Tag Archives: nesting

Lottery Winner!

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I won the lottery today, or, to be more accurate, I remembered to check my two-week-old ticket, and promptly invested the win in two more tickets. I even have 30 pence left over to treat Julia. I may buy her a stamp.

If tonight’s ticket comes up I will buy her some flowers to go with it. However, based on past experience, I won’t win tomorrow. I rarely win, which is probably part of the definition of lottery – losers buying tickets in the hope of solving life’s problems.

I may buy some flowers even if I lose, because I had a reasonably successful day at auction yesterday and have to explain why we will be eating a lot of plain, meat-free food for the rest of the month.

In work terms it was a dull day, just four parcels to send and a pile of coins and low grade medallions to enter on eBay.

I would show you some pictures, but I left the camera at work, so there won’t be any  photos until tomorrow.

There are some interesting developments in the garden at the moment with Great Tits (as per header picture) and blue tits being engaged in unseemly behaviour with much calling and fluttering. They have also been seen with feathers and moss in their beaks. We expect that several nestboxes will be occupied in the next couple of weeks.

 

A Difficult Day

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There were 21 parcels to pack this morning according to eBay, but in reality there were only 15 because six of the orders had come in on Saturday afternoon and we’d already packed them.

Fifteen is still enough.

When I arrived, via a blood test and McDonald’s, there was a telephone van outside the shop but he drove off as I unlocked. I went in, set everything going, and settled down to do the questions. There were five questions, one of which didn’t merit an answer. I wasn’t able to answer the other four so that was soon done.

Then I listed the items that needed packing, reached for the first one and started to pack. I pressed the button to find the address, and the internet died.

When the boss arrived ten minutes later I was busy switching off, restarting and prodding the reset button with a paperclip. And muttering.

He revealed that there was a telephone engineer outside again. On enquiring about our service, we were told he couldn’t possibly be to blame as he didn’t know which wire was ours.

Neither of us found this terribly convincing as any idiot with a tool box is capable of causing disruption, regardless of knowledge.

We struggled through the next hour using the boss’s phone and an unsecured BT account we found whilst searching.. It was slow and tedious.

Then, as if by magic, the internet returned. We looked out of the door and found that the telephone engineer had gone.

That’s a coincidence isn’t it?

Despite this we managed to get all the parcels packed and despatched. We also managed to serve a rush of customers, who started coming in as soon as the internet flickered back to life. It was almost as if they knew we had things to catch up on.

At least I didn’t have time to be bored.

In the afternoon I got rid of four bags of books, coughed a lot at the dust and got told off by Julia.

It’s been a difficult day.

The picture is a Great Tit in the Mencap Garden. There were several about with nesting material in their beaks when I was down on Friday. As usual, I couldn’t get a decent shot so this one, with no nesting material, will have to do. I’m going to try again tomorrow.

Rufford at Last!

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I finally managed the trip to Rufford.

The car journey was only the first step, the hundred yards of varied slopes between the car park and the lake was more of a problem.

It was worth it to sit in the sun and watch a pair of Moorhens struggling to build a nest with unsuitably large twigs. (It wasn’t so much the struggle as the persistence that made the watching worthwhile).

Things are very different from our last visit, with fewer birds, more sun and a lack of seating space. Where the winter visitors (the human ones, not the birds) tend to walk round the lake it seems that the summer visitors, who are generally older than the winter ones, like to sit. It was very pleasant to sit out in the sun, and I enjoyed it after all the time I’ve spent indoors recently. My only reservation is that sitting in the sun with a group of octogenarians is a clearer vision of my future than I want.

As soon as I’m out of hospital I’m going to start doing that list of things that’s been at the back of my mind for years.

Fortunately there’s no skydiving or mountain climbing involved.

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