Again, I am demoted to mere onlooker as Julia grabs the honours with her phone. She feels she could have done better, but as she was on the way home, in a crowded street and only had her phone, it’s hard to see how.

At first, when she saw people looking up, she thought the pigeons were doing something amusing on the side of a building.

I am a little better today, though as the afternoon wore on I still found difficulty concentrating. Getting home, I threw myself into a chair and sat, staring out of the window. That’s just how knackered I am after a day of being worn down by pain. I had thought I knew a bit about pain after a number of accidents, broken bones, embarrassing medical procedures and school concerts, but it seems there are new levels of pain awaiting me. I didn’t need to learn this the year before I retire.

One of our customers came in to sell us his collection. He is leaving coins and re-entering the world of Pigeon Racing, which was his hobby as a boy. They use geo-location now, instead of pigeon clocks, and it is all much slicker than it used to be. And birds are now more expensive. Good animals always have been expensive, as the link shows, but the breeding can be very profitable.

That’s enough for me now. I have shopped for Christmas, including the food and presents for Julia, who eventually decided what she wanted. Most of her stuff will be here before Christmas, which is a miracle. Tapping a few keys doesn’t seem a lot of effort but it’s about all I can manage at the moment. At midnight I will have an antibiotic and go to bed. I actually slept quite well last night, which helped with the recovery.