efforts there was nothing that we could do to prevent it.

In a strange way, a shroud has been lifted. The girls are being wonderful as well, and we are both looking forward to a reasonably traditional family Christmas when they arrive tomorrow.

Corinna gave me a lap steel guitar fot my Christmas present, and I am having great fub learning to play it; and after a few hours practise I no longer sound as if I am torturing a cat!

Happy Christmas

2007-12-25T06:33:00.000-08:00

Well it's been a strange old year, but through the highs and the lows, the readers of this blog have always been there with us. Happy Christmas my friends....

Sad News

2007-12-24T05:39:00.000-08:00

Corinna's father died in the early hours of this morning. Sadly, he could not cope with his personal daemons any more, and decided to take matters into his own hands.

This is a sad and confusing time for Corinna, her mother, and the two girls. Her brother Antony is looking after my mother-in-law at his home in Norfolk, and my two darling step-daughters Shoshannah and Olivia are being comforted by their long-term boyfriends, (Gavin, and Rob aka `Goldie`) who are very fine young men, and whom I am very proud to have as de facto sons in law. I am - of course - doing my best to look after my darling wife, after what has been a horrible year for her.

This is the end of a long, confusing, and desparately distressing period in the life of my family. We ask you to keep us in your thoughts, and remember us in your prayers.

"Hear my prayer, 0 Lord, and with thine ears consider my calling: hold not thy peace at my tears. For I am a stranger with thee: and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. 0 spare me a little, that I may recover my strength: before I go hence, and be no more seen."

Best records of 2007

2007-12-23T05:10:00.000-08:00

Having seen that Biffo has done it I can follow in his lead and post my favourite albums of 2007.

In no particular order:

1 Paul McCartney `Memory almost Full`
2 Kula Shaker `Strangefolk`
3 Radiohead `In Rainbows`
4 The Polyphonic Spree `Fragile Army`
5 Tinariwen `Aman Iman`
6 The Decemberists `The Crane Wife`
7 Robert Plant/Alison Krauss `Eaising Sand`
8 Robert Wyatt `Comicopera`
9 Gogol Bordello `Super Taranta!`
10 Kevin Ayers `The unfairground`

but my favourite has to be the first solo album by Brett Anderson, ex of Suede! It is everything that one could have hoped for and more....

My best gig of the year was the Pet ShopBoys at the Eden Project, but then again I didn't get to see either Led Zeppelin or Steve Ignorant!

I dont't usually hang out in such places, but I was on Friends Reunited a few months ago, and I happened to spy the entry from a one-time social intimate of mine in which he was ranting that all modern music is rubbish.

Nonsense!

You just have to look harder these days..

Good Times, Bad Times

2007-12-23T04:49:00.000-08:00

The bad news is that Corinna's Christmas Presents have died. I bought her a pair of Budgett's frogs, and Oll and I smuggled them into the house about three weeks ago. They were thriving, and even managed to survive the very cold snap of a few days back, but yesterday, David went up yo feed them and they were both dead!

I was very upset, and what made it worse was that Corinna realised I was upset and wormed the reason out of me. Now she knows about the Christmas Present she didn't have :( But I have sourced another pair for her and she will get thewm early in the New Year, so despite the trajedy, she will still get her amphibious presents.

I am very ambivelent about this time of year. I don't go as far as to say "Bah Humbug" (well not all the time, anyway), but in many ways there is something vaguely disturbing about what is euphemistically known as the `festive season`. I was in Morrison's the other day, buying vaguely festive stuff like catfood and cigarettes when I was mown down by baying hordes of chavs gallumphing around the aisles like a herd of vulgar wildebeest. They were all talking to their revolting friends on their mobile phones at the top of their voices, mostly about their sex-lives, and they were buying such enormous piles of food and booze, (that shocked me, and I am a drinker with an eating disorder), that I can onloy assume that they all had large families of eleven or twelve, or that they were kitting out an Antarctic expedition.

What was most disturbing were the number of people whom I overheard bemoaning the fact that - and I quote - they "would be paying for this for months", and that they were getting themselves deeply into debt, paying for one enormous, artery-busting blowout. I know we are a consumer society, but this is ridiculous.

And all this is to celebrate a sacred festival of a religion most people these days don't believe in. There is something wrong here.

On a happier note, however, we went to a family party last night, and had a real old-fashioned Christmas parlour party, with cake and pop and carols round the piano. It was lovely.

But the best thing about this Christmas? Spending it with my beautiful new wife, and my two lovely step-daughters! After years of being a bachelor, I am never going to be alone at Christmas again.... and you don't know how happy that makes me.

Happy Christmas my friends..