Coppetts' Wood; Aisha's injury; Aisha's piano recital and William's sports Day.

Following in her mother and uncle Tim's footsteps, Aisha has a love of nature and, having been involved in Landcare work through Guides in Australia, has joined a conservation group in Coppett's Wood just off the North Circular road. (Putting Coppett's Wood London Borough of Barnet, London, UK into Google maps should bring it up). Led for the last 30 years by a recent conservation award winner, Ollie Natelson,  this dedicated small group have been fighting to keep this unique green spot free from exploitation by developers.

Over the last few months Aisha has been volunteering with this small group of mostly adult volunteers to work on tree planting as well as rehabilitating some of the more degraded areas of the wood. Although to our Australian eyes a lot of it looks like degraded weed infested land, we are assured it isn't! Blackberries, stinging nettles, dock and ivy are, of course, all native British plants. Sally joined Aisha on her first day at which they planted young trees to help form a corridor to protect bats from the strong lights of the adjoining sports field.  Aisha ended up planting a sapling grown from a seed, from a tree, from one of the Queen's estates, planted as part of her Jubilee celebrations!  In years to come, Aisha hopes to be able to revisit to see her tree, big and tall!

Since then, Aisha has started on a project which will go towards her Baden Powell Guide badge.  She has learned skills to survey a patch of overgrown and degraded land which she and the group will then clear so that it can, in due course, become meadow.

Tree planting in March.

Aisha plants the Queen's tree and makes the local newspaper!

Aisha's uncleared patch on a midsummer's day in late June.

Coppett's Wood has an interesting history and is an important green area in north London. At one stage it was part of Finchley Wood (as was our local Cherry Tree Wood) and was owned by the Bishop of London. In 1603 Finchley Wood was used by London plague refugees. As a result of the bishop's clearing of Finchley Wood for timber, Coppett's Wood gradually shrank to the size of what is called a "common" here. By the 17th and 18th centuries it was used for bare knuckle boxing, horse racing and pigeon shooting. It was also known as a haunt of highway men, as were many of the wooded areas around the general North Finchley area. During WWII it was used as a military training area and several tank traps still remain.

Emptied WWII tank traps rolled aside waiting for ....

It is lovely to see Aisha so enthusiastically taking part in care of this historic wood. Through her work with the group she was keen to attend the Coppett's wood festival held in mid May. Sally had just had her surgery and we Mark took the kids in to see her after the festival. There were many stalls and a reasonably sized crowd attended. There was Morris dancing, which we have seen before including in Brugges. Click on the video below to see a bit of North London Morris dancing.

In the last weekend of June Aisha did two days in a row at Coppetts Wood. Mark had arranged to go up to collect her. He was just a few minutes away when Sally rang to say she had just had a call to say Aisha had fallen, cut herself and an ambulance had been called. Mark assumed that this was a classic example of obsessive British 'Health & Safety' overreaction and that he would find her with a bit of a graze.

Bad  Daddy !!            

When he got to her he found her being very well cared for by her conservationist colleagues. With five minutes left of the morning's work, Aisha had tripped over a root while carrying a set of garden shears. Dropping the shears as she fell, they tumbled around and she landed on the pointy end of one blade which ended up going deeply into her right knee. There was quite a lot of blood. While she had apparently made a quite bit of a fuss at seeing the internal workings of her knee, she had stayed talking to Sally by phone and was remarkably calm by the time Mark got there. 

While the ambulance station is very close by, it took them about 25 minutes to get there and when they did, they'd come all the way up the track without anything to carry Aisha out on. They explained they were going to go back to the ambulance, parked a good 5 minute walk away, to get their portable chair but said they weren't sure if it could traverse the muddy grassed track Aisha was on as it was only designed for use of flat concrete. Furthermore, they said that if the chair didn't work they would have to return to the ambulance, get the rigid spine board and call another crew to assist them in carrying her out because, for health & safety reasons, two officers weren't allowed to do so........

At this point Mark suggested that perhaps, since it was highly unlikely the chair would be any good, they should forget the chair, call the other crew now and go back and get the board, so to reduce the time his baby girl was lying in pain, bleeding in the mud & periodic heavy rain.

Having had a quick look at her knee and bandaged it, the ambulance crew left to get something to carry Aisha out with. Mark wasn't sure what they would come back with and half wondered if a helicopter would soon fly in ! 

Eventually the first crew came back. They did not bother with the chair but came with the board and started to get Aisha moved onto it from her wet, muddy spot. The 2nd crew soon arrived back, by which point the first crew had realised their board was missing some vital strapping required to secure Aisha to the board. Fortunately the 2nd crew had brought their board and it had all the requisite straps.  Aisha was then moved from the first crew's board to the 2nd crew's board and, with their arms laden with equipment, the four officers took her out to the waiting ambulances. 

Mark did not at any stage comment about the reason for lost empires..... 

Mark drove up to the local hospital, arriving just after the ambulance. After waiting just over an hour Aisha was seen by a doctor. The wound was deep, requiring 6 stitches. Fortunately it appears no ligaments or tendons have been damaged.

Ouch.

Aisha has been hobbling around on crutches and enjoying being driven to and from school. We weren't aware of just how many parents regularly drive their kids to and from school. One family have their girls chauffeur driven in a Bentley! Rest assured, Aisha will be back on the bus by the end of the week.
 

The jeans of death !

The knee of pain.

Aisha's nature plot may have to wait a while for its rebirth but she is determined to get back to Coppett's Wood.

Meanwhile she performed at her music class recital with crutches. Click on the video link below to see how she did considering her injury, having to use her left foot to work the pedal, the odd sounding piano and the breeze.

Fortunately, we have better news about our boy child!  William had his postponed school sports carnival in the last week of June. As he had done last year, William did very well in the races especially his speciality of the longer distances. In the fun races at the end, William discovered a previously hidden talent for the egg and spoon race, getting to the end without dropping said egg once!!  Sally took advantage of the rare opportunity to attend a school function and cheer her boy on in a distinctly un-English manner. At the start of the clip you may just be able to hear her gentle, almost hesitant encouragement from the sidelines. She is indeed getting better.

As we begin July and with the Olympics and paralympics looming, the weather figures have come in with the April - June period officially being the wettest and dullest ever recorded ( since 1910). Click here to read about our fabulous weather. We have now received all our tickets for both events and hope the weather improves and the normally packed road and tube systems will be able to cope.