Before you ask, this isn’t a new scientific concept – the two things are linked only in my head. Sorry if you are a mathematical ornithologist, but this isn’t the exciting breakthrough you were hoping for.

Tuesday morning dawned in a foggy fashion and we headed off through heavy morning traffic to a retail park on the other side of town with Hobbycraft as our target. Half an hour later, and £40 lighter, we were back in the car.

Now that Halloween is over our next big thing is Christmas. We will make Christmas cards two weeks before Christmas and have Christmas dinner the week before. A range of design and build skills will be on show, ranging from excellent to dreadful and there will be endless rows about who gets the best stuff to work with, and that’s just the volunteers. The members of the group behave slightly better, though two of them do base their design work on the Pareto Principle –  trying to stick 80% of the decorations to their 20% of the cards. We’re working out a method of rationing for this year.

It will be a lesson in cooperation, and maybe even an exercise in maths if we organise it properly.

On a different subject we had a phone call while we were on the way here – we have someone else interested in joining the regular group. He’s coming tomorrow to see how he gets on with the rest of the group and if he likes us. I’m hoping he will as he adds a new dimension to the group, having developed dementia as an adult rather than being born with learning difficulties. He has a practical background so I’m hoping we will be able to get the nest box plan going again.

Finally, when we arrived the parakeet was in one of the trees behind the kitchen. It’s the third time we’ve seen it perching there and the fourth time we’ve seen it in total. We couldn’t get a photograph and couldn’t pick up the colour because the sun was behind it but it did look and sound very much like the ring-necked parakeets we saw when one of the kids was playing rugby in Middlesex. It was a surreal day to say the least – parakeets flying over, aircraft landing at Heathrow and the after-match meal cooked on barbecues under the trees at the edge of the field. I imagine that ours is an escapee rather than a visitor from down south. I hope so because they are they are a nuisance when you get too many of them, as Esher Rugby Club found out.