#anonymasks

Ha! Yeah, those posts have Picked Up in the last few days. The one of my time in Chepstow was on about 100 notes two weeks ago, and today has hit 8000+ somehow. I am in notifications hell.

Ohhhh buddy I am SO HERE for that question you have no idea okay

So there are lots of different breeds under the spaniel umbrella, which means this won’t be a yes or no question BUT HEY it means I get to ramble on about spaniels for a while. The thing to immediately understand, too, is that spaniels actually crop up in more than one group; so while they mostly fall into the Gundogs, there are two in the Toy group and one (that I can think of) in the Utility group, and this has a corresponding impact on what their characteristics are likely to be.

But, the Toys and Utilities all started as Gundogs, so they do retain the basic spaniel temperament and that for the most part ANYWAY let’s get into that.

Temperament

Intelligent-yet-dumb; the thing with gun dogs is that they were bred to be able to perform a lot of sophisticated tasks while in the field with a hunter, initially while they worked with a falcon or a bow and arrow, and later with guns. And of course, you don’t want your prize spaniel to be so stupid that it runs in front of the bullets, so they were selected for intelligence. The more tasks a spaniel was bred for, the cleverer they are (e.g. if a breed needed to hunt, point and retrieve, they’ll be cleverer than a breed only designed for retrieval.)

But, they aren’t Pastoral Dogs like collies or shepherds, so what “intelligence” means is curious and inquisitive, and highly trainable. What it does not mean is actually intelligent. These guys are gorgeous idiots. I have watched mine fall off too many sofas, walk into too many doors… Our old Brittany, Kite, fell into a canal lock chamber four times in his life. Robber, before him, once ran full tilt at the canal because he thought the algae on top was more grass. Kite once tried to snap at a fly and face-planted a bog. He looked like he was in blackface. It was awful. I had to put him in a headlock and dunk him bodily in a lake.

(This is a Welsh Springer. They are Very Interested.)

Affectionate and loyal! Boy howdy yes. This is the main cornerstone of why I love me a good spaniel - they are SO affectionate and loving. If you want a dog that will love you unconditionally, you just can’t do better. They’re something else. And they’re very good with children, too; gentle and loving.

ENERGETIIIIC lordy but this is not a greyhound. This is an animal trained to be at work all day, and they are Enthusiastic and Filled With Simple Zest For Life. This often translates to clownish. It is very entertaining.

(This is not the kind of ‘springing’ the name comes from but you see a lot of it anyway.)

But of course, I would be remiss not to mention the odd drawback. Some breeds (looking at you, springers and cockers) can sometimes bond with one family member more than others. Not a problem if you don’t care. Also mix up who feeds the dog and that sorts it out.

And, incredibly rarely, there’s a weird thing called Rage Syndrome that affects a tiny number of springers and cockers, but it really is a tiny number. It’s a result of shitty breeding, obviously. I’ve yet to meet a dog with it.

And the other thing… isn’t so much temperament as evidence that they’ve been badly or inappropriately raised, so I’ll come back to it in a bit.

Me trying to escape the anons of this interminable wasteland

This is an amazing question.

Ah, going Tory-hunting, are we? Good good. “For a book”, got it.

Okay! So, yes, is the answer. I don’t know how broadly you want to go into the World Of Plants, in terms of global distribution? But since you’re asking me, I’m guessing you want some UKvian/north west European answers. I also don’t know how historical you need me to be, so I’ll stick to natives where I can.

Also, it should be noted that pretty much any plant can kill you if you eat enough of it? But I’m assuming you want something a bit more ‘contained in a mysterious phial’ or ‘chopped into a soup’ rather than ‘six tonnes of common daisy, eat up, Your Majesty’.

Fatal Shit

The foxglove (Digitalis purpurea). Very pretty plant that loves hedges and forests and occasionally comes in white:

You know that scene in Casino Royale where Bond is poisoned and has to shoot himself up in his car to not die? That was digitalis, i.e. the active compound in these things. It fucks up your heart and that. In fact, the medicinal compound that has been scientifically extracted from digitalis - digoxin - is used in modern medicine, but straight from the plant is toxic.

It’s possible to simply really fuck someone up with these, but very easy to outright kill them, and a fine line to walk. It wouldn’t be easy to intentionally give them just a low dose. 

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Deadly Nightshade, (Atropa belladonna). I like this one! In extremely low doses it’s a herb, actually, so there’s even narrative Plausible Deniability for it being in a kitchen/people getting overdosed.

This is it:

This, on the other hand, is not:

That’s Woody Nightshade, or Solarum dulcamara, which is also poisonous but rarely fatally so, and seems to be plastered throughout the internet on primarily USian sites labelled as Deadly Nightshade. 

Anyway. The berries and leaves are the deadly bits, and cause delirium and hallucinations. And, you know, death. This one is easier to control for effect than digitalis, mind, so you can poison or kill here. It’s also been used as a cosmetic, because it can make the pupils dilate, which as we all know, is the sexiest part of the human body.

It’s antidote is physostigmine, found naturally in the Calabar bean from Nigeria, although it is itself pretty poisonous. Or I think pilocarpine works, which is found in a South American plant, but I don’t know which.

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The Yew Tree, (Taxus baccata). A particularly great entrant to any list, frankly. Love me a yew.

LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL anyway, yew trees were worshipped by Celtic peoples as representing a Cult of Immortality, because they live for literally thousands of years. They are also almost entirely poisonous. Like… leaves, bark, wood seeds, everything. The only thing that isn’t, ironically, is the flesh of the berries, and as long as you didn’t chew - and therefore break - the seeds, they’d probably pass right through you and be fine. But as few as three seeds would poison you.

Also, most plants lose their toxins after pruning. Not yew. Cut branches are just as dangerous.

The fun bit is the symptoms, because most times, there aren’t any. You just die a few hours after eating. Some indigestion, like. That’s it. If there are, we’re looking at shaking, coldness, and falling over a lot. 

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Hellebore (Helleborus spp). Pretty plants that flower in winter, so people like them.

The roots are toxic, causing wicked D and V and also death if you eat too much. People used to give them to kids to try to de-worm them, and a lot of kids died that way.

Interestingly, though, the seeds in particular cause skin problems after contact - burning and itching, usually. Potentially a good Clue for who the poisoner is, if their hands are all itchy and that.

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Ragwort (Senecio jacobaea). So, in the Real World there are precious few examples of people being poisoned by ragwort, though plenty of it happening to horses; but that’s because we’re generally pretty careful with the stuff, and also it’s not fatal to most.

The exception is people with liver problems.

Someone with any sort of liver condition could be killed by this stuff, because at high enough levels it will cause complete liver failure. But, you’d have to either make them eat about 14lbs of the plant in one go (unlikely), or you’d have to make them drink it as a herbal tea over a long period (more likely). The toxins don’t accumulate in the body, but the liver damage does. It was for a while considered to be a cough remedy, too, so it’s a good one for plausible deniability.

Symptoms include lethargy, staggering, walking around like a zombie, and sometimes blindness.

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Hemlock Water-Dropwort (Oenanthe crocata). Yeah, this is hemlock, Famous Poison of Antiquity. They killed many a Greek philosopher with this stuff. 

Great for plausible deniabilty - the full plant is almost identical to the fully-edible cow parsley, the stems can look like celery when chopped, and the roots look like wild parsnips. But, the toxins are quite unstable. Cooking can break them down - if not completely, then at least to survivable levels. But you’d still be sick as a dog from it, and you would need hospitalisation. 

Vomiting and nausea are the main symptoms, but convulsions and seizures are also up there. And, of course, death. There’s also some suggestion that it’s more potent in winter, and less so from April onwards? It’s unproven as of yet, but it is an interesting pattern in toxicity levels.

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Non-Fatal

Lords and Ladies/Cuckoopint (Arum maculatum). It has approximately 8003 common names, this one, but Lords and Ladies is poetic, and cuckoopint is an old word meaning a cuckoo’s dick, so those are the ones I’ve included.

Some people apparently mistake it for wild garlic, since they grow in the same places and times? i don’t see it myself, but I’m told it’s a common mistake.

It is poisonous, but you’d have a job eating enough to kill yourself - it induces vomiting fast, and a prickly burning in the mouth even faster, so you wouldn’t be able to ingest more. This is true of both the leaves and the berries. So a good one to make someone ill, and they’d be sore for days, but very unlikely to kill someone.

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Greater Celandine (Chelidonium majus). No relation to lesser celandine. Botany is wild.

Anyway, the juice in the stem is bright yellow and can cause nausea if ingested, and burning on the skin; historically, it was used to remove warts. But it tastes disgusting, as so many of these do, so it would have to be masked somehow. 

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Spindle (Euonymous europaeus). Beautiful tree, five stars out of three.

Those are the berries! SO PRETTY but eating the berries will fuck you up nicely - D and V, heart palpitations, hallucinations and symptoms akin to meningitis. Unlikely to be fatal to a healthy person, mind. 

Again, though, tastes like arse.

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‘Orrible Tortury Things

Hogweed (Heracleum sphondylium). Nawr te. Here we get nasty.

This is hogweed. Tip to tip it can be about 6 feet of chlorophylled malice, but usually it’s around the four-to-five mark. The reason for it’s inclusion here lies in the sap, which contains, essentially, a compound that turns you into a fucking vampire.

How? you may be asking. Well - through a condition called phytophotodermatitis, which is where the sap basically strips out your skin’s ability to slather on the melanin and so the moment UV light hits the spot it burns. And I mean burns. Literal burns. Want to see a gross picture?

Yeah. And it’s not a one-off burn - you have to keep the skin out of the sun for a year or so before it stops reacting, even after the burn is healed. I work with people who have had hogweed burns (in my line of work it’s a professional hazard), and even mild ones will still suddenly show up again in the shower six months later.

It’s not as bad as one of our new Invasive Species, though - Giant Hogweed (Heracleum mantegazzianum). That one burns. Google ‘giant hogweed burns’ for the grossest google session of your life. That causes literal third degree burns, and it’s a good six years before you’re back to normal. That’s only been about in UKvia for about 200 years, though.

In conclusion, you don’t fuck about with hogweed.

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Stinging nettles (Urtica dioica). What list of Nast Plants would be complete without the humble stingy, eh?

We’ve all done our time with this bastard. Very common, touching the edges of the leaves produces a strong sting, a bit like mild bees. It’s entirely bearable, like, and actually, there are some people who whip their arthritic joints with nettles and report that it makes the swelling go down. But it’s not enjoyable, and being whipped with these would fucking hurt. Plus, it takes a while for the rash to fuck off.

It’s also highly nutritious and edible, though, and you can spin it into cloth. Non-stingy cloth, I might add. Go figure.

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Blackthorn (Prunus spinosa). A wonderful tree that gives us sloes which give us delicious sloe gin.

But it also has thorns. Now - professional tree knowledge coming in here - in fact, in the moment it hurts more to be bitten by a hawthorn. But, hawthorns will merely bite, and are non-venomous.

Blackthorns are venomous. As long as you clean the cuts and, crucially, don’t leave thorns in you, you’re fine. But if you leave a thorn in you, it will give you septicemia, which can be extremely nasty. Potentially fatal, actually, so possibly this could go further up the page? Dunno how you’d manage that, though.

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Hello! Personally, I think every country in the world should teach the languages of its native populations in its schools, because that’s a huge part of native multiculturalism; I think that goes triply or more for imperialistic powers, though, where a dominant culture actively attempted to eradicate others. So if you’re American, you should be learning a regionally appropriate Native language; if you’re Swedish, you should learn a Sami language. And if you’re English, you should be learning Welsh, or Scots Gaelic, or Irish.

And I don’t even mean it should be taught to fluency, necessarily, not that any language other than English is taught to fluency in England (although I 100% think the resources should be in place to allow people to study it further if they choose). I think a module that teaches each of those for a term would actually be fine, along with the respective cultures; because, as evidenced by that cringing racist the other day, the fact is that English people have completely isolated themselves in their little cultural bubble and have absolutely no clue about any other native British culture at all. And when you try to tell them, they actively reject the facts and tell you you’re wrong. They literally don’t believe you. It’s like trying to tell an MRA that women did actually exist and do stuff in history. School never taught them that, and implied the opposite, and therefore it can’t be true, you know?

Spend a term learning basic, conversational Welsh. Greetings, how to ask for shit in shops, directions. Learn our myths. Learn our culture, our social conventions, our music, Eisteddfodau. And for the love of all that’s holy, learn our history, you know? All the oppression and the bloodshed; all the triumphs and inventions. England knows none of it, and then we get disgusting imperialists like Tumblr user loki_zen who invent their own narrative based on absolutely nothing except their own prejudices and then think they get to define us and impose value judgements on us.

Unfortunately, not only have I never heard of a school in England teaching Welsh (other than the London Welsh school, which the government literally closed down for not being English enough), but if every I suggest the above to an English person their reaction is one of visceral hatred for the very idea. People like to stay on their pedestals, I think. But for my money, if you belong to a culture that violently and intentionally oppressed another, the fucking least you can do is teach it to your own citizens and help to save it; especially since language and culture are so inextricably linked in these cases, regardless of what the loki_zens of this world want to believe. Anything else is morally repugnant and completely indefensible. 

In answer to your second question, though; tricky. What you’re asking is slightly different, see, from how do we encourage more people to learn the language? Instead, it’s how do we get people to study an A Level in it?, and I imagine there are broader sociological factors at play there. When I was choosing my A Levels (2002-2004), the economy was booming and we were all told to choose what interested us. I chose Welsh, Art, Psychology and Classics. But then the recession came, and suddenly there was a scramble for everyone to do maths and sciences, to make themselves Recession-proof. So that sort of thing needs taking into account.

But then, you can work with that. A lot of young people now are trying to take courses that will get them a job afterwards, and there are whole sectors that want Welsh at least in part. Teaching, the environment, politics, a lot of business, lots of public sector stuff… There’s loads, and that’s before you get to the more obvious stuff like translation. The majority of Wales is working class, with people who don’t want to move out or leave their home areas. Tell them that Welsh will help them get a job, and I think that would help.

For me, I think, it was about identity. My Welsh teacher for GCSE (thank god) was actually very good, and used to do her best to talk about her culture while teaching us the language, and combining the two - as, of course, all of them should have. And then she took us all on a field trip up to North Wales, to stay in Nant Gwrtheyrn and visit Hedd Wyn’s house and all that. We stopped in at Cilmeri on the way to visit the site of Llywelyn the Last’s murder, and there were flowers on it that someone had laid. That was when I personally realised, I think, that there truly was this whole other culture running parallel to my own that I wanted to see and experience, and so I did. I chose Welsh at A Level, which became a degree (joint with Celtic Studies), which became… me, I suppose. I am now married to a man so Welsh-speaking he only learned English at 15. We got married in Welsh. I have Welsh-speaking friends. This is an integral part of who I am.

15-year-old me was, as all teenagers are, looking for an identity, and Welsh gave me that.

The other thing that does come to mind, though, is the concept of opportunities. And I don’t mean jobs, because we’ve already covered that - I mean cultural stuff that you can’t do in English, because you language hop when something comes up that you can’t do in the one you’re currently using (one of the many arguments in favour of multilingualism.) Stuff like computer games, VR, interactive escape room-style experiences, music gigs, interactive have-a-go music workshops; all done in learner-friendly Welsh settings. I think a fusion, bilingual youth culture is needed in Wales; something new, and alive, that’s inclusive and encouraging and means people want to go out and learn a bit more so they can do more. Like… I never even knew what Cerdd Dant was until I became a Welsh speaker. Introduce the concept of that. Make something new. 

All of that’s a bit nebulous, though, so probably the first two points will suit you better!

So, TL;DR: I 100% think schools in England should be teaching Celtic languages and cultures and offering the opportunity to learn more if requested; and I think the two big drivers for encouraging students to take Welsh A Levels are future employment prospects and identity. And also some ill-defined bollocks about cultural fusion.

Mate who’s fucking joking

Five years ago I missed my footing slightly on three steps and entirely literally and non-hyperbolically snapped off my right foot

That fucker is currently bolted onto the end of my leg with enough metal to weld a new car, and at some point, sooner or later, the arthritis is going to literally stop me from walking, and when that happens the best option for me will likely be an optional amputation.

OOH! I can help!!!

Okay, so a favourite local one of mine is Size of Wales. They spotted the weird habit of BBC journalists to use the “size of Wales” as a unit of measurement, and how it’s generally applied to ecological devastation (e.g. an area of rainforest THE SIZE OF WALES is destroyed every day) and went ‘yeah nah fuck this’. So they made it their mission to plant an area of rainforest the size of Wales, with the tagline ‘Part of the solution, not a measure of the problem’. By now, they’ve actually done it, so the new goal is to plant an area TWICE THE SIZE OF WALES!!

But it’s not just tree planting, like. The Welsh Government’s Wellbeing of Future Generations Act has strong opinions on the three pillars of sustainability, and they apply those. So, for example, one of their ongoing projects right now is in Kenya’s Mt Elgon, where the native Ogiek people are being evicted from their land in the name of Conservation. Size of Wales contends that the Ogiek are better forest guardians than anyone else, since the Ogiek themselves have demonstrated that deforestation decreases under their watch. So they’re helping the Ogiek with the legal stuff, and helping them liaise with other organisations like conservation agencies and local governments and that.

And they’re planting a tree for every child born or adopted in Wales, so. There’s that too.

TreeAid! Another one that does good sustainability work, in this case in the drylands of Ghana, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. They help plant the trees in ways that help with local agriculture (soil improvement and water retention and that sort of stuff), but also they fight for the rights of local communities to harvest from the trees, and teach them how to make non-food products from them.

Trees For Life is a Scottish initiative to try to restore the Caledonian Forest, which I believe is a globally unique ecosystem. It also does fun rewilding stuff, if that’s your bag - I think beaver reintroduction is their current big push, which is vital if we want any sort of flood defence in the climate changing days to come.

Trees for Cities is a nice twist - they focus on planting trees in urban areas, which frequently go tragically un-treed. But that varies from little urban woodlands to edible woodlands for local communities, including edible playgrounds that teach kids how to grow food. Plus I think they do some international stuff, too.

And then, of course, there’s the Woodland Trust and the Tree Council. They’re probably the two biggies. They also both claim to be the UK’s leading tree charity, so one of them must be lying, but who knows which? Probably the Tree Council. I reckon more people have heard of the Woodland Trust, so they’re probably bigger. Make of that what you will. Tedious billy-waving pricks.