Old College Friend

For the last few days, my wife has had an old college friend staying with us.

We visited a few local National Trust properties and managed one meal on the patio before the weather broke.

Yesterday we went to Ely Cathedral and ate in the Almonry, which is very close to the cathedral and also very old. Parts of the Almonry date back to the 13th century.

Breakfast in the garden

For the last 2 days we have had breakfast in the garden. It has been hot lately - unusually hot for the UK. It was good to be able to sit outside in the shade at 8.30am and not feel chilly at all. 

One of the pleasures was watching the birds e.g. this Robin. By the way, most of the fat balls in this feeder have gone within 24 hours, eaten by robins, great tits, dunnocks, collared dove, pigeons and jackdaws! Traditionally robins enjoy mealworms, although they much preferred the fat balls.

Museum visitors

We had some visitors who arrived at our local museum in this old charabang coach. This is it parked outside the windmill. The word charabanc is from French 'char-bancs', meaning a carriage with benches, so I read. The coach probably dates from the 1950s. The windmill is 200 years old.

Our home is on the left in the picture.

Bird table visitors

Every day we get jackdaws on our bird table. They are quite big birds, but quite fun. This one is busy tucking in to kitchen scraps. We now get quite a variety of birds. I think they know there is free food on offer!

The starlings love the fat balls. A refill on Saturday was totally empty on Sunday. 

We get a smaller variety of birds here than at our old home. There are fewer smaller birds, although I think this is true widely. We do see blue tits, great tits and long tail tits as well as other smaller birds, but fewer than might be expected.

UPDATE 4th July 2017 0825z: The fat balls go quickly. We have had big and small birds eating these and the food on the bird table.

Poor Mrs May?

For a start, I was one of the many millions in the UK who did not vote for Mrs May (UK Prime minister) and the Conservatives. It looks like the rich are richer and the poor poorer under her party. This is wrong. If we are to have austerity let us all share the pain. As for a working alliance with the Democratic Unionists (DUP) in Northern Ireland, I am sure this will go down in history as a mistake.

To be fair, many expected a landslide with the Conservatives winning a big, clear, majority.  Instead, we ended up with a hung parliament and Mrs May hanging on by a whisker.  Most people rejected her autocratic style.

In some way I feel sorry for her. A week ago she could do no wrong, whereas now she is vilified.

Who knows what the future holds? It will be several years before the dust settles,  but beware any party that ignores the people it serves.

Oh, we still await a true charismatic leader in any UK party.

The letter Y

Many many years ago I attended Salcombe Boy's Club. This was back in the 1950s when I was still very young. We played indoor sports followed by a brief religious service taken by 2 very kind men.

It is funny how some things stick even 60 years later. One of these was Mr Putt telling us how life was like the letter Y. The Y has two ends at the top, like life: you frequently have to choose a direction to go in. Often there is an easier path and a more difficult one. Often I reflect and wonder what would have happened had I followed a different path in life. This is a theme I have mentioned before.

What if I had gone to a different university or no university at all? What if I had got poor grades at A level? What if I had changed jobs and moved? What if I did that PhD that I turned down? I guess we can never know. Life is filled with such Y moments, but we do not realise it at the time. Perhaps in a multiverse we do take every path, but are only aware of one?

Laurel hedge

Our laurel hedge in our front garden needs cutting several times a year to keep it in check. It makes a nice barrier, but we don't want it too high.

I swept up several wheel barrows of clippings. The photos shows me flicking the cuttings from the top of the hedge onto the grass.

As you can see, that 200 year old windmill really is "next door".