Feathered friends

 We have always fed the birds during winter when their food is scarce.

Loose seeds/suet etc. is not so good as it attracted wood pigeons, grey squirrels and probably other unwelcome vermin.

We tried a block of suet/seeds and grains in a special metal holder. That was okay but we think we have found the best and most popular idea - it is a half coconut packed with suet/fat/seeds/ etc.

Cheap to buy and it attracts the local blue tits, great tits and robins and because of its location on a bendy branch there is no chance for the larger birds to gobble it all, nor any possible rodents. I don't think that the grey squirrel has bothered either. So all in all a great success.

Viruses, what are they?

 A month of wet, damp weather doesn't help get rid of viruses/colds etc but encourages them surely.

I read about the amount of viruses there are in the oceans. So it is no surprise that the evaporation. clouds and precipitation may contribute to the continual bombardment of viruses.

Viruses like computer viruses are destructive and simply replicate. Again I have read that viruses are not alive but are a halfway between inorganic and organic and that they can never make that transition to a life form.

Suffice to say that we have the lurgy, it is not Covid but a bad, very bad cold type virus.

Oily Day

 What do people go on holidays for? Relaxation, cultural, discovery family etc?

Obviously different holidays satisfy different people but I have always thought that when abroad it is a big opportunity to go off the beaten track and see and sample the real way the local people live.

A great experience to be sitting in a remote small rural restaurant alongside local farmers on a dinnertime and eat superb simple locally cooked food. A choice of tow mains - meat, chipped potatoes and salad and bowls of olives or fish, chipped potatoes and salad and cowls of olives. Wonderful.

Christmas Day

Question - What is better than a Christmas dinner?

Answer - A Christmas dinner cooked for you. So a great opportunity to play games/toys etc and simply sit down and enjoy a wonderful meal with all the extras.

It was a lovely service at church which started the whole day.

What is the special part for you? Surely family is the main focus.

That time of the year

 One of the biggest joys of the whole Christmastime is to watch a school nativity play.

It is such a busy full term for those that had started school for the first time and after a breather of a half term holiday, the focus is on Christmas.

The excitement of the young children coupled with the seriousness they took their roles was a sheer joy.

Such unique unrepeatable times.

Tidying

 There is a lot of satisfaction to be gained from tidying up. Whether it is because you make an even worse mess which then gets neatly arranged or the surprise when you find a long lost item it is a job well done.

Meddling about

 A bumper crop of apples this year and a bumper crop of medlars.

Not many people seem to have heard about medlars and fewer have tasted them.

They cannot be eaten until they are bletted.

It is an unusual fruit and a different taste, if you get an opportunity to try one it is well worth it.