A definition of disappointment

Elements of Famille L went to visit some old friends a couple of weekends ago. We had not seen them in ages and in the intervening time they had moved house. Where they used to live they had had a lovely long garden, albeit very thin, and right down the bottom (about a mile and half if I recall) there were a selection of wonderful vegetable beds. Whilst their new place does not have any where near the same amount of outdoor space, their new garden is up and running and one corner has been devoted to a couple of raised beds. In one of these were the remains of this year's strawberry crop, and in the other was the most gigantic clump of rhubarb I think I have ever seen. It resembled a Gunnera in stature.

Anyway, we had a lovely weekend, stayed overnight on the Saturday, and as a parting gift my mate chopped some rhubarb stems out from this clump and sent us on our way. I don't know about you but I love rhubarb, and I especially like it in a crumble. Mmm mmmmm.

So, we arrive home and the rhubarb is stashed in the kitchen. A few days later as I am passing the kitchen door one evening I see Mrs L at the far end just adding crumble topping to the crumble dish. Ah-hah! I know what that is! I started to salivate at the thought of what was to come, it has been a very long time since I had a rhubarb crumble and I couldn't wait! Dinner was served and I gleefully headed to the table. The green crumble dish was there, centre stage. A bit unusual that dessert was out before a main course, but on reflection I would be perfectly happy just eating rhubarb crumble on its own.

It was haloumi and couscous.

What the? I have rarely experienced such crushing disappointment. From a distance, couscous looks a lot like crumble topping, and there was no mistaking the dish. Why did she use the crumble dish? This was last week and I am not sure I have yet recovered. Meanwhile the rhubarb is still on the kitchen counter. Calling me. Taunting me.

I just thought I would mention this in case anyone else has a similar tale of unrequited lust and bitter disappointment that is any way comparable. To be honest I would be surprised, but who knows what lurks out there in blog land? Please do share any thoughts below.   

Starving of Wanstead

I am home alone and there is nothing to eat. Hungry, I checked the bread bin for sustenance. Half a stale pitta. Fruit bowl; a lemon. I ventured to the fridge. Four egg yolks in a bowl, left over from a pavlova last Wednesday. Some grated cheddar, a jar of cornichons, some jam, a lettuce, some carrots, and some milk that went off six days ago. The only really edible item was a packet of octopus tapas that I had promised Mrs L we would share. There are some wives, not many but some, who (it is said) prepare the necessary number of meals for their beloveds any time they go away, and leave them labelled in the fridge. With instructions. This may be an urban myth of course, but I checked all the way to the back and it seems that Mrs L is not one of them. I phoned her.

Where is all the food, I asked? It is in the shops, she replied. Eh? Shops? Apparently if I want to eat I have to go and buy food at a shop. Harsh. It is fair to say that these days I do not play an exactly equal role in the domestic necessities of Chateau L, but I'm busy earning a crust (which ironically I reckon I would have been pleased to find). The last time I went shopping for food was probably in about 2011, just before I got demoted and sent back to Canary Wharf. I had got the hang of it by then after starting from a low baseline in 2009, but I have regressed significantly. 

Dammit, I mean yes I do know how to go shopping, but I do not want to go shopping. It is out of my way, it takes time, it is irritating. You need bags, you have to choose things for a balanced meal (these days with lots of fibre) and then return home and cook it. I could, I suppose, order takeaway and absolutely stuff my face with greasy crap, but that doesn't sound very appealing. Plain pasta it is then, back to the mid 90s and my student days. I'll go food shopping tomorrow perhaps.

Talking of shopping my last experience was not a good one. These days I buy almost everything on line, but I needed a trellis quickly, or more specifically a plant obelisk. This is a structure that you stick in a plant pot and that provides support for a vine to climb up. I am trying to grow a passion-fruit (to stave off future starvation if I am abandoned again), and it has got to the stage where it needs repotting into a larger container and requires support. So on the way back from work I stopped off at what purported to be a garden centre. The place used to be Homebase a few years ago, but that closed and now it is something called a B&M Home Store. I'd never heard of it, but I knew my way there and soon walked through the large automatic doors. 

I found myself standing in a large warehouse full of junk. At first I wondered if the years had in fact dulled my memory and I taken a wrong turn somewhere, but no this was the place. It was extraordinary. There was no order, everything was completely random. The first aisle sold canned fish and garden lights. If you're shopping for tuna, would a set of solar-powered chinese lanterns be an impulse purchase? Equally, if you were after some garden lights would you slip in a couple of tins of salmon, well, just because? Who thought this was a clever move? I staggered around the place in a daze - much like the other customers it has to be said - looking for a trellis. The amount of tat was simply outstanding, mind-boggling in it's crappiness. Is this what the interior of houses in Leyton look like? Who buys this stuff thinking that yes, a Scooby Doo cuckoo clock is just the thing for the mantle-piece? 

I eventually found the part of the shop masquerading as a garden centre. Lots of paving slabs, white gravel and some half dead plants. The trellis was £1.99 and didn't look like it would last far into August. There was an obelisk, but when I picked up the box the contents fell out of the bottom in pieces. Self assembly required, and with the camp bed experience fresh in my mind I thought the better of it, forseeing a "straight-to-bin" experience. I returned home and constructed my own using thin pieces of dead bamboo from one of my plants and some string. Rustic but effective. I wish now of course that I'd bought a tin of that salmon....

All change

Big changes are afoot in Chateau L. Tape measures are out, architects and designers have been visiting, and things we have been meaning to do for about a decade are gradually beginning to take shape. The biggest change of all though is that Mrs L has resigned her commission. After nearly 20 years at the coal face she has decided that she has had enough and jacked it in. I know how she feels, most of us probably do, but she has proactively gone and done it. No, not divorce. She has resigned from her accountancy job.

I remember when I stopped working back in 2009 that it was such a wonderful sense of relief, and I'm sure she feels that too. I was of course sacked due to economic woes and had nothing to do (because looking after children is officially worth nothing in this country) whereas she has big plans. Plans that also involve looking after children, for she has decided to become a teacher. Readers of this blog would probably not think that Mrs L has the necessary skills to be a teacher. You need to be fierce and very strict. You need to tell people off all the time without hesitation. You need to bark orders. Oh, wait.....

She's going to teach A-level maths, and has been studiously revising, essentially redoing her exams from all those years ago. The house is full of quadratic equations, calculus and all sorts of other things that mean nothing to me. In the dim and distant past I do vaguely remember being made to do quadratic equations by a fierce maths teacher, but the years have proved me right and that teacher wrong, as in the intervening 25 years I have had no practical need to ever use one. Telling Mr McConkey that cast-iron prediction got me into trouble in 1989, but the truth always prevails. The poor man died actually, very very young and not long after I'd left that school, and without ever having the chance to apologise. I skipped A-level maths and went the languages route, French and German, which I knew would be useful for life within the European Union..... (Gah!). I have of course worked in a bank ever since, but still without recourse to everything being over 2a.

Utterly useless

So, all that begins in September this year, when Mrs L becomes a student teacher and starts to take her first formative steps in how to be bossy and command total respect. Before that it means the summer this year is a lot more relaxed, without the usual conundrum of what to do with the children. This has coincided with a distinct lull in my normally absurd travel pattern, and so we've been having a really rather nice time just relaxing at home. Oh sorry, my mistake. When I say relaxing what I mean is that we've been running around like blue-arsed flies, doing all the things that we've set to one side over the last ten years whilst we've been busy having full time jobs and being parents. When my own parents note (frequently) that we should move, get an extension done, organise x y and z, I retort that this stage of lives is just too busy for any of that. They nod, recall that their late thirties and early forties were equally busy, and then return to hassling us. But finally things are getting done. Mrs L is organising a loft conversion and a functioning kitchen with cupboard doors that don't fall off when you brush against them. I've sorted out the greenhouse, cut down overhanging tree branches, and weeded the terrace. She has steam-cleaned all of the cupboards, drawers and windowsills upstairs, and I've been round the house sorting through hidden corners and clearing out a decade of ill-advised purchases and things I mistakenly thought might be useful one day. Mrs L has in turn moved 4 years of unopened post from the kitchen counter to somewhere I have not found yet, and I got rid of the manky moth-eaten carpet in our guest room in preparation for the arrival of our new au pair.

Yes, the time has come, we need help. I don't even like having relatives to stay for a weekend, so the thought of somebody else in the house for nearly a whole year is currently giving me kittens. It was actually my idea, but a bit like Brexit voters I didn't expect it to genuinely happen. With my family-friendly working hours and Mrs L's new PGCE course starting later this year, the only practical way to ensure our children's continuing education was to enrol them in breakfast and after-school clubs. These are run by enterprising extortionists all over London. S.P.E.C.T.R.E have nothing on these guys, and two kids attending one of these places for an entire academic year came in at somewhere just shy of ten thousand quid. "Ten grand....", I choked as Mrs L broke the news. "We might as well get an au pair!" I didn't really mean that of course, but it was too late. Once again I was labelled a genius by my entire family, and before I knew it a candidate had been found and an arrival date set. She's Spanish, which will be great for the kids languages, and hopefully doesn't know what a quadratic equation is.

This formula generates my expected mental state in September 2016.

But it does mean a certain amount of domestic reorganisation is needed, which includes the loss of my study / the guestroom, the disposal of decrepit carpets, and fixing the bathroom door which one of our friends broke at our house-warming party in late 2004. This is what I mean when I say we've been busy for a while. It's been on the list, but we just haven't quite got round to it. All that is now changing, energy has refocussed on Chateau L, and things are looking noticeably different. Nicer different. Less cluttered different. And once the building work actually gets done, hopefully fantastically different as the adults will be abandoning the pandemonium of the first floor for the peace and tranquillity of loftier realms. It will of course be hell for a number of months, all happening just when we are at our very busiest and least able to deal with it. But we do chaos very well indeed having had years of practice. In many ways it is all we have ever known.

Sock Report

Yesterday I arrived off a plane from Dubai and went straight to work. Once there, I worked for a number of hours and then went home. Once unpacked, I was put to work on pairing socks by a wife who had clearly missed me. This task was deemed menial enough to put me in my place, and also simple enough for my feeble and jet-lagged brain to cope with. So I sat on the bed and had Chateau L's clean sock assortment dumped before me, and set about my task with not exactly gusto, but minor enthusiasm as this was somewhere I felt I could really add value. Yes, it is self-evaluation season at work as it happens. I picked up a bright yellow sock - easy - and set about hunting for its partner. 

Oh.

Nowhere. Frustrated at my lack of progress, I put this to one side and aimed for a pink one. Ah yes, and there's another pink one! But they're different lengths, and have a slightly different weave (very technical this sock business). Discarding this one, pleased at not having been fooled, I searched for the other two pink ones that I knew must be buried somewhere in the pile - I don't miss a trick me.

I found five, and none of them matched. What the? I went down the colour route at this point, making little sub-piles of socks, and was thus able to do a good few pairs. At this point I'd like to state that little girls' white school socks are a complete nightmare, and everything you thought you knew about sock-pairing is completely useless when faced with 30+ small highly-similar white socks. I persevered, but it was soon apparent that the task was beyond me. At this point Mrs L came to gloat. I complained that they were all odd, and that I had paired everything I could. Yes I know came her response. But what about this one I queried, dangling a sparkly black number with hippos on it. Oh, that's been in the pile for a while. Really? Shows how much domesticity has been coming my way of late, but per Mrs L, this is a problem that has been brewing for many months. No kidding. Do you know how many odd socks we have? I counted, and we have 86. It was 88 but consummate skill reduced it by two earlier this evening following a second stab. 

86!!! How is that even possible that we have that many socks in the first place? They are of every flavour and variety, from lurid pink to dull grey. From thick and woolly to thin and cottony. And not one matches. Does this mean that there are 86 more socks hiding in the house? Per the children there are not, but a quick inspection soon proved this to be a whopping great lie. Nonetheless, the recent finds do not in any way add up to nearly a hundred. There are doubtless more behind beds, stuffed in corners, and likely yet more still working their way through the system. There is also the real possibility that buried within sock drawers are unmatched pairs, but the only real answer to this whole conundrum is to fastidiously go round the house picking up every sock, clean or dirty, paired or unpaired, washing the whole lot and then starting from scratch. Neither Mrs L nor I have the willpower necessary to accomplish this feat, so I suggested simply chucking them all out for a neat resolution to the problem. How many odd socks are there now? Ahhhh, none! However this approach has been vetoed, so for now we've done what has apparently been done for the last eighteen months or more and shoved them all back at the bottom of the ironing basket for another futile session on another day. Real life, you can't beat it.

Piss Poor and Pissing Down

Last Sunday I was stood with Tim and Nick near the Broom Fields. The precise location isn't actually important, but that's where we were. Unsuprisingly, we were talking about birds. Specifically we were talking about migration. Slow, we remarked. Hasn't really started, we mused. This is the week, we surmised.

Oh how wrong we were. None of us have seen anything, with the exception of lots of water. Hard as it is to believe, none of us have seen a Sand Martin, and there has been one single House Martin. The patch list is miles behind where it should be, it is easily the poorest spring since records began*.  So, no birds, though I did take a very pleasing photo of a Greylag Goose, which you can see here. I hope to make loads of money out of it and retire, which is why I haven't put it on here to be downloaded at will. It does happen you know - I still see a photo I took of a plant in Naples over a decade ago being used regularly to sell seeds of the plant on Ebay. You can even see Mrs L in the background! I gave up trying to get people to desist long ago. In fact, to prove it's still happening, I had a quick search - took five seconds - and sure enough, my photo comes up on the fourth item down. Shameless.

Talking of Mrs L and photos, an interesting half hour a few nights ago resulted in this. Now before you say that some things should remain behind closed doors, this is perfectly safe, and frankly I think the world needs to know. This is Mrs L's latest handbag.

As you can see, it's broken. Again. All Mrs L's handbags break. The only type of handbag that wouldn't break would be made of reinforced steel, and would be so heavy as to be unportable. Why do they break? Because the non-metallic handbag that can safely hold 45,000 Tesco receipts, 36,000 used tissues, 14 broken pens, 5 lip balms, a purse, keys and a phone has yet to be designed, and nor will it ever be. Imagine if I had that little lot in my pockets?! In some ways men have it easy. There is simply not enough room in pockets to hold that amount of crap, so we throw it away. My simple suggestion of using a bigger handbag was met with all the scorn it deserved, as apparently a bigger handbag would suffer from exactly the same problem - ie bursting under the strain - but would just hold more and thus delay the inevitable "pop" that will one day come. How about throwing away receipts, I suggested? More scorn. I will check them against my bank statements (the ones in a pile three feet deep at the back of the wardrobe), she said. We sat on the sofa together, I eager to help, but not being allowed to, as carefully each scrunched-up receipt was flattened and read. In October 11 we bought 8 tins of Baked Beans and a new sponge. Fantastic! Happy memories! That one got binned. The next was from August - a scarf purchased in St Andrews - this one went into the keepers pile.

What?! Why on earth are you keeping that one dearest, I enquired. In case I want to take it back, came the 100% serious reply. You are kidding me? Do shopkeepers now rent scarves? Can you imagine going back to the shop in Fife, seven months later and just as it's getting warm again, and saying that you've changed your mind and you don't want it any more! You'd be chased down the street! Anyway we had a lot of fun, but there is now a problem. There is now not enough stuff in the handbag. Things move around now, it's all loose, and things could fall out. Any thumping noises you can hear are definitely not me banging my head against the wall repeatedly. Anyway, we must now begin the long, dark search for a new handbag. Do handbag review sites exist I asked, cautiously. The very notion! Reviews on the internet are for men exclusively it appears. Women do not write bag reviews for the consumption of other women. Women go to shops and poke at handbags, tut at handbags. So do I dare buy her a handbag for her birthday? Online? Not on your nelly! Plastic Bag anyone? Looks like we may have some Tesco ones.....

Lonely Husband

Mrs L went out today. To do music. This is her hobby, we must not begrudge it. I have, afterall, been known to go out birding from time to time. Not often, but nonetheless those few days of absenteeism are felt. And noted. So today it was her turn. She would only be gone for a few hours, she said. Back mid-afternoon, she said. Mrs L's mid-afternoon is 5:30pm. My mid-afternoon is about 1pm, perhaps 1:30. I pined.

So, no birding today. Well, I could have gone out on the patch this morning, I had a very slim window of opportunity, but I elected to stay in my nice warm bed and make soft snoring noises. This is another rare event, and as the days grow shorter and the nights colder, one I am hopeful of repeating. It has been a very pleasant weekend of low achievement. Precisely, had we had need of a doctor, what he would have ordered. My birding has been restricted to a very brief foray yesterday before lunch. This was enough to relocate the long-staying female Wigeon on Alexandra Lake, and not relocate the six Teal that have been hanging around. In fact the whole sortie could easily have been in vain had a Woodcock not flown past me whilst I was in the Broom Fields on the way back. Naturally there is no photo. I merely looked blankly at it as it flew past, and as it inclined it's head fractionally in my direction, I recalled the camera hanging off my shoulder, but of course it was too late. It nipped over the trees of Long Wood, and appeared to drop in. Even though it is November now, I decided not to go and look for it. The statistician I employ to count birds for me notes that this is only the second ever Woodcock that I have seen in Wanstead, and its sighting exactly mirrors the first, which also flew past my very surprised head in the Broom Fields and plopped into Long Wood. He also mentioned that this is patch year-tick 111, the dreaded Nelson, and that I had to hop home. This I dutifully did, and when I eventually arrived at Chateau L, further good news awaited me - the Woodcock was in fact an actual year tick, new for 2011 anywhere. I shan't tell you the number, it would be embarrassing.

The rest of the weekend has, as I mentioned, been binocular-free. A Greater Yellowlegs annoyed me briefy by being in Northumberland for the entire weekend, but once I realised that even contemplating twitching such a distance was utter madness, it ceased to rankle, and I busied myself doing nothing. Doing nothing, as any good interviewer will tell you, involves playing with children, stopping them fighting, cooking them food, and cleaning up after them. I did a great deal of nothing today, and am rather tired. And when, finally, Mrs L arrived back home, I flopped gratefully into an armchair with a vodka tonic enhanced by passion-fruit syrup, the handover complete. A little later on, I noticed she had left her laptop unguarded on the kitchen worktop. I snuck up to it, got up Google, and searched for "lovely husband", aiming to leave it on that page, just so she knew. Google is a marvellous thing sometimes. Do you know what it said? Try it at home and see if it works for you of if it's a phenomenon unique to Chateau L. Here, at any rate, a search for "lovely husband" brings up "did you mean to search for lonely husband?" Quite.

Not enough hours in the day

Imagine for a moment that I have a wick coming out of the top of my head. I am a candle, and I am alight. My hair is gently being singed, my scalp getting hotter. There is also a wick coming out of my left foot. That too is alight, and causing some discomfort. I am a candle burning at both ends. Put without stupid references to candles, there is not enough time in the day. Last night I went to bed at 1am, the night before that, also 1am. With paid employment now taking up the vast majority of my normal waking hours, all the stuff that I used to do during the day while the kids were at school is getting pushed to either end, and I’m still not getting it all done.

This is exactly how I remember it before, but then that was without the comparative luxury of knowing that one didn’t have to live in complete chaos. Back then, living in a bombsite seemed normal. When I lost my job in 2009, I turned my not inconsiderable energy and drive to running the house and looking after the kids, with possibly a small amount of local birding thrown in. Now that I am back at work, I see everything I strived to sort out disintegrating, and disintegrating fast. This is naturally extremely irritating. My response has been to attempt to squeeze some of what I used to do during the day into the mornings and evenings.

Last night for instance I did a pile of cleaning in the kitchen, and this morning saw me hanging up washing, cleaning up the kitchen – again, moving the vacuum cleaner whose upturned plug I had trodden on several times in the last few days, and helping the kids with the arduous task of putting away socks. It didn’t help that I got up late, but that was because I had only gone to bed a matter of hours previously after all the stuff I had needed to do last night. And this is with help!! At the moment, I am not responsible for either the school run or feeding anyone. That thankless task is being done by a succession of exhausted relatives, without whom we would be up a certain creek missing a certain paddle, and we are very grateful.

Tomorrow, I’m in charge again. I’ve had over a week in the office now, sorting myself out and working out what exactly it is that I need to do, but with that bedding-in out of the way, I’m going to attempt to work from home. I won’t have time during the day to do much of what I used to, but I think that just by being present when the children are around I can perhaps keep a lid on quite how much devastation they can cause. Or that is the plan anyway. In reality I’m going to be hiding myself away and hoping that they don’t kill each other.

We always knew that this period would be difficult, and of course it didn’t help that I went to both Shetland and Norfolk in quick succession, but that’s October for you, and I'm already planning next year. We’re both working full-time, we have three kids at school, including one on a daft half-day schedule (which thankfully comes to an end quite soon), and the house does not clean itself, nor the clothes wash themselves. Neither does food cook itself, nor transport itself from the shop to our kitchen. And more is the pity, for soon something will have to give. I’m thinking specifically of the word “cleaner” at this point. Though it pains me to pay someone else to clean my house, it may have to happen. It would be one less thing to worry about, and would of course help the economy. The Lithuanian economy primarily.

Then there is the small matter of local birding, the thing that above all keeps me sane and balanced. Can you guess how much I’ve done in the last two weeks? Exactly. Right now, I’d need help finding my way to Wanstead Flats.  I’ve not been out once. Not that there has been much to see, the odd Ring Ouzel, a few Skylarks and a large Sparrowhawk ;-) , but that’s not the point. I just enjoy being out there, and that has been sacrificed. I’m not happy about it, but there is nothing I can do at the moment. The good times are over it seems.....

Unless.....have a Shrike! They always cheer me up, and they may cheer you up too having just read my big whinge. This juvenile Woodchat Shrike at Lowestoft in Suffolk was extremely approachable, though with many other birders there, and a recent article in Birdwatch Mag about photographers, I didn't want to push my luck. We popped in to pay it homage on the way back from birdless Norfolk last weekend, and it cheered us up no end, as did a Glossy Ibis just down the road at Minsmere, site of some of my finest smash and grab raids. And I finally connected with the Semipalmated Sandpiper in Essex as well, although my mate Lee, er I mean Bradders, thinks we're stringing it as he didn't see it earlier in the afternoon. I of course would never doubt any of my mates' sightings..... no no no, never.

Le Fairy Magique de Chateau L

For the last two and a half years, there has been a Magic Fairy residing at Chateau L. No really. She arrived at around the same time that I was made redundant, and has been a huge boon for my family and I. I'm not sure we would have coped without the Fairy, she is amazing, and does everything. Washing, cooking, cleaning, shopping, copious dusting, and somehow also manages to operate a free taxi service. In short, a blessing, and we are privileged.

However, all is not well, the Fairy has been getting fidgety. You see, I have been looking for a job, and incredibly, I might actually get one. Back in the world of finance, and the Fairy is not pleased. She has announced her intention to leave. This is devastating news frankly, we cannot imagine surviving without her. All the things she does to keep us afloat, to keep us from drowning in dirty dishes and dust. All the meals, the freshly laundered clothes, the sparkling stainless steel. But her decision is final, she says. If I go back to work, she leaves, and there is no pleading with her, no convincing her. The lady's not for turning. And so, like Mary Poppins when her work is done, she will leave, and this family will be much the poorer for her departure.

We will miss her terribly, of course. More than just a domestic slave, she has become almost one of the family. But she has said that there are others in need, other families that she can assist, and so she'll go, and somewhere, in a quiet suburban street, a little bit of magic will light up fresh, grateful eyes. There's a voice that keeps on calling her, she says, and so she has to move on. We don't know where, and she won't tell us. Cryptically she says she'll always be just down the road.

So the day is coming soon, maybe tomorrow, when we will have to bid goodbye to our Fairy. There will be tears, but perhaps it is for the best.

Le Fairy magique de Chateau L

The Rite of Spring [Cleaning]

Yesterday was glorious. Blue sky, bright sunshine, and at 11 degrees centigrade, genuine warmth. Something primeval stirred in me, the marigolds called out to me, and before I knew what was happening I had been transported away on a frenzy of cleaning activity. I don't know if one can clean to death, but I must have come close.

By the time I looked up, it was almost 2pm. I had been cleaning for almost four and a half hours straight, daughter forgotten, lunch uncooked. And you know what? This morning the house looks exactly as it did yesterday morning. If anything, I'd say that it even looks slightly worse. What a pisser.

Evidence of the problem

The problem is children, or too many children. Whilst I was busy cleaning the upstairs bathroom and vacuuming the bedrooms, Pudding was downstairs experimenting with playdough. When I came downstairs, I had to send her upstairs to wash her hands (the downstairs bathroom by this point out of bounds whilst bleach-based products worked their magic). Whilst I was engaged in removing atoms of playdough from the seat of a wicker chair, she then made a mess of the sink and moved the contents of her bedroom onto the landing - a party, she said. When I arrived upstairs again,  I re-cleaned the sink and moved her belongings back into her bedroom, whereupon I discovered a mutitude of green, yellow and purple wheat-based flakes all over the landing. I got the vacuum out again....

I stuck her in front of Snow White and the Seven Little Men (Dwarf/Dwarves not yet in vocabulary) where she could cause no further destruction, and carried on. I pruned the very thorny Bougainvillea in the conservatory - this is middle-class cleaning - and emptied all the bins, one of my least favourite tasks in the whole world, particularly the bathroom one. Gagging, I returned indoors and tripped over a plastic tractor.

Mt. Garment

All manner of other mundane jobs followed, although I never went near a duster, and all of sudden it was way past lunchtime and the house was looking pretty good apart from washing draped everywhere. I congratulated myself on a job well done, and went to collect the other two kids. Upon arriving home I went straight to the kitchen for a cup of tea, parched, and when I next emerged cyclone Yasi had apparently passed through. I started the clear-up operation....

It's now this morning (obviously), and the house looks a tip again. Clothes all over the floor, piles of junk everywhere, the breakfast stuff still on the table, and last night's dinner to wash up. By the sounds of it there is a party in full swing on the upstairs landing, and it can only be a matter of time before the Slaty-backed Gull puts in an appearance and Dom is camped out in my garden.

Partygoer

Not sure really. Many things.

"It doesn't take a year to learn how to do washing if you actually concentrate"

A direct quote from Mrs L only recently, and rather damning. As a result of Lesser Kestrels, Ring Ouzels and suchlike, I've done very little washing in the last two weeks. When this was noticed by my beloved, I tried to deflect the inevitable criticism by saying it was too difficult, and that the additional complexity arising from the amount of wool in the house meant it wasn't fair. It fell on deaf ears, and I fear I have lost some BPs. The washing situation is now resolved, no thanks to me I might add, but really I could have done better. The silly season has not even started yet, and already I'm failing in my basic duties. Really I should spend the hours of darkness when no birds are visible doing all of this stuff, thus leaving the days clear, but then I wouldn't be able to sit in front of the computer for hours and hours every evening. This is a real problem.

Yes, blogging takes time, even this one. One of my favourite reads, Not Quite Scilly, has unexpectedly wound up, citing too much time as one of the reasons. This is a great shame. The other reason, if I understand him right, is a fear of becoming stale and repetitive after two years blogging. Luckily, there is no chance of that here! Perish the thought! No, here you are treated to constant innovation, birdy talk of a varied and stimulating nature, and top parenting tips. If I ever start to detail the minutae of my domestic trials, or post endless photos of mis-identified Gulls, that's when you need to start worrying.

Of course, that would never happen, but believe it or not, writing this does take time. Sometimes of course I just bash it out - though you would never be able to tell - but it can also be more involved on occasion. You are able to write for as long as you want, there is no word limit. Blogging does not encourage thrift or thought. If I felt so inclined, I could just waffle on and on for ages and ages, rather than carefully craft a post of just the right pace and length. Editing? What's that? Writing that recent article for Birdwatch magazine was one of the hardest things I have done for a long time. I was restricted to 750 words. 750?! That's nothing! By the time I have got to 750 words on here, I may have a vague idea of what the post is going to be about, but really I'm just getting warmed up. So to be all wrapped up, not a chance! After my first pass, I was on about 1600 words, every one critical. I wept as I deleted whole paragraphs....

All blog posts need a photo, even a filler. Believe it or not, it does not even need to be related in any way to the subject of the post. No, it doesn't matter. Just insert any old picture and you're done. Like this Reed Bunting for instance. You will not find any mention of a Reed Bunting today, but somehow, it just works. I have no idea how.

So, to Wanstead, which is the whole point of this blog. The bird death saga rumbles on. The stupidity of the local populace continues to beggar belief. I've seen families walking past the "Biohazard" signs and stepping over the high-viz tape to go and feed the ducks by the lake shore. Fail. The Corporation had to install proper security fencing to stop them. Personally I'd have let Darwinism take it's course, but there you go. The latest news is that the test results are back. The poison was an agricultural pesticide used to control fungus and insects, typically by food producers. I may have the wrong end of the stick, but it could be that the people involved were not looking to kill off the local corvid population, but instead had just wanted to get rid of this stuff and so had left it on top of a bin.... In other words, idiocy, rather than malice. The poison may even have been in that margarine tub. I had thought that somebody had stumbled across the dead birds before me, and had put as many as they could in the tub and left it visible for the Forest Keepers to deal with. But who knows, this is all idle speculation. Two local men were arrested, and were bailed until the end of April, so we will no doubt find out more then. The good news is that the area is now safe, and there is no further risk to either wildlife or people, even stupid ones. The even better news is that the car-park remains closed - long may that remain the case.

Mrs L banned me from going out today. This was a great shame as the Pallid Swift in Suffok was showing very well all morning. I would very much have liked to have seen a Swift that to all intents and pusposes looks exactly like a normal Swift, except, well, less browny. And she claims not to understand twitching! Honestly.

I managed to get some birding in though, employing extreme cunning. Today is the first day of the holidays, and by 10am Muffin was climbing the walls. I altruistically voluteered to go and exercise him on Wanstead Flats with a football. And binoculars. Shhhhhhh. There were Chiffchaffs everywhere, a few singing Blackcaps, and a single Willow Warbler. Most of the time I had my eyes on the sky though, hoping to see a Swift, even a boring paleish one. Wouldn't that have been something?! I didn't get any hirundines either, though Tim and Stuart had a Sand Martin over Heronry. No matter, plenty of time left to get one of those.

Right, this post is now the perfect length, and has reached it's natural conclusion. Satisfied, I can stop. This has nothing to do with dinner being ready in twenty minutes and the need to peel carrots. Wanstead Birder - Uncompromising.

The Social niceties of Children

Muffin had a friend round to play today. In the two hours he was here, I learned the following:

"I don't like big sausages, I only like little ones"
"I hate milk"
"The table is dirty"
"The bed upstairs is dirty"

and my favourite

"Why is this house so messy?"

The answer to this last one is easy. It is that I am in charge, and I have very clear priorities. Clean the house or twitch a Lesser Kestrel? Sorry kiddo, you'll have to somehow cope for a couple of hours before you can return to domestic paradise. And you can eat the sausages or go hungry.

Suffolk it was then. I arrived at Westleton at around 11am, to learn that the bird had disappeared from view some twenty minutes previously. For all of the previous three hours it had been happily perched on a fence. You could have written it I suppose. I gave it an hour and a half in the drizzle, but there was no sign, and then a thick mist descended as it warmed up a bit. Pudding and I headed back to the car for lunch, and wondered what the plan was. Though it pained me, we decided to cut our losses and go home. Have I ever mentioned how much I loathe dipping?

In a black mood, I turned the car around and headed for London. This was always the risk with a twitch so far away - a very slim window of opportunity, and a non-negotiable deadline to be back in London for. I knew this before I started, so I have no-one to blame but myself. I had to leave by 1:15 at the very latest in order to make the school run. At five past one my phone rang. It was John A, and the bird was back, exactly where it had been before.... Then Bradders rang with the same news. So much for my [blank-screened] pager....

I turned around, and screamed back to the site. I legged it the few hundred yards up the track to the ridge where you could scope the bird from, and before collapsing in an immense coughing fit, had a peek through a kind man's scope. Whoever you are, thanks very much. I find that twitchers are always willing to let a newly arrived and clearly panicking birder to have a look through their scope for the initial "tick" view, just in case the target vanishes whilst a tripod is being set up. I was in agony, but managed to set up my own scope and get a decent view of the bird. In my brief look at it - a stunning adult male - I was amazed at how bright it seemed versus our own Kestrel. I had enough time to note the salient pattern on the back, wings and head, and that was it, I had to go back to the car. I never even saw it fly. Tick and run. My only feelings were of relief, not elation. Rubbish. Of course, I'd rather have had this brief view than nothing at all, but the absurdity and futility of what I had just done was not lost on me. Twitching is total crap sometimes. Sometimes it's great, but today, and despite the successful outcome, I didn't enjoy it one little bit.

I made it back to school with five minutes to spare, and was thus able to be insulted by a six year old for the remainder of the afternoon. Sweet.


One of these next please.

Cabin Fever and Gluttony

I need to get out! I have been stuck indoors now for about three days. Every time I so much as glance at my bins Mrs L finds a new job for me, or I notice some new part of the house that is chaotic and needs putting right. I know, I should just roll with it - five children can mess up this place far more quickly than I can tidy it up - but somehow I can't just leave it. Must be my Domestic Goddess training kicking in.

It is still largely chaotic, but I am scoring minor, if brief, victories. For a short while the middle room actually looked quite nice, but then I turned my back and went off to do the recycling or something. When I came back from taking out yet more of the enormous quantity of bottles we are getting through, it looked like Beirut again.

There have been twelve of us staying in Chateau Lethbridge, which is less palatial than the name suggests. Today there are going to be eighteen of us. To put it mildly it is a tight squeeze, compounded by the fact that we now have a good proportion of China's economic output from the last year stacked up in bright and shiny piles everywhere you look. We were pretty good at not spoiling our kids this year, and remained rational and sensible in the amount of tat purchased, but various friends and relations went to town (Shanghai by the looks of things), and the cousins that are staying were absolutely innundated as well. There are piles of bedding in corners and on sofas, airbeds leaning up against walls, twenty-five thousand pairs of shoes in the hall, and people EVERYWHERE! I am tempted to go and hide in the greenhouse, which has running water, lights, heaters, a chair with a cushion, and a bottle of scotch, but I would get found out fairly quickly, and anyway, I dare not leave the house untended for fear of the apocalypse that would occur if I stopped tidying stuff away.

We have also all put on about 3 stone, and now have to pass each other sideways in the hall and doorways, which again makes the house feel that much smaller. The amount of food and alcohol consumed is bordering on the sickening. The fridge door keeps threatening to pop off, and amazingly after three days of people constantly shovelling food down their throats the in-laws are out shopping for more. I can't remember what the kitchen counters actually look like; for days now they have been covered in a layer of food - mainly protein items - about two feet thick, and people come in and graze when they feel that their esophagus's have cleared sufficiently from the last helping. As soon as all the visitors depart tomorrow, Mrs L & I are eating nothing but salad until about March.

I can barely remember what a bird looks like, and somebody will need to show me which end of my binoculars to look through. Hopefully I can get out tomorrow, though I expect that the various Smew, Wigeon and other rare wildfowl that have been happily enjoying the Heronry Pond whilst I have been gazing longingly out of the window will all depart tonight leaving just Coot and Mallard. However, if I do find anything you'll be the first to know.

Right, must dash, my bloodstream alcohol levels are dangerously low and I have not eaten for over twenty minutes.

The aroma of fresh pine

The aroma of fresh pine is permeating the house. Not toilet cleaner, a Christmas Tree. According to the label, it is apparently a classic Nordmann. It is now in the front room, classically dropping pine needles all over the floor. By the time I had put the vacuum cleaner back in the cupboard and gone back to admire my tree erection handiwork, there was a fresh scattering. Non-drop? Let's just hope it is merely adjusting to its recent change in circumstances and will pull itself together and remember why it cost forty quid.

Fittingly, it has also begun to snow, and this wintry scene has been complemented by the arrival of a small flock of Lesser Redpolls, which is really what I wanted to write about. There are somewhere between fifteen and eighteen birds, and a couple of Goldfinch with them. They are mostly feeding in a tree with dangly bits (my botany is not all that) three doors down, but every now and then they fly around in a big circle and land in the tree at the bottom of my garden, which I think is a sycamore. This morning, as I was having breakfast, three of the flock diverted and sat up in the Mahonia right next to the terrace. They were beautiful, I didn't have my camera, and naturally they have not returned. I did manage to grab a shot over the fence as they fed, but it's not really what I had in mind.

If only I lived in SW London, as these would then be Mealy Redpoll.

This is only the second time we have had Redpolls in the garden. The first were three fleeting birds about two years ago that I never got good views of, so in some ways this feels like tick. I filled up the feeders yesterday, just in time for the truly cold weather, and this morning there have been a succession of visitors. Greenfinches, Sparrows and loads of Blue Tits and Great Tits, but also a few Chaffinches and Robins. There has been a Jay, until four Blackbirds converged and saw it off, the resident Jackdaws have been about, and a Wren has been singing from down the end somewhere. All in all rather a pleasant morning. All I need now is a Nuthatch to complete the scene.

Suburban idyll

I have dutifully checked the Basin, Heronry and Perch Ponds, and found nothing of interest. Perch and Heronry have partially frozen, including the bit where the Goldeneye likes to hang out, and there was no sign of it this morning. It is a bird that is supposed to arrive in cold weather, not be driven away by it dammit. I'll check again tomorrow but I have a horrible feeling it has gone.

I have to go. Pudding is telling me she has Christmas Trees in her socks. Bloody rip-off Nordmann.

EDIT: The sock Christmas Trees were Brio ones, and they were indeed in her socks, which were on her feet. If I knew, I would tell you.

Gardening

One of things I said I would do when I got the axe was gardening. Well actually I said the garden would get sorted. Clearly I did not think this through, as in order for that to happen it would need to be done either by me or by a gardener. We can't afford a gardener, and my attitude has been somewhat laissez-faire. VERY laissez-faire. With three kids, you can't possibly have a nice garden anyway, that is what I tell myself. Mrs L cites this as yet one more example of my bone-idleness when it comes to all things domestic. I had an initial spurt of gardening and other domestic chores, but when I tell you that my youngest daughter's curtain-pole fell down in January and that it and the curtains are still leaning up against the corner of her wall you will realise what she is up against. Not that she is any better at getting house stuff done, but she does at least go off to work for five days every week, an excuse that I don't have. And no, I haven't sorted out that monumental pile of filing - in fact it has grown by about fifty percent, and the additional part has been living in the middle room. Maybe today I will take it upstairs, that would be a good thing to get under my belt.

Realising that the garden was looking dreadful, this Tuesday I wielded the secateurs in anger for the first time in months. The victim was a Yew bush down the bottom that was encroaching on access to the shed. It looks a lot better now, apart from the ring of dead brown grass that has been exposed. This is just one minor triumph though. Everywhere you look there is something that needs pruning or trimming, and there is some serious tree-surgery needed on the Lime and the Maple which even if I had the inclination I could not do. To add to my woes, it is now Autumn, and I need to go birding....

The carefully manicured lawn. I take my inspiration from The Oval.

I am off again at the weekend. Back to the SW. I am Esso's official sponsor. This time the forecast looks truly stunning. All of Sunday is a huge gale blowing directly from the south-west, bringing a succession of large Procellariiformes straight past my deck-chair on Gwennap Head. My stock-pile of Brownie Points, whilst not at an all-time low, is not ready for Autumn 2009. In retrospect, I have played the summer very badly indeed. Show-home Shaun has been amazing in this respect, I think he knocked down his entire house and built it again from the ground up, with new coving and everything, so he is sorted for BPs for a long time. I have today and tomorrow to do a huge number of BP-earning tasks, and I am going to start with some gardening. I am even going to get THE SHREDDER out. You know it is serious when the shredder comes out - to even get it out from behind the mountain of bikes and garden play-things takes about half an hour, so that motivates you to chop loads of stuff down. Gardening is not a bad thing, for one thing I can keep half an eye on the sky and listen out for overhead migrants. I have been doing a lot of this, but unproductively from a deck-chair, with the garden growing out of control beneath my feet.

This is not from my garden, but I would like it to be.

My house list is very dear to me. I get unreasonably excited when I get a house tick. Birds I would usually not give a second glace become MEGA if they go in or over my airspace. A prime example of this is a Blue Tit. On the patch, out birding anywhere at all, and they get ignored. In the garden, brilliant. Actually that isn't true, I pretty much ignore these in the garden as well, but if you stop and think about it, a Blue Tit is probably one of our most amazing-looking birds. Most of our birds are brown and unremarkable. This one has a bright blue cap and tail, it has a pure white face with cool black markings, and the belly is bright yellow. Stunning n'est-ce-pas?. If you were on holiday abroad and saw something that bright and shiny flitting through a bush, I am willing to bet you would get pretty worked up and say "Wow, what was that?!" a lot. But as we see them day in day out we just ignore them which is ludicrous. My new life has seen me take a renewed interest in the house list, and indeed the extra time spent in the garden since February has added ten ticks. I can't wait for the next one, which I hope will be an Osprey on my new squirrel-proof trout-dispenser.

Most birders keep garden or house lists, and there are some pretty amazing ones out there. Last year I twitched a Dark-eyed Junco at Dungeness that was in some bloke's garden, and he said it was his second! This year I went back to that very same garden for an Icterine Warbler. It is at times like this that I wish I wasn't in zone 3, but you can't have it all I guess. My house list stands at fifty, which I think is pretty good for suburbia, and I get to see cool blue and yellow birds every day. When you next see one in your garden and turn away in utter apathy, spare a thought for those poor guys up in Shetland whose gardens are so barren they hardly ever get them and have to make do with dross like Bluethroats and White-tailed Eagles.

All finished. Lovely.

7 Loooong weeks

Gratuitous LBB photo. Plenty more of these to come.

Hurrah, t'is the summer holidays! Seven weeks of providing non-stop entertainment and food, and refereeing endless squabbles between siblings. This is my first go at the summer holidays, and I am pleased to report that so far so good. We are two weeks in and all three offspring are still alive and uninjured, the house is still standing, and I am actually feeling pretty perky. Can't help feeling that the last two weeks have been the easy ones though. Mrs L had one of them for the first week, and then we spent the second week being looked after by my parentals in Fife. The real fun starts now I expect. Tomorrow morning a friend is coming to play, which means that by about midday the house should look like the the Gaza Strip. When the friend leaves, there will be a fit of immense proportions as the realization dawns on Muffin (trial pseudonym) that he now has to clear it all up. It has happened before; I could have a million conversations with him trying to pre-empt what will happen but it is futile, and we both know it. On the plus side, there will be an away leg later on, and I will be down to two for an afternoon. I don't yet know when, but I'll be sure to book a BBRC rarity.

Some time ago I wrote that I should start lists for the kids as they'll surely be interested in the years to come. This I have now done, and they are pretty good too. This past week or so, the youngest, here-on-in known as Pudding, has managed to tick Great Spotted Cuckoo, Ferruginous Duck and Ring-necked Duck. Muffin got both the ducks but not the Cuckoo, but unfortunately middle kid, Pie, wasn't present for any of them, and was looking the other way when the Bee-eater flew past (note how the "Blue-cheeked" is utterly superfluous here - we all know what species I am talking about). Need to sort this out as she is lagging, as can be seen here:

Muffin
Sharp-tailed Sandpiper
American Golden Plover
King Eider
Hoopoe
Spoonbill
Ferruginous Duck
Ring-necked Duck

Pudding
Hoopoe
Spoonbill
Iceland Gull
Black-winged Pratincole
Great Spotted Cuckoo
Ferruginous Duck
Ring-necked Duck

Pie
Cattle Egret
Hoopoe
Spoonbill

Am I a good father or what? Unique parenting skills. This is merely the list of notable birds they have seen. I figure that if they can ID Oystercatcher in flight aged 5 there is no real need to record any dross (other than Hoopoes).

In a bid to enhance their fledgling lists, and in a desperate effort to eke out another day before terminal boredom sets in, we went to Breydon yesterday to try for what is now a Pacific Golden Plover. Didn't see it, but I did learn that Muffin can do Oystercatchers. Poor kid. Rather charmingly he is also now pointing out birds and butterflies to the other two. Despite dipping it was really a rather pleasant day out in the sunshine, waders galore, and including a bargain lunch at ASDA in Great Yarmouth.

Other hot news is that the Dip-monkey has started a blog, and is very worryingly notching up posts at a rate of knots. Like me he is a committed father, family-man, and dedicated patch-worker....

Giant Kittiwake, right. A new species.

Sock issues and a "doggy"

Problem - I have too many socks. Now that I am a bum, I wear flip-flops all day long. Consequently there are no longer any socks working their way through the system; they are all clean and my sock drawer is overflowing to the point where it is almost impossible to close. And when I do need to go in there, for instance for a pair of walking socks, the action of pulling them out disturbs the delicate tessellation. You would think that removing a pair of socks would make the drawer that little bit easier to close but you would be wrong. You have to start over, and another precious two minutes when you could be damp-dusting is gone forever. So what should I do? Throw some socks away? Create a second sock stash somewhere? This is the kind of weighty issue that now consumes my every waking moment, and has been annoying me since about April. There is a similar issue with the shirt cupboard, but that is less of a problem as I go in there less frequently, and the overspill of shirts seems quite happy on the back of a chair where it has been since March. In fact the whole house is a bit of a tip. Look at this pile of filing that I have to do!

Note the caution employed before publishing this to the world wide web. Despite a readership numbering in the, oh, tens, you can never be too careful.

It is always the same. You do no filing for six months, and then do the whole lot in one day, and it takes hours. When it is finally over, you get that unique feeling of satisfaction as you bask in the extra 3 ft sq of floor space you have created. As you crack open the celebratory bubbly, you tell yourself very firmly that this WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN and that you will do the filing religiously every week at an allotted time. You are very serious about this commitment. After all, it is June and there are no birds to see anyway. The first week passes, and you suddenly find you have not even opened the post, let alone thought about filing it. So you don't bother, and slowly but surely a huge mound of paper builds up. You start off by putting it in neat piles on the kitchen counter. When the row of little piles reaches 6ft long and you can no longer make a cup of tea, the piles get moved upstairs, and the kitchen is a vision of loveliness once more. Out of sight, out of mind. Six months pass, and then one day you discover you live in a shit-hole. "Fuck it" you say, and go off and look at butterflies instead. But THE PILE IS STILL THERE, rankling, growing. You tell yourself you will definitely sort it out. Soon. Living the domestic dream. Anyway why can't people just stop sending me stuff?

Eating breakfast en famille this morning, we were surprised when our youngest spotted a "doggy" in the garden. It had buried some food in a large plant pot, and was craftily retrieving it piece by piece and slinking off to eat it behind the greenhouse. I was able to sneak out and position myself for when it came back for more - "click" - fair to say it was quite surprised. To show its appreciation for the friendly householder it left a smeary shit on the lawn after I had gone back inside. Nice doggy.

"Why is there a man in pants crouching near my toilet?"

One more piece of news - another addition to the reading list on the right. Deserves a link on the basis of this post alone. As a recent employee of a large multi-national, and all the utter bollocks that goes with it, this left a big grin on my face. I look forward to using it when I start to look for work again.

Ho-hum

Just finished playing Hide and Seek with my two daughters. They were hiding behind the armchair upstairs, which is exactly where they hid last time, and also the time before that. This makes the game only marginally challenging, but they both enjoy it enormously. It will be a momentous occasion the day I go upstairs and find the spot behind the chair empty. Still, whilst I am dutifully counting to twenty downstairs, and they are finding yet another really really good hiding place upstairs, I can continue with my never-ending domestic adventure.

This has been cleaned since the last photo and was beautiful and gleaming. Mrs L cooked potatoes on the top right burner about 5 minutes after I cleaned it. I lost the will to live.

This week I have been stung by some harsh criticism. Both girls have coughs. This is not some minor bug though, like Swine Flu for instance. No. It is caused by dust. This was the pronouncement of Mrs L as I dragged my broken body into bed last Sunday at about 11pm after taking the bin out, sorting out the recycling, hanging up the washing, doing the washing up, and stacking the dishwasher. Apparently I have not vacuumed enough upstairs, nor have I done enough DAMP dusting. This is different to normal dusting, MUCH more effective. I remember fondly Mrs L doing some damp-dusting in about 1999, so I'm glad she still remembers just how effective it is. Anyway, not wanting to be thought of as a shirker of domestic responsibility, I spent the whole of Monday morning after my lie-in cleaning the upstairs. I even vacuumed the picture rails, I think for the first time since we moved here in 2004. "You should damp-dust" said Mrs L as I drifted past with the vacuum. Mrs L works from home on a Monday, which is handy for cups of tea, but less handy for up-to-the-minute commentary on the state of the house. This of course means that I do all the cleaning on Mondays, and then just loll about for the rest of the week. So the burning question - did the upstairs need vacuuming? Possibly.

Today the watchful eye is at work, so I have been swanning about at home. I vacuumed downstairs and did two loads of washing before the Ashes started, but since then it has all been a bit slack, bar the odd lengthy hunt for hidden children. Very happily Blowers is back, so there are plummy tones coming from the radio talking about Amber Liquid. We're not doing very well though. I already have two emails from Shippo. The first one can be summarised as follows: "You Pommy bastards are a load of shite". The second is similar to the first. Good old Shippo, long may this correspondence continue. I can only hope that we do better than in 2007, or opening my emails could become an increasingly traumatic experience.

Order. Peace. Tranquility. Pre-chaos.

The girls and I took lunch at midday precisely, Beans on Mat again, a firm favourite. They are now having a nap, and in between doing boring tasks like working out how the fluorescent lights work, I am writing this. Two out of the three lights don't work anymore, and I can't possibly cook in poor lighting conditions. Bad light stops Stir Fry. The good news is that I have got the tubes out, and even rather expertly switched the little starter things around with the one that still works, to make sure it is actually the bulbs that need replacing.

Right, that's it. I'm off to hoover up dried baked beans from the conservatory floor. Top tip of the day: In summer, leave all food spillages for at least 2 hours. They dry out very quickly and are much easier to clean up. Also, rice is by far the most satisfying food spillage. In a freshly-emptied Dyson the grains make a fab noise rattling round the container bit.

Visible here are two baked beans that escaped from a toddler at lunch, plus a very small piece of toast (right). The yellow bit (below) is either a fragment of cornflake from breakfast, or sweetcorn from dinner yesterday. I neither know nor care.

Oh, and token bird content from the weekend.

Traffic-cone-billed Tern.

EDIT at 4.10pm. We have light! Dinner is assured.