Goodbye Freedom

It's official, I have a job. The offer came through today. Of course it's subject to references and various checks to make sure I'm not a heinous criminal, fraudster or drug dealer, or just plain nuts (here's hoping they don't find this blog), but when all of those steps are complete I am once again going to be a financial contributor to the economic welfare of this great island nation. This means that daily, from 9am to about midday, I'm going to be working for you. For us. For all of us, together. I'd like to let you know that I never claimed a penny of support during my long absence from earning money, I didn't want anyone to suffer on my behalf. I just love you all, and I can't wait to start giving again. I particularly want my taxes to go to dole claimants who ticked Greater Yellowlegs in Cornwall this week, or alternatively to help with the Sky Sports subscriptions for those who cannot afford to watch Premiership Football at home and have to go to the pub to see the games. Here, let me get those lagers...

Missed part of the bird, but I still like it.

Have I missed work? Er, no. There are very few people in this world who do. Have I missed having an income stream? Er, yes. A lot. Whilst my time at home with the kiddos has been amazing, and I would not change it for the world, having a steady dribble of cash going the wrong way has been mildly traumatic for someone not used to that. Then again, not earning money has had the immeasurable benefit of teaching me that money isn't as important as maybe I thought it was. We very easily adapted to life without large piles of fifties lying around in every room, and ceasing bathing in Champagne did wonders for my skin. You can't buy happiness someone once said. Bollocks. Give me a couple of mil and I'd have a bloody good go.

I have, though, been very weak. Very. I have courageously and bravely got myself a job at the very same institution that dispensed with my services two and a half years ago. I like a challenge, new experiences, and as such will get my old ID number back, and my old email address too. And my job will be looking at the same kind of stuff I was looking at before, indeed, I am going to carry on with one of the same projects I was doing before. It will be like I never left. Like I had a long holiday. A sabbatical of sorts.

So I need to enjoy these last few days of freedom. I need to bird like I have never birded before. I need to take photographs, and lots of them. Tomorrow Pudding starts school. When I lost my job, she was in nappies, and now she's a proper little girl with smart shoes. It has gone quickly, and I have accomplished very little. But who cares? I've deliberately done next to nothing, A bit of writing, a teensy little bit of twitching, but mainly I have just cleaned the house. Dusted.

I have no idea why I started this blog. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Six weeks later and I was unemployed, though I am (fairly) sure the events are unrelated. In one sense it gave me something to do. A way to continue to be creative, to continue using words with more than one syllable. I have to say I've enjoyed it a lot. This is usually the point when bloggers sign off and say "So long, and thanks for all the fish" or something along those lines, but I reckon I'll keep it going. Domestic woes may get replaced with lists of new and wonderfully meaningful buzzwords I have encountered, or why the tube is just the best place to be on a Monday morning, but otherwise I envisage it remaining essentially the same.

A load of old rubbish.

A Bug's Life

I am burning the candle at both ends. Brightly. The trouble is that there are not enough hours in the day. Ideally I would stay up until 2am mothing every night, have a tranquil eight hours sleep, and then awaken at 4:30am to close the moth trap and then go out birding on Wanstead Flats until 7am. You see the problem? Precisely. How can I fit eight hours into two; when exactly am I supposed to sleep?

Well yes, I could sleep during the day, being a bum and all that, but what about the children? I've tried, and it doesn't work. And anyway, my life of leisure domestic slavery may soon be at an end. I am thinking about getting a job. Not sure what yet, but I have started browsing various vacancy sites and have even gone as far as looking at some application forms. I have not put pen to paper of course, that would be a step too far, but I am thinking about it which is half the battle. I have to say that I am disappointed at how pitifully paid most jobs are. Much as I loathed banking, the money was fantastic. I have been looking at jobs in the environmental sector, of which I have zero experience, but even if somebody ignored that glaring omission and actually hired me, the pay is beyond dire. I am perhaps willing to sacrifice cash for quality of life, but if I do go back to work full time, whatever I earn will need to cover various forms of childcare, for few jobs fit into the school day. Apart from teaching, obviously. Childcare is not cheap, and I have lots of children. Much to think about....



Whilst generally avoiding thinking about it, I have been observing bug life on Wanstead Flats. Mrs L threw me out the other evening so that she could do music practice, and so I had a wander around the SSSI part. It is teeming with life at the micro level. Small and Essex Skippers patrol the grasslands, scattering as you brush past. The caterpillars of the Cinnabar Moth (of which I have caught only one thus far) are feeding on just about any Common Ragwort you can find, and there has been an explosion of Common Red Soldier Beetles. I could become seriously interested in small things. If I had my time again, I reckon I might have done something along those lines. I am finding however that a degree in French, even a very good one, has no place on ecological application forms. Bummer, as they say.

2009 Self Appraisal

One of the things I no longer have to do is to go through an annual appraisal cycle. This involved writing something called a Personal Development Plan, where you set out your personal and professional goals for the year, and then measure yourself against it at the end of the year. The deadline for having this all laid out was usually March, and was habitually left to the last minute. It was very much a case of going through the motions though, and after ten years there, I was pretty good at rolling out stock phrases like "I will seek to influence others' decision-making and thereby reduce risk" and "I will leverage my internal networks and understanding of derivative products in order to help traders make pots of money", and could generally bash out something that read well but in fact meant that I just needed to do my job. Very happily I got the axe before I needed to go through all this again for 2009, so "Ensure that the trading desk is ready for the roll-out of Basle II" (professional goal) and "Try not to die of boredom before bonus day" (personal goal) were replaced by "Become a Domestic Goddess" and "Go birding a lot".

GOAL: Become a Domestic Goddess
*note that this is a self-appraisal and that my manager's opinion may vary.

Shopping: Once a mystery to me, I can now competently go shopping. My first shopping trip way back when resulted in 10kg of rice and some shampoo. This was deemed a failure by Mrs L for some reason. Nowadays I come back with complete meals, and generally keep us well stocked. I still can't plan more than about two days in advance, so I have to go shopping a lot, but the key points are that we're all still alive and we have never run out of toilet paper.

Cooking. I do all the cooking, well, all the cooking in the week. My meals are mostly basic, but I am slowly raising the complexity stakes. For example we have recently dined on Coq au Vin, on Boeuf Bourguignon, and on a jumbo Cornish Pasty. I am also capable of Roast Chicken, and I baked a cake. I know how to make white sauce, thus opening up the world of pasta bakes and casseroles, and I no longer buy frozen chips - no, I actually peel and chop up potatoes. Fishfingers do feature quite a lot, but the children like them, and they are always on special. There I was thinking fish stocks were declining, but clearly the vast North Atlantic shoals of small rectangular fish are still doing well. There have been zero incidents of food-poisoning, nor of me forgetting that we all need to eat. Dinner is generally on the table as Mrs L gets home from work. I know my place.

Cleaning. Erm, well, the house looks quite clean. Just don't look behind or under anything. I admit it, I am not very good at cleaning. I have short bursts of zooming around, usually when Mrs L works from home and I can be seen doing it, interspersed with long periods of inactivity. I am good at the sinks and shower, as I have that lovely pink brush. I am also pretty good at the toilets - with three children I need to be. I am not very good at cleaning the bath for some reason - one for 2010 perhaps. I am also ace at vacuuming. Most other things I am less good at. Dusting is one of them, particularly DAMP dusting (which if you believe everything you are told is the ONLY type of dusting that is effective). I am also no good at cleaning the cooker, or wiping down cupboards. Or mopping. Or cleaning the windows. In fact the list could go on for a very long time. But again, if you were to come and visit, unless you are Shaun, you're not going to gag when you come in the front door. It looks ok, it smells ok, and by and large is ok. A small amount of dirt is good for children anyway.

Washing. A mixed result. I have not ruined too many knitted items, thus my marriage remains safe, but the complexity can sometimes be overwhelming. I tend to concentrate on blue loads as there are fewer pitfalls. I am also able to wash towels and sheets of any colour, provided they have been removed from the beds first. I am able to erect the airer, and hang clean wet washing up on it. Some days I am so productive at washing that I have also learned to drape it over all the doors and radiators, which has resulted in several white sheets getting long straight stains on them. My responsibility for washing ends once it is clean and dry - I take it upstairs and dump it on the landing. A fairy then irons it and puts it away.

General Presentation: Personally I wear whatever is on the top of the pile. My scruffiness knows no bounds. The older children dress themselves, and I get the little one dressed. We get full marks for originality, if not for coordination. I don't know how to brush hair. Lined up at the front door, waiting to greet Mrs L as she comes home from work, it is hardly a scene from Mary Poppins. I am sure that the £77 haircut Mums at school must talk about how dishevelled and absurd we all look, but this is trivial in the grand scheme of things and I care not. We are going birding, and the scruffier, the better.

GOAL: Go Birding a lot
*definitely a self-appraisal...

Become a Better Birder: I don't think it's possible to go out birding and regress. You're constantly learning. Especially in my case. "Ooh look, a Kingfisher!" "Er no, it's a Robin" - this conversation actually happened. So, getting there. A long way to go, but getting there. This for me is one of the principal attractions of birding - constant learning. A couple of highlights this year were finding my own Caspian Gull, and picking up a Yellow-browed Warbler on call. The only thing is that it all falls to pieces when I'm out with other people. Am I the only one to experience this? Either I'm not confident enough to call things (correctly as it happens) and thus miss out opportunities to prove to the world that I'm getting better, or I do call something, but it's a howler. On my own I am INFALLIBLE! Hmmm, what could it be? Joking aside, I am getting better and it really is rather pleasing, but I know my limitations. There is no substitute for hours in the field, be it patch birding or twitching something further afield. One argument is that you need to go on the odd far-flung mission so that you get to know vagrants and rarer passage migrants better. For instance, I've seen three Hoopoes this year, and I reckon that if one now turned up in Wanstead, I'd probably recognise it straight away.

Patch Birding: I did not spend as much time on the patch as I said I would. This is due mainly to year-listing, but also a genuine lazy streak on my part. Throughout most of this year I found it desperately hard to get off my arse and go on the patch. Despite this, I saw thirteen new species in Wanstead, and blew my 2008 total of 83 out of the water, which was one target. The other was to get to 100 species on the patch, which was achieved with a Coal Tit in Reservoir Wood in November. Whilst Stuart found all the really good stuff, I was responsible for finding a Ring-Ouzel, a couple of Redstarts, the Red-crested Pochards, a Wood Sandpiper, and the first Treecreeper for like, ages. Despite this, I must try harder in 2010.

Life List: I actually set myself a goal of three new birds a month during 2009, which meant my target was 330. I stayed ahead of the curve all year, and am currently on 338. Worthy of mention (yes, again!) are Fea's Petrel, Blue-cheeked Bee-eater, and Eastern Crowned Warbler. All three Pratincoles in just over three weeks was pretty special too. Mega rarities included Crested Lark, Great Spotted Cuckoo, Collared Flycatcher, Fan-tailed Warbler and Brown Shrike, and honourable mentions must go to the Snowy Owl and Pallid Harrier. Also memorable was a magical eighteen minutes at Dunge where I ticked first Melodious, and then Icterine.

Year List: Well, it was OK I suppose, didn't go too badly..... I had one goal, a ridiculous and futile goal - to see 300 species. The key to a decent year list is to start early and see as much as possible as soon as possible, especially rarities. One look at how poor, relatively speaking, this autumn was shows the merits of this strategy. I started off in Scotland, and ended January 1st on 87 species including Surf Scoter and King Eider. By the end of January I had reached 152, and I hit 200 on April 10th. 250 was notched up by the end of May, and 300 on the 11th October. Objective met.

Various other Lists: I keep a couple of lists, not very many. I like hitting nice round numbers, numbers divisble by 50, though as that becomes harder, I may move to 25, then 10. Besides the above, a number of targets presented themselves this year, and I comfortably made them all.

Essex 198 → 220
London 181 → 206
Rainham 141 → 156

They say objectives need to be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and have a set time period for achievement. Listing goals are perfect in this respect. Sad and anoraky? Not a bit, SMART. Though "Become a Better Birder" is pretty wishy-washy. And anoraky. "Hello, my goal this year is to become a better birder. Would you like to come back to my place and look at my BWP?"

So there you have it, my 2009 self-appraisal. I still need to become a better birder, and I am some way from being a fully fledged Domestic Goddess. In particular, certain elements of my cleaning repertoire leave a lot to be desired. However, given the monumental shift in direction that occured in February, I don't think I am doing too badly. Where I used to work, goals were always like this - you're not supposed to meet them all. You can always do better, always improve, always aim for 110% - and thus never get there. Of course it's all a load of nonsense, as so much of what I did was. See points 1 & 2 here. Nonetheless, next up, my 2010 Goals. Mrs L has declared an interest in helping to set them. Uh-oh.

God sends Giant Corvid of Death to punish dodgy credit derivative traders

The thin end of the wedge

A top drawer story from the BBC that I can entirely empathise with. A schoolboy has been made redundant from his Paper Round. His payoff was £6.93. Hopefully he'll start a blog.

The internet is full of all sorts of interesting things that can waste immense amounts of your time. Almost all of it is useless. But once in a while you come across something that is genuinely funny, like the story above. Much as I feel sorry for Splodge, I must confess that my first reaction was to laugh a lot. The below is quite funny too.

Happy Friday! Now what?

It is the end of the working week, offices have emptied, relieved young workers are in pubs the length and breadth of the land, and older workers are perhaps at home renewing acquaintance with their families. I never used to go out on Fridays, I always went straight home. Generally Mrs L & I would open a bottle of something nice, eat some extravagant food, and moan about work. I don't have any of that any more, so my contribution to the weekly "God what a shit week I had at work" conversation is pretty minimal. Instead I listen and nod, or switch off and think about birds instead.

"blah blah blah blah....and it will probably be a major comment, which won't go down well. What do you think I should do?" asks Mrs L, Audit Queen.

"The Arctic Warbler showed well", I say, brightly.

But I know exactly where she is coming from, it is virtually impossible to switch off from work entirely. Although I was pretty good at mostly forgetting all about it, it was always there in the background. Even on holiday, you don't really start to wind down until it is almost time to go back. Mind you, I don't think I can remember a holiday where the office didn't call me, no matter where I was or what I was doing. They called during all my paternity breaks as well; you are always available, they own you. Now that I can look back at it rationally, I realise that none of it was of any importance whatsoever, yet it consumed my life for a decade. I remember being so pleased about making Vice President, it meant I was finally 'somebody'. I ordered 500 business cards with this valedictory title emblazoned below my name, and used about 10. These days we use them for shopping lists.

I was reminded about that period of my life twice today. Firstly, a guy over the road still works at the same place. He is on paternity leave, so I saw him today for the first time in ages. He looked shattered, unsurprisingly. We had a bit of chat, and naturally it turned to the office. He said it was mental, still, and that the whole place was crippled by a fear of screwing up, creating an odd atmosphere of frantic inertia. He is a Vice President too, or rather he is a Vice President, and I am not. I should invent a title for myself to use in the house. Standing there, talking about the daily grind, I was glad I wasn't there any more.

Later on, a good friend from the office called. How was I, and had I started looking for a job yet? He too described a manic environment of deadlines, bullshit, and fear. I remember it being a difficult place to work, and being highly stressful, but did I moan about it as plaintively? [yes - Ed.] Perhaps they are both being nice to me, exaggerating the horribleness of it to make me feel better for having been made redundant. I doubt it though, it was pretty nasty back in Feb, and probably hasn't changed much. But back to the job hunt question - a mum in the playground today also asked me if I was looking yet. Do I look like that much of a bum? Why is it expected that I should be looking to get back into a bank? Do people just look at the colour of my arms and think "Lazy bastard, he should be at work"? I'm quite happy at the moment thank you very much, I am very much enjoying being with the kids and not being in a highly-charged office. I also have extraordinary flexibility which allows me to twitch Bee-eaters and so on. Win win.

But I do have a constant nagging feeling, which is this: What am I going to do next? Looking after the kids is lovely. Being at home is lovely. Being outdoors and birding a lot is lovely. Right now, it works, but it is not exactly a long term solution. What am I going to do? How am I going to satisfy my intellectual curiosity? I have a number of ideas, and this is the big problem. I don't know which idea is best, or indeed if any of them are "right". And being 34 now, it has to be "right". I think it would be problematic to embark on one of these ideas only to find out a few years down the line I had made the wrong choice and that at roughly 40 I needed a third career. My favourite job of all time was driving a van round London one summer, delivering wine to rich people, but it paid something like £3.24 an hour, and seems a waste of my intellect. I am aware that that sounds (and is) highly pretentious, but I can't get away from the fact that I feel I would be wasting myself by doing something where I learn nothing and contribute nothing. But at the same time I don't want to learn any more about derivatives, equities, yield-curves, and theta-gamma. I'm all done on those things. It needs to be something new. At the moment - and you must understand that I have always been fickle, moving from one interest to another, but always most wholeheartedly - I am interested in birds, both in Wanstead and sometimes further afield. But actually it isn't just birds - being out and about looking for them brings me into close contact with many aspects of the natural world, and thinking back, this has been an undercurrent of my entire life, an interest in nature. As a child the books I enjoyed the most were the ones about natural history, be it real like Gerald Durrell and James Herriott, or fictional like Willard Price. I drew birds, I always remember drawing them, and I was a member of the YOC. When I lived in France as a kid I spent most of my time trying to catch lizards. My favourite TV programmes were the David Attenborough ones, and still are. As an adult my two main interests are birds and plants. I have devoured E. O. Wilson and Barry Lopez, I subscribed to National Geographic as soon as I had an address, and although my knowledge of many aspects of science is somewhat rudimentary, as each day passes I find myself wanting to know more about the world around me. I just find it all very very interesting. Maybe this happens to all thirty-somethings and there is a whole science devoted to it. Maybe I'm unique, I don't know. Whatever, can I make a second career out of it? I don't know. And this is the real problem, I just don't know. It is not a crime to not know what you want to do, I am sure many people don't know. But why on earth I took a degree in French, waffling about Picasso, Delaunay and Braque, and then spent ten years in an investment bank basically doing numbers all day long is anyone's guess. I suppose that when you make the initial choice of direction, you're 16 and clueless. You start applying for your first job aged about 20, and you're still clueless. When you think about it, the whole system is highly unfair on young people. I'm not young any more, but I still have to admit to being stumped, if not clueness like I was then. Mind you, listen to this song, also cleverly embedded below, a Wanstead Birder first. In fact, listen to it several times over, it is brilliant. Specifically take note for twelve seconds starting from 2:11. The song is 7 minutes of truth. You listen to it, and you nod, and you realise that every word applies to you one hundred percent. It should be on the national curriculum. Also, Bradders and other year-listers, listen out from 1:41 to 1:53 :-)




So, a serious and largely non-flippant post. Unusual. It has taken an hour to write. The frivolous ones are far quicker, and easier. I was hoping that by writing it down, it might help me work out THE PLAN, but it hasn't. Though perhaps it may allow the people who ask me "started looking yet?" to realise that one of the reasons that I haven't is because I don't know what to look for. All I know is what not to look for, which is a start of course, but hardly conclusive.

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.

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.

A tale of two Es

The other day I went back to Canary Wharf, E14, to sign the final bit of "Goodbye" documentation. What an extraordinary place, did I really work here? In shorts and flip-flops, and with two children in tow, I was rendered miraculously invisible to the average Wharfer, and so was able to peer, unobserved, into their world, which used to be mine. Tall, blonde, athletic-looking men with swished-back hair talked a variant of Scandinavian at each other as they walked briskly by, no doubt it was highly highly important. A smartly dressed and very pretty lady clutched a three foot tall latte. A man marched by attempting simultaeneously to type on a Blackberry. The over-riding impression was one of a lack of time. Everyone seemed in a massive hurry. I knew my new life wasn't quite as pacy as before, but have I slowed down so much that it becomes that marked?

This scene contrasts sharply with Leytonstone, E11, today. As I walked to the Post Office, I passed a pub with some tables on the pavement. At one of these tables lounged a tatooed teenage bint, who, as I approached, took a large swig of lager, lit a fag, and then sauntered ahead of me to the Post Office. Laden with child, packages, and an additional 12-15 years, I ended up behind her in the queue. She proceeded to draw her benefits, in tens, and was back in the sun enjoying the remainder of her pint and a new cigarette by the time I passed by on my way back to the car. She didn't seem in too much of a hurry.

I have no point to make really, just that people adjust to whatever circumstances they find themselves in. I'd like to think I was never really one of the Canary Wharf crowd, but probably to an onlooker I would have appeared just like the people I saw the other day. Neither would I like to think that I have anything at all in common with the wastrel I saw today, but there are certain parallels. I haven't yet started boozing it up in the afternoons at the taxpayers' expense, but there are sunny days where I accomplish virtually nothing other than staring at the sky. Not today though. Today was a day of high achievement. Sainsburys, Beckton. The Biscuit Aisle, and a revelation:

Over the course of a year, the savings could be substantial. This packet also has "Scilly '09" written all over it.

Almost unemployed, so now what?

Well, only a week to go, and then I am properly unemployed. The last two months and three weeks have been absolutely ideal - no work, full pay and rare vagrants, but reality is about to kick in with the loss of the monthly pay packet. And in the depths of winter with six hours of available daylight, sub-zero temperatures, cold-sensitive children and no rare birds, and with the reserves dropping daily, it may all be rather miserable.

Which leads me to wonder what I am going to do with myself? Of course, being able to stay home and look after the kids is a rare privilege, and all the more so given the demands of my previous career, but the redundancy settlement won't last forever and I will need an income. I need direction. The longer I am out of the City, the more difficult it will be to get back in, and the less likely I am to want to get back in anyway. Right now I have no desire to work in finance ever again, and I expect my enthusiasm for it will only diminish. Which begs the question of what alternative employment might be suitable? I don't need a huge salary, my new lifestyle has quickly taught me that having stacks of money isn't really very important, but that sitting in the garden and looking at the sky is. With Mrs L now the main earner, I just need something relatively lightweight so that we can break even. Working from home, and for myself, would suit me down to the ground, but doing what exactly? I can't think many people are going to pay me for looking at the sky. My current interests are birds, more birds, photography, plants and wine. A few people no doubt subsist quite happily doing one or more of these things, but they are a minority; for every wildlife photographer who makes a living from it, there are probably a thousand who tried and failed. I'm slowly getting better, but I am a million miles away from the elite standard. Similarly, I am not a very good birder either - getting better, but not able to take up guiding, or to write about it and be taken seriously. My plants are too niche to make money from, so they are out, which leaves wine. Now here is one thing I am genuinely good at. In fact I would go so far as to say that I excel at drinking wine. So if anyone out there needs someone to come and drink nice wine for them, I am your man, and you will find my rates very reasonable, especially for Grand Crus.

Not quite what I had in mind

Being made redundant meant I was going to see loads and loads of birds, especially in Wanstead. Today however, I cannot recall seeing a single bird. I do recall doing the school drop-off, going shopping, going to the dump with the weekend's gardening efforts, cleaning my son's room, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, doing a load of washing, changing nappies, cleaning the front windowsills, cooking two meals, and looking after a small clingy baby. Some of these things may garner Brownie Points, but honestly, what a waste of bloody time! By the time I'd finished that little lot it was time to do the school pick-up and the day was basically over. I am a week-and-a-bit into this and already I am in need of emancipation. Shit.

Birding is much easier without a job

I have always known it, but never been able to put it into practice. In a nutshell it is this: Work really gets in the way of birding. Imagine being really rich, you could just be out all the time. Obviously this is just a temporary state of affairs in the Lethbridge household, but boy is it great, and I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.

Yesterday I went to Norfolk. Again. For those of you counting, that is twice this week. Yes, thats right, in the week. Ahhhhh. Started off at Wolferton at dawn, and surprised myself by getting Golden Pheasant at the first real attempt, with two immature males feeding on the grass verge. I was hoping for the full red and yellow monty, but a tick is a tick. The birds soon disappeared into the impenetrable Rhododendron thickets, but I managed to fire off a few frames out of the car window, the best of which is below. So, it's a cruddy photo, but 7am in mid-feb, even with 800 ISO selected, I could only get to 1/30s, so to get anything that even resembles a pheasant is a minor miracle. That is photographic speak for "it was dark and I couldn't hold the camera steady". A celebratory cup of tea later, and I was on my way, via a few Grey Partridges in some nearby fields.

Golden Tick

Next stop Titchwell - critical to visit this reserve before it opens. It was a lovely morning and I practically had the place to myself. I went through the Brent flock and again surprised myself by finding the Black Brant, a semi-tick. Somewhat stupidly I had not read up on nigricans before heading out, but in the event armed only with the knowlege that the back was a bit darker I still managed to pick it. As I was comparing it to the other birds, gradually little details slipped out, like the clean white flanks, the thicker neck collar. This was clearly a different bird - I reckoned I had scored. At the time I didn't know this for certain though, so when someone else came along, equally clueless about Black Brant, I lost all my confidence and so passed up an opportunity to look clever. But I did take notes, and later on the beach when I met a man, his wife and his Collins - a polygamous relationship - I was able to check it out. To thank him I found him some Snow Buntings feeding close by with Linnet on the tideline, which he then proceeded to turn into Twite, despite the large grey beakage. I've fallen foul of this before, desperately hunting for Twite and finding only Linnet, so I shouldn't sneer really. Nonetheless, I knew it was time to leave. Sure enough, as I headed back down the footback, tweed jacket after tweed jacket came past, getting excited about Marsh Harriers, and struggling with Spotshanks. Cor look at me, having a go at posh west Norfolk bird watchers! My postcode starts with E, I am unemployed, and I have not shaved since last Wednesday - this gives me full licence I think you'll find.

Titchwell has so many posh people that there are Robins who will valet your car whilst you go birding

The pager then bleeped that the Glauc was still at Cley beach. There was a good reason for this - it has a broken wing so can't leave. When I first arrived I had a quick scan with bins but couldn't see it. Nothing on the beach, and nothing on the water. There was a white buoy close inshore, but no gulls. Damn it! I had tried for this bird last weekend after Bradders' wedding and failed. I then noticed a guy scoping the buoy, bit odd, perhaps there was something sat on it? I set up and had a look as well....what can I say... Glauc's are MASSIVE - possible confusion species is Yacht. It was pecking away at a dead floaty thing, mmmmmm. After a while it flew onto the beach, despite a serious looking wing injury, and sat about 50 yards away from me. I bum-shuffled to within about 20 yards, and took a series of about 200 photographs, which were very boring to edit. Here is the most interesting one.

Glaucous Gull - eats seal pups whole

Towards the end of the day I found some real Twite at Brancaster Staithe, flying about the salt marsh. At one stage they came and landed on the mud right in front of me, which was quite handy for eliminating Linnet properly.

So, another busy day at the office....what shall I do tomorrow? I know, I'll go birding.

Goodbye Rat Race

Well, the so-called Credit Crunch has claimed yet another victim. Me, on Thursday. Oh, what a shame. Not really. Most people seem to be more sorry for me than I am. Nobody likes getting made redundant, and I have to say it was difficult sitting opposite my boss, and then having to listen to the HR spiel, and then going back to my desk afterwards to pack up, say goodbye. But when I found myself on the pavement, bins in my pocket, at about 11.30 on a fine February morning, and with the next three months fully funded, I felt much better. No more uncertainty, I can actually plan for the future. In fact, bar the one obvious negative, I can only think of positives. Here are a few of them:

1) No more bullshit at work.
2) See above - there was a lot.
3) More time with the kids
4) More time for birding.
5) Even more time for birding
6) I don't have to go on the Central Line ever again
7) Healthy living is once again a possibility
8) Dramatically reduced stress levels
9) The garden will get sorted out
10) More photography
11) Summer days with the conservatory vents open and chilled beer
12) I don't have to tell people I'm a banker

Anyway, I went home, had a nice lunch with Mrs L, and went birding in Wanstead. The following day, Friday, I went birding in Wanstead. What a terrific change of lifestyle! It won't last of course. My new career is in Childcare. Clearly finance is not the place to be for the next few years, if only because of the associated stigma. So the plan is that I will be a stay-at-home dad. For the last ten years I have been working about 50 hours a week, consequently I didn't really see the kids during the week (or at weekends once I discovered birding...). So now I get that chance, as we have pulled the kids out of nursery to aid the cashflow. I will also be responsible for housekeeping, cooking, and something called "shopping". This latter activity is a bit of mystery, as I discovered today. I went "shopping", and bought a 10kg sack of rice, and some shampoo. Mrs L then came home and enquired what was for dinner. Err... Anyway, it turns out that food does not just appear in the fridge, you have to go and buy it. So my attempt at shopping earlier today apparently goes down as a failure, even though millions of people the world over eat rice 7 days a week. Mrs L cooked Macaroni Cheese whilst I bathed the children, as we had plenty of water.

Another task I need to get to grips with is washing. I am told that you can't just sort it out by colour, which would be my natural inclination, you in fact have to sort it by fabric type and colour. This means that each load consists of approximately 3 garments. Ridiculously inefficient. Not helped by Mrs L being somewhat of a keen knitter, which means that 50% (and rising fast) of all the kids clothes are made of wool. And wool is not wool is not wool, if you see what I mean. It is far more complex than that. You get wool blends, and balls of wool which are multicoloured, so you can get a small baby's sock that is only 15cm long, yet which contains 21.324% merino, 24.19% alpaca, 27.5% cashmere, 10% nylon, 2.52% silkworm, the rest unknown, and in addition has 18 different colours in 53 different shades. And I am supposed to know that I therefore have to wash it on program "Q" or it will turn into a thimble and I will get served with divorce papers. And kids clothes also only last for about 2 hours, or until the next meal, whichever is sooner, so you can totally empty the washing basket (about 25 small yet subtly different loads), only to come back later that day and find it overflowing again.

But none of this has started in earnest yet. The 2 youngest are still in nursery, the eldest is with Grandma for half-term (planned when I was gainfully employed), so that means this week is the calm before the storm. Which means I am off birding, hurrah!

"What load would you wash me on?"

So on Monday I went to Norfolk for the day and had a marvellous time. I started off in Lynford with 3 Hawfinch, some Siskin, which took me to 160 for the year. Next stop Strumpshaw Fen - my Penduline cup truly overfloweth this year - another 2 birds feeding on Reedmace. Got excellent views, even helped a blind lady get a tick. Set up the scope, got the birds slap bang in the centre, invited her to look. "I can't see anything, are you sure its there?". Hmm, the bird has probably moved, let's have a look. Nope, still there, right in the middle. "No, it isn't there". Quick look, yes it is. "I still can't see anything". Quick check, yep still there, it might actually be having a nap on the reedmace. Anyway, repeat this for close on 5 minutes, and remarkably the Penduline stays on the same reed for the entire time. Finally, on about the 6 minute mark...."Oh, I can see it, I can see it! I don't know why I couldn't see it before!" "Because you're registered blind?" "It's almost exactly the same as the reeds!" "Well, apart from the brown back, grey head, black mask, and being bird-shaped, yes I agree, basically the same". Perhaps I am being unfair, they are quite difficult to pick out in the reeds, but generally not when someone has lined up a really rather good scope at 30x with the bird right in the middle.

Goose, washed on the wrong load - just look what can happen.

Two miles down the road and I am on a mission to take a photograph. If I am honest, this is all just a cruel prank. Yes it's a year-tick, yes it's a good bird, yes it's a challenge to find the bugger, but really, it's all about an email I am hoping to send to Paul later on in the evening. Tee hee!

Duck sp.

Ended the day at Stubb Mill roost, Hickling, where I counted about 15 Marsh Harriers, and 19 Cranes came in to roost in the enveloping darkness. I drove straight home, sniggering all the way, and sent my email. I am so juvenile.

Goodbye Rat Race. I won't miss it.