Coronation Chicken

I am blaming the Coronation Chicken for all of my recent hardship. It is said that mass-catered events and airline food are the number one sources of dodgy tummies. I do enough of the second one to know that this isn't true, but I did go to wedding on Thursday and this is when my troubles began. Registry Office gallop at four, at the feeding trough by half past, Coronation Chicken down the hatch by five, some odd gurgling by eight.

Or maybe it was the A3? This poor excuse for a road had me driving round Sussex and Surrey country lanes at 1am with nary a diversion sign to be seen, and contributed to basically having no sleep that night and thus my body getting out of kilter. I am a very regular person, but not anymore..... Dammit I hate being sick, and having stomach issues is my least favourite type of illness. Give me a cough or a cold any day of the week. Friday morning was kind of OK, bar exhaustion, but by Friday evening I was having the kind of cramps that I hitherto only associated with Polonium 210. By Friday night I felt like I was having a baby, and most of Saturday was spent groaning. Sunday and I am at least up and about and able to twitch rare ducks, but it's now Monday morning and it has all gone pear-shaped again. How on earth one (well, maybe two) sandwiches can completely destroy my digestive system is anyone's guess, but everything has all ground to a depressing halt.

It would be unkind of me to share with you my exact symptoms, however when I arrive in Glasgow I will be shopping for prunes, kiwi fruit, and pro-biotic yogurts. Plus pot pourri and a sari. Jesus. Somehow I have to get through a day of meetings that have been especially organised for a functioning me. Not that type of functioning... I simply mean that an in pain, groaning and dashing to the loo me is somewhat sub-optimal in terms of what lies ahead. Perhaps the answer is to hold off on the prunes until the afternoon, but I am in urgent need of relief and I cannot wait that long. I am already wondering what can be cancelled and what time the hotel check-in opens so that the extravaganza can start.

Being ill is the absolute pits, luckily I am stoic enough to suffer in silence.

Worse than I feared

The whole of Alexandra Lake has been cordoned off. I had wondered if this was an over-reaction, but having just bumped into one of the Epping Forest Keepers, the news is dire. It is a deliberate case of bird-poisoning, and the eight Crows I found were just the start. They have been falling out of the trees almost constantly since Tuesday. I don't have the exact figures yet, but so far the deaths include over 100 Crows, many Canada Geese, Coots, and particularly Moorhens, 2 Greylags, and some Pigeons. In all hundreds of birds have died, and indeed when I looked at the area from the car today, it seemed very empty. The Keeper I spoke to has been picking up Crows and putting them together whilst they die, the whole thing sounds horrible. And it does not stop there - a lady has lost her Alsatian as well. Whilst dog-walkers and their dogs are the bane of my [birding] life, I would not wish any of them harm. I can't believe that this has happened on my patch - it's disgusting that there are people out there who would do this. The Police Wildlife Unit and the Environment Agency are both investigating, but how you find whoever has done this without actually catching them in the act I have no idea.

So there is now something newsworthy in Wanstead, though whether the general populace will find it more interesting than Susan Boyle's cat's residential status is unknown at this stage.

How dare somebody poison my birds! The more I sit here typing about it, the more angry I am becoming. On the plus side, no Gulls have been affected. Nor any Wildfowl, though many of the wintering birds have gone. There are a pair of Little Grebe on there, as well as several Mute Swan and a load of Mallard, but they seem to have escaped unharmed at present.

Sorry this post is unhumourous, and contains no Gull faux pas. Normal service will be resumed tomorrow.

"I might be dead now"