How ya doin'?
Despite the cold and the isolation and the wait for the jab and poor old Herbie left alone in the cold and all that, there are things that cheer me up. The kids in the square outside our house were having a whale of a time in the snow yesterday. Well not just the kids actually, a number of the adult neighbours were having a jolly snowball fight. Last night, after they'd all gone to bed I snapped the results of their efforts before the snow had all gone.
On the other side of the house we look out over the church yard which like a secret garden has given me so much pleasure over lockdown.
The graves over at our end of the churchyard mostly date from the second half of the nineteenth century and it is now designated as a wildlife area. The wildlife themselves seem to have read the notices too because they take good advantage of it. Birds, insects, wild flowers, foxes, squirrels, we get them all, and being so close, they stray into our garden all the time. Most of our hanging bird feeders are cunningly set up to be squirrel proof but I let the squirrels get at one of them and they don'r need asking twice.
Next weekend we'll be doing the RSPB annual great garden birdwatch when all who want to are invited to watch and count the birds in their gardens for an hour and send in the results. Luckily I can observe it all from a bedroom window. Last year we didn't get many but this year looks more promising. Over the last week we have had pigeons, robins, great tits, long tailed tits, blue tits, coal tits, rooks, blackbirds, magpies, a dunnock, a nuthatch and yesterday our first ever blackcap. It's a pity we're not allowed to count birds that fly over the garden without landing because we get a red kite most mornings and over at the church tower a neighbour assures me there is a peregrine falcon although I have yet to see him. I have however heard all the other birds panicking when he is about.
I take a walk around the graveyard most days and am beginning to regard the people resting over there as friends. I find my self giving a cheery "Hello Willie" or "Morning Lord Arthur" as I pass their graves. I have now built quite a large dossier of potted biographies of the more illustrious incumbents. Spring is beginning to spring over there already, the daffs are about eight inches high and the crocuses are already out.
I was going for a longer exercise walk each day until a few days ago something 'went' at the back of my left knee so now I need to rest it I suppose.
Inside the house I've been trying to record a lot of the songs I know so I can leave something to annoy the kids after I'm gone. I think I've done about ten songs so far. The longer I leave it and the older and more senile I get, the worse at it I will get so that's why I'm doing it now while I can still remember the words and all that. Here's a sneak peak at my untidy 'recording studio' aka the back bedroom. No cat swinging here.
And if that wasn't enough, to keep me busy, the clever people at Raspberry Pi have just released a powerful little microcontroller called a pico for a trifling £3.60 so I've ordered one of them to play with. That'll keep me quiet for at least a month I should think. One thing I'd like to build is a gubbins I could leave on the boat to keep a log of the inside temperature during the cold months of winter.
I hope you are managing to keep sane and well. See you next time.
