CFZ PEOPLE: Ragyle

A sad phone call last night from Emma Osborne. Matthew's dog Ragyle, who is well known to attendees of the Weird Weekend cocktail parties since 2006, developed epilepsy some time ago and it has been getting worse. Sadly Ragyle was put to sleep yesterday, and we all join with Matt in mourning his loss....

RICHARD FREEMAN: Eternity Weeps

As a kid at my school, we played at Dr Who en-masse. I was usually the third Doctor or sometimes the fourth. Other kids would play the Brigadier, Benton, Yates or other members of UNIT. Other kids would be Sea Devils, Autons, Yeti, Axons (spaghetti men, we called them), Daleks, Zygons, Krynoids or Cybermen. But the girls; they all wanted to be Sarah Jane Smith.

Sarah was the companion to many people. She was beside the Doctor in many of his most memorable adventures. Never just a yes-girl or a helpless shrinking violet, Sarah was often just as instrumental in saving the day as the Doctor himself. When she came to the role, Liverpudlian actress Elisabeth Sladen was relatively unknown, having had small roles in Some Mothers Do Ave Em, Doomwatch, Coronation Street and Z-Cars.

When the brilliant Katy Manning bowed out of Dr Who, Z-Cars producer Ron Craddock recommended Elisabeth to Berry Letts who was Dr Who’s producer at the time. She proved an instant hit with both Letts and Jon Pertwee.

Her character was one of the most fondly remembered companions in the history of the series. Especially fondly remembered is the team of Tom Baker, Liz Sladen and the late Ian Marter as the fourth Doctor, Sarah and Harry Sullivan.

Such was her popularity that the character was brought back time and again, firstly in 1981 for the ill-fated spin off K9 And Company, then in 1983 for the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors.

With Dr Who’s triumphant return Sarah Jane teamed up with David Tennant in the story School Reunion. Finally - perhaps inevitably - Sarah Jane got her own series, The Sarah Jane Adventures, aimed at younger viewers, but still intelligently written and well acted.

She was brought back for a showdown with Davros and the Daleks in Stolen Earth and Journey’s End, again with David Tennant. She had last encountered them in the 1975 epic Genesis of the Daleks. Davros even comments on remembering her face. Liz worked alongside the new Doctor, Matt Smith, and her predecessor Jo Grant in Death of the Doctor.

I met Katy Manning shortly after and she eulogised on what a joy Liz had been to work with.

It was great for many of the old fans who recalled Sarah Jane as a heart throb from the ‘70s to see her back, now like an eccentric, lovable favourite aunt. Liz died suddenly on April 19th. She had been suffering from cancer but few fans knew; she looked so well and had carried on with her acting regardless. It feels as if a part of the universe has fallen away leaving a bottomless void.

HAUNTED SKIES: (Not so Magick) Mushroom

http://hauntedskies.blogspot.com/2011/04/not-magic-mushroom-blog-of-nature-today.html

OLL LEWIS: Yesterday's News Today

http://cryptozoologynews.blogspot.com/

On this day in 1994 the first discoveries of extra-solar planets were announced.

And now the news:
Fossilised spider 'biggest on record'
Motor boat turbulence kills zooplankton in estuari...
Iran: Dog Ownership to Be Outlawed Under Lawmakers...
Only hillbilly hunters have ever seen one alive
Badger vaccine pilot planned by National Trust in ...

Badger, badger, badger:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C8TdLx3-xs

ON THE TRACK OF UNKNOWN...

Yesterday Graham and I went in search of an animal not seen in our part of North Devon for over thirty years. Like so many cryptozoological creatures, it is ethno-known, and our search was triggered by a chance encounter that a visiting fortean had with one of these animals.

Graham and I finally ran it down after an exciting car chase down twisting lanes, and we have conclusive proof of its existence.

I lived in Woolsery between 1971 and 1981, and most springtimes I would get on my bicycle and go up to the edges of Huddisford Woods (yes; the place where we got the big cat hairs last year), and look at the orange tips.

Anthocharis cardamines is one of my favourite British butterflies, probably because it reminds me of my favourite butterfly from my childhood in Hong Kong. However, for some reason or another, they were never common in Woolsery, and began to die out in about 1977, and by the beginning of the decade that taste forgot, they had vanished.

At the weekend Dawn Holloway of the Haunted Skies Project told me how common they were this year in her back garden in Redditch, and I bemoaned the fact that I had not seen them in Woolsery for many a year. I even told her that each year I drove up to the borders of Huddisford Wood looking for them, to no avail.

The next day (with a slightly `I told you so` look in her eyes LOL) she told me that there were plenty of them along the lane from the campsite at Ashcroft Farm to Huddisford. So today Graham and I went looking for them, and we saw five or six males. We followed one along one of the lanes, and were surprised to see it travel for over half a mile without any seeming signs of exhaustion.

We later saw another three males at another location (Kennerland Cross) where I had never seen them before. The species is certainly back, and in some numbers. We shall be going back there tomorrow to see if we can ascertain how many of the `white` butterflies that we also saw were this species rather than green-veined, large, or small whites (P.napi, P brassica, and P.rapae). Watch this space....

DALE DRINNON ON SURVIVING SIVATHERES..

http://frontiersofzoology.blogspot.com/2011/04/surviving-sivatheres.html

LIZ SLADEN DIED YESTERDAY - for those of us of a certain age, the world is a poorer place