bunn

 I did not see the seal that swam past the house the other day because Theo had managed to find a place where he could scramble over the wall AGAIN.  I have bought yet more wire fencing but have not yet had a chance to erect it.  It's been a busy week what with one thing and another. 

But I did see the egrets which came for a while on a recent high tide. Such elegant birds.

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The builders who were supposed to be arriving next week have cried off due to Covid-related supply problems.  However, the Bathroom Guy is supposedly now over his bout of Covid and subsequent isolation, and in theory should be here next week. I am not holding my breath.  Long ago in the optimistic Spring, we thought that the bathroom would be done and dusted by the time D&D rolled around at the end of Oct, but I now doubt the work will even be started.  We have hired a little shower-bathroom thing that sits outside, which, the gods of the pandemic allowing, will arrive on Friday, because even if other roleplayers are happy to share one shower and two loos for a week, I have decided I am now old enough  and grumpy enough to cry: NO! to that.   Annoyingly, you can hire a shower that goes inside the house just in a room (if you have space), but not a toilet.  Temporary toilets have to be Outdoors for Reasons of Hygiene.  Which is ridiculous really because in the not-bathroom there is a currently ex-toilet (the Once and Future Toilet, one might say, since it will be one again) that is insulated from the mains sewer by the inadequate means of a plastic bag thrust roughly into its gaping maw, which I am pretty sure is also Forbidden but we have lived with that since May and nobody has died yet.

On a tangent, to my enormous if somewhat self-consciously ridiculous pride, I have made a construction of old floorboards and erected upon it a sink, in the room where the boiler lives. I plumbed in the cold water and the waste connection, but am currently stumped by the problem of how to turn off the hot water for long enough to plumb the hot tap in.  I was hoping that Bathroom Guy would know how to do this, since presumably he will have to do it to plumb in the Bathroom Things.  We shall see.

Arrrggh, Theo keeps getting out of the garden to visit the pair of little terrier ladies who are staying with their owner's Mum at the top of it. And he won't do it when I'm looking at him!

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In other news, walking back down into the village after my dog walk this morning, I saw a fluttering in the tree-shadows in the middle of the the road.

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I met these two yesterday.  Their feud was so fierce that they barely spared me a glance.  Tragically, the social pressure of the impatient white car in the distance prevented me from getting a picture of them furiously duelling in mid-air right in front of me, because I had to put the camera down and look for a layby to reverse into.    They broke it off just barely in time that the impatient white car failed to hit them, which shows that pheasants are daft, but not quite that daft. 

I never knew that before!  But a few days ago I found a pussy willow tree basking in the morning sunlight, and it was all over bees, hoverflies, wasps, and even a rather raggedy peacock butterfly left over from last year was feeding enthusiastically (I wonder where it went when it snowed?)   I had always assumed that plants with catkins were wind-pollinated, but in this case, clearly not.

Sadly I did not have my camera with me, so here's a brimstone butterfly feeding on a violet instead.

You would have thought it would be cold, but in fact it was a clear calm day today, and the sun was warm and the tide just at half past one, so we sloped off down to the River Lynher and went out from Wacker Quay. 

( with a scattering of waterfowl... )

I was walking Rosie in the woods yesterday, when I found myself surrounded by a cloud of tiny twittering things darting between the trees and bushes.  There must have been 7 of them at least, and my impression was of considerably more.   I thought at first that they were wrens, but then I got a good look at a couple of them, and discovered that they were actually goldcrests, the tiniest of all British birds, but it seems, definitely not the quietest!

Of course, although I had my camera, getting a photo of goldcrests in a shadowy wood is not easy, so here is a photo of Rosie about to cross the stream instead.

I came back to the house this morning to find a duel going on in the skies above it, between a heron and a buzzard.   The heron won.

I wonder what they could possibly have been arguing about?  The argument was rather loud. 

On top of a fence post,
all covered in green
I photographed lichens
That evolved before the Eocene.


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If Pp had not borrowed my car to take the Shop on the Borderlands to the Plymouth War-games show, I might have taken an Excursion, but as it was I just went out for a wander down the valley to admire the mist.  The snowdrops are almost out, but they're looking a little draggled.  But the mist and sky were beautiful.


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Here. It asks things like 'choose a statement: I hate technology | I love technology'

THAT IS AN IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE.  I both loathe and love technology.  It is the yin-yang of my life.   What kind of insanely simplistic reality forces a choice like that?

Also 'It is better to : be yourself | be polite'.  Well, that would depend how much of an arsehole you habitually are.   If you are the kind of lovely person who is overly polite and nobody can work out whether you actually want a biscuit or a cup of tea, then for god's sake stop being so damn polite and just tell us what your biscuit choice is.  We really would prefer that.

 However, if like me you are the kind of person where everyone you know is already bored with your opinions and there is visible wincing when you open your mouth, sit down, shut up and work on the 'polite' thing.

I was a Neutral Good Human Ranger, which is,frankly, a very dull outcome, so I'm not posting the whole thing as I am sulking about it.

In other news, I heard a noise this morning that I did not recognise at first, a sort of slightly resonant rhythmic thud with a sort of slight crunch to it.  After a moment's confused listening, I worked out that it was a thrush hitting a snail on a stone.  That was once an utterly familiar, normal and domestic kind of sound, and I am somewhat shocked that things have now reached the stage where I hear woodpeckers and owls far more often than a thrush.