Saturday 27th July 2013

Weekdays.

It says here, this year's prince is born.

And so said Sir William of Bragg some 30 years ago when Diana popped William out. This week William himself became a father, after something like nine months ago, in the words of Luck and Flaw, he learned how to play Mr Wobbley Hides his Helmet!

So, for the past two weeks, many of the world's major media organisations have been camped outside a hospital in central London for news of the royal birth. Last weekend Kate, sorry Princess Kate went to Reading, as a lot of English pregnant women do, as it reduces the swelling.

Apparently.

Now, I was in Denmark, so followed the story via the medium of Twitter. I gathered the media went a little stupid at ties. Sorry, all the time. Here are some of the quotes that paid media types spoke live on air:

“Plenty more to come here from us. None of it news” — BBC’s Simon McCoy

“All I can safely say is that it will be either a boy or a girl” — BBC’s Peter Hunt

"Will the Baby affect the stock market?" I hear you not asking. Here's a chart that won't help.

How "royal" will the royal baby be? #C4news has been finding out...

What could the #RoyalBaby's first words be? Author Gyles Brandreth tells @lbc973 what he thinks:

“I asked how many centimetres … but they said it’s not the kind of info they give out” — Sky News’ Kay Burley

I could go on, but you get the idea. This is what happens when 24 hour rolling news meets Mother nature and the royal when in labour. The Daily Mail complained about the BBC's blanket coverage whilst not noticing it had dedicated something like 24 pages to the royal delivery.

At least the baby gave the satirical shows something to talk about and makes jokes about. Which seems to have been the main positive outcome of the whole event. Googleing Prince George quotes brings up mostly Blackadder quotes, which is not a bad thing, and as mentioned above, Prince George has not actually spoken as yet, this has been suggested this is due to the silver spoon in his mouth, sorry, whole set of six silver spoons in his mouth.

The other thing occuplying the BBC this week is that is is 365 days since the Olympic Games began in Stratford. And reading my blog for the day, it is hard to remember how laid back Jools and I were about it. We went out for a meal before hand, and switched on the opening ceremony not expecting much other than the every competitor marching past. And although that did happen, and take a long time to happen, but the ceremony itself set the tone for what was a wonderful two weeks.

I travel through, well under, the Olympic Park most weeks, and although not much seems to have happened, I'm sure lots of work has been going on, workers have been going in each morning. The temporary stands around the waterports centre have been taken down, and the Orbit is open again, and I guess the queues will be somewhat less this year.

Friday.

In the evening I went with Gary to Westbere lakes near Canterbury to look for a dragonfly. You see not any old dragonfly was good enough for us, we were looking for a rare one which we know have been breeding there. the Norfolk Hawker is, as you can guess, is mostly only found in Norfolk, but some have been seen in Cambridge, and it appears a pair bred in Kent last year and produced at least one new Norfolk Hawker for this year.

We walked around and saw some brown dragonflies, we guess most were Brown Harwkers, a more common variety, but larger than the Norfolk. We did see plenty of Banded Demoiselles, and other lesser types, and manaed to snap some of them too.



We met up with another flickr snapper, and we walked around the lakes, eyes sharpened looking for a slightly smaller borwn dragonfly in case we could get a shot of it. We didn't. However, it was great to just walk around looking for things to snap, and not be thinking about the trip to denmark in the morning. As it would appear I have no trip to DK booked for the foreseeable future, but I know will have to be there for the 2nd week of August, butfor now, let's just enjoy being at home not packing or travelling either direct or through naughty Amsterdam.

After leaving Westbere we headed to East Blean to snap the White Admirals, before the light failed and it was time to head home and watch a Springwatch special. On butterflies. Yay!