Favourite photos

This time last year I had recently returned from a photographic expedition to Florida. If anyone is interested the relevant blog posts/trip report starts here. Likely not, but those were the days. I've been taking solace in reminding myself of some of the great trips I've been on, the wonderful birds I've seen and the fun I had seeing them. Although I'm marooned in Wanstead at the moment looking back at these photographic memories never fails to raise a smile and I am so glad I documented them all. 

There are some photos that I consider a cut above. Photos that I will always remember taking, photos that made me smile at the time, that perhaps even elicited a giggle. I just found one that I think sits very near the top of my list of all-time favourite photos. It's not a Wheatear. It's not any kind of pin sharp bird. It's not a glorious sunset from an epic location. It's not artistic or technically clever in any way. In fact I would go so far as to say that is is plain stupid. It's not even taken with a proper camera, it's simply a snap from my phone. I don't recall ever having posted it, or if I have I can't find it. But even if I did it is one of those photos where the quality easily merits a repeat.

It is Snuffi. Snuffi is a small and partially threadbare Panther. Many of my favourite photos involve Snuffi. He comes with me on every trip, and it is essential that he has his photo taken in front of landmarks and so on, or at least somewhere readily identifiable as being "there". If you have followed this blog for any length of time you will no doubt have seen him pop up before, usually at the very end of trip reports. You have probably been kind enough not to mention it. That a middle-aged man could have such an attachment to a small cuddly toy is best left to professionals, but here is a photo from that trip to Florida. I remember passing the sign and then stopping the car and turning back once my feeble brain had processed the possibility that the nice clear stretch of road afforded. I am very glad that I did as in my book this is one of the all-time greats.

What are these funny green things?

I've just found these odd green tubey things on a shelf. Does anyone know what they are and what they're used for? They've got glass at both ends and appear to be some bizarre device for making things appear really small, which seems really rather pointless. I can't remember ever using them and I have no idea where they have come from or how they got into the house. Suggestions gratefully received.

In other news I may start birding again soon.

Snippets from the big wide world

Dealing with a few observations from recent times, this post is about dogs, massages, and twitter. All perfectly logical and highly complementary. I'll start with the dogs as it has been a while has it not? I've been saving this one up, not because I agree with it (go figure) but because I've been busy and then subsequently misplaced it. I found it again the other day tucked in a book, and it comes from the Science Editor of The Times - not a newspaper I normally I read but I found a free copy somewhere (a plane? Ed.) back in April. A bit of light-hearted science is applied to that most esteemed character, the dog owner who is so blinkered by their own inalienable and innate sense of right that they simply cannot  see any other point of view. Ever met anyone like that whilst out birding? No, neither have I.

A German academic, amusingly called Matthias Gross, has conducted a study lasting a decade which concludes that afternoon dog walkers are more likely to pick up their beloved pet's mess than their morning counterparts, who often pretend not to have seen their dog curl one out. You could argue that this particular fact only requires a week to work out, perhaps not even that long, but you have to admire the dedication. The study paper is titled "Natural Waste: canine companions and the lure of inattentively pooping in public", and I am urgently trying to find a copy.

The professor notes all sorts of behaviours that the likes of you and I will immediately recognise. Sudden earnest phone conversations for instance, termed "strategic non-knowledge". Or if a dog-walker does make the effort, the conscious over-the-shoulder look as they do so. He also notes that fabulous phenomenon of the "poo tree". Apparently in the ten years of the study he never once witnessed the ritual of hanging a poo bag on a tree. Thinking about it, neither have I, but a particularly brilliant quote highlights; "they [sic] conduct dirty protests against a society that oppresses their dog's right to defecate at will." He argues that it is an important way of rejecting social expectation by expressing their scorn with parody. I argue that it's being an asshole, but then I'm not a scientist. Where the Professor and I do share a view however is in trying to get to the true answer. But apparently dog owners declined to be interviewed. Who knew that The Times was so sensationalist? Approaches were frequently met with aggression, with friendlier responses being "mind your own business", and "don't you have anything better to do?" After ten years you may well agree with the latter point, but coming from someone who frequently challenges dog owners, all I can say is that if any of them were ever so measured and polite back to me I might easily faint there and then. Commoner responses can be summarised neatly as "Fuck off you prick", or alternatively "I'll do whatever I want, fuck you. (you prick)", but of course my favourites are the incredibly poorly constructed arguments as to why their dog, and by association themselves, ought to be able to do exactly what they want to the detriment of all other human beings and animals. I have enough material to fill a book, so it's disappointing that the study doesn't delve into these irrational outbursts as a psychoanalyst (or birder) could have a marvellous read. Nor does he explore the mythical dog-walker apology, but then again the study only lasted ten years so he can probably be forgiven. My most recent highlight from the field is being bitten on my watch by a passing puppy, the new dog of a grumpy man who lives on my road and who in ten years of walking past me has never exchanged so much as a single word. Well it turns out he's not mute after all, as after pulling the animal away from my wrist via a big smear of saliva and a nice red weal on my hand, was heard to say "come along Poppy*". My wry retort of "You could apologise" was not acknowledged. But I know where he lives, and I may deliver his poo back to him later as never once has he returned home with a bag. You are welcome.

In other social interaction of the heart-warming kind, this week I have been called out as a bird-hater, someone who is all talk no action, and an ass. Well, one of three isn't so bad I guess, but this particular story is so wonderful that it merits some kind of record for posterity, and if you read the news possibly Twitter, which is where this thoughtful exchange took place, may not be around for long. In summary it contains the worst of anthropomorphic drivel, high levels of stupidy, total non-acceptance of conventional wisdom, and a rapid spiral into abuse. I take it back actually, Twitter's commercial future is as rosy as it comes. 

Anyhow, one of my followers  - for the sake of anonymity let's call them halfwit - found two nearly-fledged birds close to a nest. Oh @Wansteadbirder, what should I do? Well let's see, I reckon you should pick them up, give them names, hand-rear them for a while, and then wait for the canonisation that will surely follow. I didn't say that of course, as I am not the facetious type. Instead I suggested that the birds be left alone, and shared an RSPB link to a long-standing FAQ about what to do in this situation, which in summary says "leave them alone" (just on the off-chance that anyone really really stupid out there hasn't grasped that fact yet). I also mentioned that unfortunately this does happen, and nature isn't necessarily all cuddles and happiness. This touched a nerve with halfwit, who went on the offensive immediately with a number of absurd statements, including various pathetic hashtags, accusing me of hating birds, calling me various expletives, and culminating in the insightful "If you get hurt in an accident I hope nobody calls an ambulance just like wot the poor birds won't", or something even less grammatically excellent. Obviously I did not respond in kind, but agreed that in posting the RSPB advice I did indeed hate birds, and that I was chuffed to bits that we had got to the ambulance bit so quickly. This irony fell on deaf ears, and the tirade unfortunately continued for some while, even involving a few genuine bird-lovers that I know, to whom my thanks. Oh sorry, my mistake, they all hate birds too. Nothing of course beats the ambulance tweet, but I did enjoy halfwit's courteous gratitude towards Prof W, who said to leave the birds alone and shared......the same RSPB link. Thank goodness that at least somebody was helpful. I was also advised by halfwit to give up my job, as obviously all people's Twitter account names reflect exactly what it is that they do in real life, oh yes. Two days later and still being called a twat I decided that the "block" feature might be usefully employed, so sadly any further gems won't be seen, or at least not by me. However I would ask that correspondents and readers keep me fully informed about anything that could surpass the crass idiocy of the ambulance tweet, as that would be special and a real shame to miss out on.

In other news I had a back massage. It hurt a lot and was indescribably awful in all respects. It came included with an airline ticket, but I remain utterly mystified as to why anyone would pay good money to simply be abused. Twitter, on the other hand, is free.

*name changed to protect the innocent guilty. Gosh I am being good today.

Tickling the Ivory....

Some Monday morning merriment as I have nothing sensible to say at all. Still reflecting on what a great bird it was and I'm so glad I went. Even non-twitchers should go and see this, which I suppose is why I went. Now, where did I leave that Ross's Gull.....

Plan B

I don't really have any time in which to travel any distance. Northumberland, Aberdeen, North Uist and Orkney are all completely out of the question. So here's plan B........ If it works, you'll be the first to know.

Possibly my favourite photo from the whole trip....

Unexpected visitor to Debrecen Great Wood. Or perhaps, given this is me we're talking about, entirely expected.

Nuthatch photography

I've always wanted to photography Nuthatch, but rarely had the opportunity. Usually the best opportunities are at feeding stations, and it's difficult to get a natural-looking perch - I certainly don't want a photo of a bird on a peanut feeder! And typically it's quite dark as well, set low down under a thick canopy. Add that to the fact that you often have to shoot through glass, and it all adds up to why I've rarely bothered even pressing the shutter. Today though I finally got the opportunity I had been craving, and locally too! I found a bird completely out in the open that seemed to have little if any fear of people. I took hundreds of images, but have only time to show three.

The first is the classic perched shot, of the bird horizontal on a tree trunk. This view is rarely seen, usually it's of a 'classic' bird vertically against a trunk, so this was nice to capture.

The second shot is of course the afore-mentioned 'classic'. Bird creeping vertically down a trunk, with the front half of its body peeling away from the tree. There are some that say there is no point trying to take the same photo that hundreds of other people have taken, but I reckon this particular pose is one that you can never tire of. Believe it or not the bird rarely adopted this posture, but evetually I saw my moment and took it.

The final shot is of the bird in flight. You don't see many of these at all for some reason, so I was really pleased to nail it. Very tricky indeed - timing was everything, and it was only on about my tenth attempt that I managed to lift the camera to my eye quickly enough. Nuthatches move incredibly quickly - thank God for autofocus!

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.....

Sharing is caring

Two photos, one much more exciting than the other. If moths are your cup of tea, you will like the first one - it is called an Early Grey, and is the first I have ever caught. The second shows that drunkeness on the Flats is reaching increasingly decadent proportions, and was very nearly a London mega. The real prize is of course Champagne Razorinbill. We live in hope.

Meet Occupy London

Not really! Hah! Just trying to wind [some of] you up! Can you imagine? Me, scum-of-the-earth dangerously intolerant right-wing fascist Osborne love-child nasty unpleasant financial worker bastard and single-handed perpetrator of massive social and economic injustice, publicly airing anything at all on people who feel so strongly about capitalism that they are prepared to live in a tent on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral for months in order to make their point? Oh, except most of them go home at night. No no, it would be very very wrong of me to say anything at all on this [my] blog about anything that might be remotely controversial or have a whiff of soapbox about it. So I shan’t. And those of you whose comments were no doubt ready-formed the moment you saw the title of this post, well, perhaps you have something to say about birds?

No? Funny that. Not to worry though, I do. Lots. In fact that’s what I write about most of the time. Parakeets, Pigeons, Ducks, Woodpeckers, Wheatears, Skylarks, Sandpipers, Yellowthroats, Northern Waterthrushes, Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters, Fea’s Petrels... Nice and safe, birds.  Guaranteed not to raise aaany hackles. I was a bit busy yesterday, so didn’t see any - this is the trouble with trying to write a bird blog. Of course I could just write nothing..... Aaaanyway, today the plan was to rectify that, but once again it didn’t happen. Actually I tell a lie – I left on the school run a little bit early so I could check the Basin on the way. Virtually nothing. And almost unbelievably it soon became less than virtually nothing as man was walking his dog across one of the fairways closest to the water and a bunch of them flew off. Is nothing sacred?! Pfffffffff.

Talking of dogs, I recently discovered that one of my Twitter acolytes is a beagle. No, really. Well, not actually really, obviously, but really enough in the same sense that a cat that wandered onto the pitch at Anfield a couple of weeks ago is also a Twitter user..... Yes, people with mouth-watering amounts of spare time are pretending to be animals on Twitter - and some say that Twitter is a complete waste of time. Honestly. I haven’t been through the whole list to discover if any of the others are animals, but assuming the rest are human, if you take me as a proxy - with approximately one third of a percent of my followers being dogs, and Twitter as a whole having half a billion users - that means that there are 1.6 million people pretending to be dogs online. If that isn’t a tragic statistic, I don’t know what is. Three thousand dogs set up new accounts every day, and Lady Gaga, Twitter's most-followed person, has over 60,000 canine chums – which goes a long way to explaining that meat dress she wore last year. It wasn’t a statement designed to provoke outrage, comment and discussion; no, it was simply for her adoring fans.

Woof woof!

Binocular Confessional

I have a Binocular obsession. There, I’ve said it. Like most people I have two eyes. They are, again like most people, nicely positioned either side of the top of my nose. In other words my face, other than being a bit fat, is perfectly normal. With my two evenly-spaced eyes, I can use precisely one pair of binoculars. Any more than one, and I get into all sorts of difficulty.

Why then do I currently have six pairs of binoculars? Ok, so one of these was a freebie with a magazine subscription and lives in the car, and is about as technologically advanced as two smarty tubes with the lids popped off (and about as useful for seeing birds with) but the other ones are all proper ones, and at any one time, four of them are likely to be gathering dust. I could argue that I have one pair for each member of the family, but I put them all off birds years ago, and with the exception of muffin, they’re about as likely to pick up a pair of bins as they are to take Duivendijk to bed for some light perusing.

Once upon a time, I had one pair of binoculars. I’d saved up for them, they were my first really nice pair. I’d thought that the ones I’d inherited from my grandfather were amazing, then I picked up some Leica Ultravids and I saw the light. I watched out for my pennies, they turned into pounds, and after what seemed like an age I gathered them into a huge pile and dragged them to a Leica dealer in central London, emerging some time later with a very nice and shiny pair of my dream bins.

Do you know what happened to them? I’ve almost certainly mentioned it before, and it still chokes me up. On my way back home after a long, hard day of honest toil, four less-honest people jumped on me in Bush Wood because they wanted my mobile phone. Needless to say they took my mobile phone, and as an afterthought, my bag too. With it went my prized binoculars. What happened to them, who can say? Outwardly they look like a pair of bins, with nothing to suggest they were worth twenty times what my phone was worth. The ready currency of thugs and petty criminals generally being portable electronics with things like Nokia and Sony written on them, I suspect that my bins, with their quaint little red scripted dot on, ended up in a bin. Or a bush perhaps.  It doesn’t matter. They were gone, and from that point on binoculars ceased to be something special. With the insurance payout fortunately coinciding with the dealers looking to clear old stock in preparation for an updated model, I bought two replacement pairs, a 7x for general birding, and 10x for when I would be without a scope. And then for good measure, I bought a cheap(ish) pair of small second-hand roof-prisms to use on the patch that wouldn’t cause me much angst if I was robbed again. Needless to say I always used one of the other pairs instead.

For a year or two, this new status quo was maintained. To Mrs L, one pair of bins looks much like another, and no subterfuge was needed. Recently though, I bought a pair of porros out of curiosity, and they are so good that I can’t possibly sell them again, but unfortunately I can’t possibly go birding with them because they look so antiquated and rubbish. I have an image to maintain, dontchaknow? Not really. Though they are optically sensational, wide and bright, they are not waterproof, and as such, useless for birding. They now live on a windowsill at home, ready for the day when a distant raptor needs resolving into a Short-toed Eagle with an abysmally poor sense of direction. I’ve used them twice I think, and they were both Crows.

All was going well, and then for no reason at all other than that they were a “bargain”, I bought another pair last week. I really really like them. They could easily turn into the bins I use every day. So now I have a problem, a stupid problem entirely of my own making. What I really need to do is pull myself together, select one pair, two tops, that I will keep, and get rid of the rest. Any one of them will last a lifetime, and I only have about half of one of those to go. I can perhaps justify keeping one of the cheaper ones for the kids to use when they come out with me, or as a backup in case something bad should happen, but beyond that it is just plain stupid, not to mention greedy, to have any more than one pair. So I am going to man up, and get rid of some. It pains me, but I know it is the right thing to do and that I will feel better for it. Question is, which ones.....

Statistical Collective Boredom

I was recently shown the "Stats" feature of blogger, which, semi-luddite that I am, I had not realised existed. Way back in the distant past I had managed to enable something called "Statcounter", but, these things being what they are, it required a password, which, naturally, I forgot. Since then the only pointers I have had as to blog-popularity are the Fatbirder counter thingy that you see down the bottom, a pageview counter that I cannot remember ever putting on and thus distrust, and the how many comments get left. And given that half the time I can't even leave comments on my own blog, let alone anyone else, I've been largely igoring that guide, and worked solely off the Fatbirder thing. This usually sits at around 150, but peaked once at 88. How that gets worked out I have no idea, as it moves across a fairly wide range with surprising regularity. Right now I'm sitting between a Russian language site that might be about birds, and some kind of photographic encyclopaedia that quacks at you when you open the Ducks page, but this varies.

Now I have discovered blogger stats, and my what a load of fun they are! They tell me, for instance, and this is what has prompted this short post, that yesterday saw a staggering 1044 pageviews. And only about 800 of those were me checking to see if anyone left any comments.... Seriously, 1000 pageviews? Vous etes having a laugh, non? Checking to see if this was some horrible mistake, a thought which presumably went through the minds of roughly 1000 people at some point yesterday, I went back a bit further, and discovered that the day before saw 675, the day before that 825, and the day before that 748. I'm no statistician, but that would seem to indicate that it's not just a fluke. I checked to see if I had inadvertently written about Great Tits on any of the days, for we all know what the internet is primarily used for, but of these there was no mention. Clearly I am on a roll - shame I just started work again...

I think yesterday's sortie into four figures for the first time ever can be explained away by it being Monday, combined with the world being once again close to economic collapse, and having just had three Party Conferences in a row. People are bored. Very bored. Cameron this, Osbourne that. Please, anything but politics! How about a so-called bird blog that hasn't mentioned birds for three days? Yes internet, take me there now! Hallelujah! Oh, wait......

Sadly the stats page does not show the length of each visit, or at least not that I have found, and that of course may paint a different picture, and tell me that cumulatively the 1044 pageviews lasted about 32 seconds. We shall never know, and seeing as it may burst my proverbial bubble, I'm happy to remain in the dark. More interesting is that it tells you which pages have been visited the most. No matter what time period I look at, the top page is "Birding in New Delhi", which dates from May 2009, generally by a factor of ten over any other page. The next most popular is my map of Wanstead Flats, which is probably just people wanting directions to Long Wood. Nothing else even comes close. These two facts are very surprising, but it shows that there may be some mileage in writing about popular birding destinations like Wanstead Flats. And New Delhi.

Far and away the best bit of stats is of course the keyword searches that brought people here. "Hoopoe Bird" is quite a common one - I particularly like how specific people are being. Hoopoe Cow, for example, is never seen. "Birderdes" is another one that crops up fairly frequently. Perhaps there is a birder called Des somewhere, or perhaps, in the same way that I type Wheater instead of Wheatear around 96% of the time, it's just a cock up. This week more than one person searched for "boy otter costume", which is probably entirely innocent, and today someone searched for "ryanair monopod", no doubt wanting to know how a monopod might best be used to beat a hand-luggage-measuring Ryanair employee senseless next time around. Sadly the keyword search is capped at ten per time period, so some of the more obscure and highly perverted ones that are perhaps out there will have to remain a mystery, but the possibility of scoring a few now down the line now that I have discovered a way to view them may prompt me to insert some ambigious phrases in future posts. Not that I am that immature of course.....

Bird's bum wiggling in the air.

Hooray, I'm rich!!

You will not believe this. This is fantastic news. Here I am, getting all worked up about going to work and earning a crust, giving up my bum lifestyle, and wearing ties. I had another interview lined-up for tomorrow, but my circumstances have unexpectedly changed, just like that, so I may not go. I just got this email, what luck!

I am Mike Dan, an attorney at law. A deceased client of mine, who shares the same last name as yours, died as the result of a heart-related condition on March 12th 2005.His heart condition was due to the death of all the members of his family in the tsunami disaster on the 26th December 2004 in Sumatra Indonesia.
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ 2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake

I can be reached on ( mike_dan@aol.com ) for more information. My late Client has a deposit of Three Million five Hundred Thousand Dollars (US$3.5 Million Dollars) left behind.

Best regards,
+447511085697
Mike Dan (Esq)

Of all the people that this could happen to, I am up there with the most worthy. Two and half years of domestic slavery, with barely a penny earned that whole time, severly limiting my purchase of L lenses, and now, on the cusp of returning to paid employment, I get this out of the blue. Fan-bloody-tastic! I fully intend to follow it through, what could possibly go wrong? I've heard all about various scams, but they're all Nigerian, and anyway, this guy has the same surname as me!

Whaddaya mean Lethbridge isn't a common name in Sumatra? Anyway, if as many of you as possible could email Mike, or phone him (several times if you like!), to thank him on my behalf, that would be great. Woohoo!

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

Takes after her mother...

Dolly decadence

1). It is a nice sunny day, and Bella, relaxing in the garden, is enjoying a nice glass of chilled Sauvignon Blanc.

2). Baby Hat gets involved.

3. It all goes wrong.

Hot Grebe Porn: Mrs Grebe does Wanstead IV

Mrs Grebe's nest has broken. What to do? Yes, that's right, invite a workman in to fix it. Let's call him Mr Grebe.

Here he comes now, looking muscle-bound yet sly.

Mrs Grebe answers the door. She is dressed wholly inappropriately. Oh dear, can you believe it, she appears to have dropped something. She bends down to pick it up. Provocatively.

Mr Grebe feigns no interest. He is here only to fix the nest remember.

Mrs Grebe reveals she is feeling really horny, despite not being Slavonian. Mr Grebe can resist no longer, and approaches Mrs Grebe. From behind, obviously.

The money shot.

Mrs Grebe pretends to be shocked at what has happened.

Rules is rules

I issued another dog-walker with an asbo this morning. I've been watching her, or rather her dog, gallop care-free through the Skylark breeding areas for the past few days. She knew this, and would guiltily put her dog on a lead when she saw me looking in their direction. Today I stopped her, asked her if she had seen the signs. She had. But the dog needed its exercise. There are other dogs running in the long grass too. That doesn't make it right, I chided. Honestly, like speaking to a child. She huffed. I persisted. Finally, a reluctant "well I'll try to stay over this side, but it won't be all the time". We'll see. The closest Skylark population to central London, and she'll perhaps try. There are rules you know.


Here is one of them, taken from the whopping great sign in the Park. The disturbance bit is pretty unequivocal, and "effectually restrained from causing annoyance to any person" is presumably ye olde english for don't let your dog bite birders. Good to see that the same problems existed half a century ago.

Whilst byelaw #11 is still as valid now as it ever was, there are some great ones that perhaps need a bit of reworking.

 
#29 is a good one - no shooting galleries or coconut shies, golly gosh how dreadful that would be. What would it be these days I wonder? A man in a tent offering 1p mobile calls to Lebanon? Equally, no person shall hire out any mule or ass. Or goat. OK then, we won't. Lucky that rule is in place, we might otherwise be overrun. Quad-bikes, no problem. You will note also that photographic equipment is also a no no. Oops.

 
It gets better though, much better. In these previously enlightened times, gypsies, hawkers, rogues and vagabonds shall all be removed from the Park. Too right! Beggars, brawlers, gamblers and fortune-tellers are all similarly undesired. Away with ye! And no tramps either, which could be highly problematic for the local birders, and god only knows what might have happened at the Wryneck twitch last year had the Epping Forest constables been present. Several might have been carted off!

 




Superb, no? One can only imagine bucolic scenes of groups of vagabonds sat in the copses betting on dice, gypsy women roaming the broom fields plying for people to cross their palms with silver, rogues cursing at females, and mass brawling. Or you could just wait for the fair to turn up again.

Don't worry, all is not lost

Chateau Lethbridge recently replaced its oven. It arrived today, all lovely and shiny, though this is only temporary. Billed as a "premium oven for the demanding cook", I had no hesitation in ordering it immediately. What could better suit my needs? It promises to "allow you to cook ambitious meals such as large Christmas dinners with ease!" Hurrah!

As soon as it was plugged in, I immediately started preparing turkey with all the trimmings. Basted and ready to go, I went to put it in, and discovered that it only had one shelf. So, fine for the turkey, but getting the roast potatoes and sundries in, well, I was stuffed, so to speak. Perhaps this is what they meant by ambitious? The old oven had already departed, so no chance to raid its innards for a spare, and as the demanding head chef at Chateau Lethbridge does not go in for single-layer cooking, there was nothing for it, a second shelf had to be sourced.

Thanks to the power of the interweb, I found and googled the part number, and was immediately transported to a website in order to buy it and get on with dinner. Except that the part was out of stock. But don't worry, all is not lost, as you can see below.



Though the specific shelf I needed was unavailable, hopefully they had something that fitted the bill. So let's have a look at similar products. Top of the list is a Karcher pressure washer unloader valve kit for the acclaimed K4 series. Snazzy. But likely to prove problematic for suspending roast vegetables. What's next? Ah-hah, a roller-pivot oven door hinge! Getting closer now, that shelf must be just around the corner - onto similar (even more similar perhaps?) products!

First up, the Braque modular corner sofa. The oven shelf that I require measures 43cm x 38cm. The chic Braque modual corner sofa is 3m x 3m, approximately fifty-five times too large (I am nothing if not precise), not to mention the height of 70cm - the slot in the oven is about 1cm. Add to that the fact that I could find no information on whether the Braque was flame retardant - it does after all need to go in an oven - and I had to reject it.

So how about some wallpaper? Supports casserole dishes with ease, says the blurb. Oh no my mistake, it actually says children can be transported to a magical world under the sea. I think the website designer inhabits a magical world...

Moving on, a Panama chaise, discounted by over £500! Wow, what a saving! Perhaps not ideal for an oven, but for that kind of reduction let's take a look anyway. Clicking on the link reveals the following: "Relax in style with this elegant chaise longue reminiscent of the 18th Century - the most comfortable addition to any oven home". Hmmm.

But wait! Enter the Dulwich right hand facing chaise end sofa from BHS. It is availble "only in Teal fabric" Gosh, unique, whole flocks of crecca, slaughtered for my reclining comfort! A must have! I zoomed in on the picture, looking for the vertical stripe that might indicate that a carolinensis had been in the flock, but no joy. Unless there's a rare involved, then I'm not interested. The fact that its a piece of furniture, and not a stainless steel oven shelf, is frankly irrelevant.

The search goes on.

Bin the Swarovski

Have you got a nice fancy telescope? Superb image, waterproof, armoured, great for digiscoping, weighs nothing, costs a fortune? Now is the time to rationalise. Sell it on, and apply to Telescope House, Holborn for the latest in optical innovation. But be quick, as there are only a few available in the UK. They only cost twelve quid, whereas a new Swaro will set you back roughly two grand. It's a no brainer, surely?