Avocets and Elephants....

The other day I went with my best friend and my son to a fairly local beaty spot, to do a spot of birdwatching.. which is always fun, even though I'm not as into it as young Matt is... but then he does work for Birdwatching magazine.. after the usual great jokes ( That gull -like bird gave me a funny tern, etc!) the conversation turned to avocets and elephants... which is admittedly strange.... but i see them as a symbol of my basic disappointment with life... let me explain.. i see myself as an incurable optimist, as you know, but i keep getting told that i'm a cross between Alan Partridge and Victor Meldrew... and I admit that i do seem to be a miserable old bugger sometimes... but as I told Matt, just because I'm miserable doesn't mean I'm not happy... he actually told me that on the surface I'm probably one of the happiest people he knows, but that deep down I make Morrisey look positively gay.... I just believe that disappointment is the natural state of human affairs, but like any good Taoist will tell you, this matters not... the best way to explain this is to take a look at that famous piece of Chinese artwork, The Vinegar Tasters.. as opposed to the vinegar tasers, which is something totally different... but I digress.. this picture, which to some is the pinnacle of Chinese symbolic art (although some believe that Willow Pattern holds that title, coming as it does from that famous beijing suburb, Stoke on Trent..) showsa three men licking their fingers around a barrel of vinegar... the firts man, who symbolises Kung Fu Tse (or Confucius if you'd rather.. ) has a sour expression on his face.... the second, who is apparently Buddha, looks bitterly at the varrel.. the third, Lao Tzu, is smiling.. but why the discrepancies?? Well, Confucius believed that the world was a sour place, to be tolerated and put into order... so therefor his core belief was that there was something wrong with the place.. Buddha believed that this world was a bitter place, to be escaped from asap.. but the Taoist Lao Tzu accepted that the world was both, and that that was the way things were, so why not make the best of it... the idea is, why curse vinegar fro being bitter and sour? That's what you expect of vinegar! If the vinegar is bitter and sour, smile.. you've got good vinegar! I think I cn see the point I'm trying to make.. but what of avocets, i hear you cry.. or maybe not.. well, the point is, and I've nothing against avocets (or indeed elephants for that matter..).. in fact,they are still one of my favourite birds.. but after looking ongingly at them in my Ladybird Book of Sea and Estuary Birds I was quite excited at the prospect of actually seeing one.. for some reason I was expecting them to be about the size of a heron... and was quite disappointed to find them a lot smaller....and the same with elephants... but i accept that the problem lay not with the creatures, but with my expectations of them... which is why I still like elephants, and avocets, and my disappointment has not made me all that unhappy.. it would just be silly to blame the avocet.. and it is a beautiful bird. but enough of my wittering.. the curlews are curlewing and the whippoorwills meeping, and it is time for bed.. so until all our avocets are like vinegar, Wisebeard salutes you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!