I should know better

Finally back to blogging after some more trouble with my Achilles Wooden Leg and lots of large yellow pills.

So Tony is back with a reduced majority. He has learned a few lessons

He has learned that the British public has mastered tactical voting.

He has learned that we don`t want a President

And he is having to remember that the Labour Party is traditionally a broad church – and all those non-Blairite parishioners will now be teeming out of the woodwork, flexing their muscles.

As for the Nat results, the least said the better. “Save Balamory” just didn`t bring them flocking in, somehow……

But what care I? I`m for a day of sitting in the sun recuperating, eating more pills and listening to my resident thrush, Notpavarotti, doing his little best up in the big spruce, while Mrs Notpavarotti labours to bring up another clutch of fledgelings who can grow up to learn to sing badly, just like Dad.

Lots of birds here. My birdfeeders are clogged with everything from bluetits to woodpeckers, not excluding woodmice. – I seem to keep a whole woodful of small critters going.

I was sort of brought up with birds. My father, a quiet man, was wonderful with animals. As a child he fought a running battle with his mother over this. She took offence at his homing pigeons and told him to get rid of them – “Just give them away!” And so he did. She supervised it. But some how the number of pigeons never seemed to get any smaller. It took her months to realise that they were simply coming back home again as fast as they were given away…..

He wanted a Saturday job for pocket money, and she found him one as a baker`s boy with a very respectable firm. But he soon found one more to his liking. Paisley cross lies on a fairly steep hill, and five roads meet. In winter that hill was treacherous, and horses tended to slip and slide, especially if pulling heavy loads. Teamsters used to wait at the cross with extra yokes of Clydesdales, ready to hire them out for additional traction. But it was a cold wait and they preferred to do it in the nearest pub. So they would pay little boys to hold the huge horses and call the men out when needed..

My gradmother was furious – her little boy mixing with coarse drinking men. But he only cared about the horses.

We didn`t keep caged birds at home. We didn`t need to. My father was one of the few who could literally call wild birds down to his hand. – he would stand still and make a few whistling noises and suddenly there would be a thrush or blackbird on his arm. I don`t know how he did it – I certainly can`t.

Other people fed birds in the garden. We fed them in the kitchen. My mother disapproved of this. I remember that a nesting blackbird used to come and peck at the kitchen door to get in for food. One morning just as the postman arrived my mother shouted ; “That damned blackbird of yours is knocking at the back door again – I`ve had enough of her!”

The postman`s face was a study. Clearly the image conjured up by “black bird” was very different for him. Suddenly he was seeing my father in a new light……..Fortunately he didn`t take his wild imaginings any further.

The nearest I get to that is Jim. Jim is a crow who seems to live on my roof. He is solitary, and lives to steal dogfood. The dogs live to eat Jim. A constant guerilla war goes on. As he frequently drops feathers, and the dogs find them, they feel they have already had a taste and long for the whole dish. As I write I can hear another skirmish, punctuated by screeching dogs and the off-tune warbles of Notpavarotti…….

Lullaby of Birdland indeed..


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