blue tit – Page 2 – derrickjknight

This Will Be Fun

This morning I scanned another large batch of colour slides from 1970.

In April, six year old Michael was introducing a quizzical Matthew into the legends of The Old West.

That same month we awaited the birth of Becky who was to be born on 19th August. Jackie was surprised to see her cigarette, for she did not normally smoke during her pregnancies. On the wall behind her to our right of her fag, hangs her excellent oil portrait of Michael. Pasted to the door beside her are an asymmetric cluster of my favoured photographic magazine photographs, which I have already mentioned was how I decorated the room in those days.

Here is a selection of portraits of the mother to be:

Becky duly arrived in the midst of a late night thunderstorm. As we know, healthy mothers and babies were kept in hospital in those days rather longer than they are today, so the following photographs, from 23rd, were taken in The Nelson Hospital.

Already our witty and humorous daughter appeared to be thinking:

‘This will be fun’.

We are told that such a smile is simply caused by an excess of wind. With Becky, don’t you believe it.

On this sunny afternoon I dragged my dodgy leg around the garden as far as the back drive where the incinerator wheelbarrow blended well with Aaron’s sawdust. I was. of course, attached to the limb. I then sat on the Nottingham Castle bench and watched the timid tits, of the blue and long-tailed varieties, making their way to and from the bird feeders.

This evening we dined on Jackie’s piquant cauliflower cheese (recipe), carrots, mashed potatoes, and haddock fish cakes. Jackie’s liquid refreshment was sparkling water, and I finished the Lussac Saint-Emilion.

Fag Ends

Benjamin Renouf and Tony of Abre Electrical arrived on time this morning to fit a new fusebox, run a power cable to the kitchen from the upstairs circuit, and generally check over our supply. They were quiet, efficient, and wasted no time, although they were here all day. I would certainly use them again.
I spent the morning further clearing the front garden. This involved the usual uprooting and pulling out bramble and ivy, and heavy pruning of overgrown shrubs.

By noon I had a large pile to be added to the vast, constantly growing heap at the far end of the garden.
Before lunch I trudged down to the postbox and back. A trudge was all I could manage.

After lunch I took a break and watched the birds. The avian activity was fascinating. Some were prepared to share the feeding station with others. The robin and the great tit seemed unfazed by the other’s presence. A young blackbird, however, was most disgruntled at the invasion of its territory by a starling. After it had seen off the rival, it turned around and began to scoff.
It was fascinating to follow a blue tit’s progression from the netting to the seeds.
The crow has desisted from trying to clamber onto the feeder. Other birds, like this female blackbird, a little larger that those others depicted, flap around somewhat, as they have trouble landing.
The strong sunlight revealed the inner nature of honesty:
and lit attractive patterns on the geranium palmatum, such that it was tempting to play around with the image:

or perhaps not. One can’t really improve on nature.
Throughout the day, Jackie continued with her creative planting, weeding and watering. This involved the removal of some heavy stones with her Time Team trowel.
While we sat on the patio before dinner, Jackie mentioned how some visitors had ground their cigarette ends into her grass and patio paving whilst sitting in her garden. This took me back to one summer in the late 1980s in Newark, and to Lincolnshire N.S.P.C.C. I was facilitating some team-building days for this staff team in Lindum House. Before the ban on smoking in the workplace, I ensured that there was a plentiful supply of ash trays in the rooms being used. No-one smoked. Yet after each break period the trays were filled with dog ends. When I asked why this was, I was informed that the smokers had all enjoyed their cigarettes in the garden, but had brought the stumps inside so as not to spoil the garden.
After this chat, Jackie collected fish and chips from Ashleigh’s, and we ate them at home. I finished the Bordeaux with mine.

A Woman Paid My Fare

A full moon illuminated the kitchen at 3.30 a.m. this morning. Somewhat later, but still too early for the sun to have turned the corner, a large fat baby blackbird monopolised the dish on the bird feeder, repelling all other boarders. It confused us by attacking an adult blackbird that had at first been feeding it. Was this the case of a tyro turning on its tutor? Or just an ungrateful child? Later, when it descended onto the lawn, and began calling for food that the parent provided from the dish, we realised it was the latter.

I spent this morning on an ancient tree hunt (see 1st May) with Berry. My friend was very excited because we found and recorded twelve suitable trees in a little under four hours. Walking under the Castle Malwood Farm underpass, we zigzagged across the forest in the vague direction of Sir Walter Tyrrell. So fruitful was the trip that we didn’t quite reach the Rufus Stone car park before turning back for home.

Most of the trees were large oaks, some, like one that was a bit knackered, more notable than ancient. Notable is acceptable. An interesting rarity which almost caused Berry to get her feet wet, was, we think, an alder. Growing by the stream, it proved quite difficult for Berry to get a tape round to measure its girth.

I, of course, did manage to get my feet well and truly wet, not by putting them in the stream, but by falling foul of a quagmire. Jackie, who cleaned up my kit afterwards, had an opportunity to remember the time, during our first incarnation, when she had given my rugby kit similar treatment.

Perhaps the most fascinating example was found in a group of trees that had fallen in a storm. A huge oak branch, at first looking like a whole tree, had brought a beech down with it when it snapped away from the trunk that was more than five metres in girth. My task was to produce photographs for the Woodland Trust website.

So rich were our finds that we began to get a bit blasé, and say things like ‘we’ll do that one another time’, or ‘not really notable’.

There were an unusual number of other walkers about today. In my previous excursions this way I have never seen another person.

After a late lunch we drove to The Firs for a gardening session. Mum had come as well, and Elizabeth was already into weeding when we arrived. Elizabeth and Jackie’s main task was extracting the weeds, and mine was mowing the lawn. Danni helped all three of us in different ways. Before mowing the lawns the edging had to be trimmed, and all encumbrances, like tables, chairs, gardening tools, and Mum, need to be moved out of the way.

Naturally, all were reinstated when I had finished.

Of all the plants which are now re-emerging in the garden, Elizabeth is possibly most pleased with the tree peony which, like others, has benefitted from the soil improvement undertaken last year.

Elizabeth produced an excellent roast chicken dinner for us all, followed by apple crumble. Jackie, as usual, drank Hoegaarden; Mum passed; and the rest of us enjoyed Prestige de Calvet Bordeaux 2011.

As always, when we are all together, reminiscing was embarked upon. Mum reminded me of how Chris and I had collected wasps, drunk on the fruit of our grandparents’ trees, and stuffed them in a matchbox which we buried and kept unearthing to see if they were still alive. This, naturally, led to the tale of the bees (see 29th May 2012). In relating this, now, for the first time I remembered how I had completed the bus journey without any money. A woman in the seat opposite had paid my fare.

Have I Simply Gone Mad?

A robin and a blue tit saw off a nuthatch from the bird station. Really it was the robin who did the business, the tit being like the little kid who eggs on the bully to snatch some of the glory. The robin then stood guard, looking threatening, while the tit, knowing he didn’t belong in the same space as the toughie, head deferentially bowed, waited his turn. Modern technology found a wonderful new way to send me ballistic this morning. We received a phone call from the handyman who is to fix a few things in the flat. One item was not on his list. Since, without the agent’s say so he could not fix it, unless we contacted them we would need to continue flushing the lavatory with a piece of string which gets soggy if you drop it in the water. Rob, the handyman, asked us to call the agent. That was when the fun started. After dialling the number I was asked by a machine to enter my password. Well, how do you do that on a mobile phone? I also had an e-mail telling me the device would not receive messages because the password was incorrect. Thinking this may have been to do with my having reset my e-mail password on the BT account, I followed the directions given to do that. I was not allowed to do it that way, so I tried another. The new password was rejected, and the phone locked. Now, my mobile phone is on an O2 account, as my regular readers will already know. The home phone, in Jackie’s name, is a BT account. So you will be able to imagine my surprise, and mild expletives, when I got the same password request on the home phone. My expletives became even milder when Jackie got the same response on her pay as you go T-mobile. Eventually, I received a call from the home phone on my mobile. Jackie had now discovered that that had begun to work without the machine’s interference, as had her mobile. I could now receive calls, but access nothing else on my locked phone. There are seventeen apartments in this building. During this fiasco our entry buzzer was activated. Hoping it was our Rob, Jackie answered the door to a deliveryman who was trying to access number 15. Ours was one of only two buzzers he had managed to get to work. Rob arrived in good time. He was unable to access the loo until I got out of the bath. My ablutions had been delayed by the shenanigans. Whilst soaking comfortably I contemplated ‘Murder In The Lounge’, posted on 25th August last year. That story was about a cat fight. What I didn’t mention then was that the people next door were out when I returned the perpetrator’s collar, so I put that through the letterbox and left an answer phone message. My neighbours did not receive the message, and what is more, their entry phone did not take messages. Nevertheless, as I pressed the buzzer, a machine from inside the hall asked me to leave a message. So I did, and when I heard nothing more from my neighbours whose cat, after all, had left my sitting room looking like a pile of feathers after a predator had made a kill, I thought that rather churlish of them. So, did that buzzer short circuit with the telephone, or was the timing pure coincidence? And, if that was possible, could the deliveryman, trying all the buzzers in turn, have managed the same thing? It was, after all, only after he left that Jackie managed to use the phone. Or have I simply gone mad? Never mind, I thought, the birch on the lawn now sports fresh green leaves, and the sun casts its rays through our huge mullioned windows. There was, however, nothing remotely amusing or cheerful about the way the rest of the morning was spent. I was rash enough to telephone O2 about the locked phone. First of all the advisor suggested the earlier problem must have been related to the number we were trying to ring. That made sense to me. She then took me through the very lengthy process of unlocking my mobile. I had to enter, ten times, the password that kept showing up as incorrect. She could then reset it for me, but all the information carried by my phone would be wiped. I did this, and watched all my contact information; e-mails; saved messages; texts; and anything else I haven’t thought of, represented by a black line progressing across the screen. Twice. When she reset it, the password I had been using all along worked. Perhaps I have gone mad. This is exactly why I have always been reluctant to keep all information in my mobile phone’s memory. But I’ve often been a bit lazy in this respect. So, if you ever want to hear from me again, please send me an e-mail with your contact details. If I don’t receive any of these, I will know where I stand, and I just don’t know what I’ll do with myself. After lunch, with all this buzzing in my head, Jackie drove us to Elizabeth’s, where she continued planting bulbs and seeds and I cut the grass. This was slightly problematic in that I couldn’t get the mower going again. I was just about to throw in the towel, when, realising that would only clog up the works even more, I remembered Elizabeth’s technique, displayed on 20th, of pushing the machine along, jerking it up and down. A few yards of shoving what looked like a giant snail with hiccups did the trick. We were pleased to see the early, red, rhododendron has benefited from the bracken compost and the removal of diseased buds last summer. Before I could put my mind to this, I gleaned some family phone numbers from my sister and inserted them into my mobile. If you are a family member do not assume I now have all your details. Danni cooked a superb roast chicken dinner with all the trimmings for the four of us. Pudding was apple and blackcurrant pie. Danni and I drank McGuigan Estate shiraz 2012; Jackie drank Hoegaarden; and Elizabeth drank water.

The Benefits Of Hearing

A new visitor alighted on the bird table today. Jackie was able to view this creature from the hide she had constructed in the kitchen. As usual, as for the would-be panda photographer in the Kitkat television advert, when I arrived with the camera, the bird disappeared. She had to look it up in Dave Farrow’s ‘A Guide to the birds of Britain and Northern Europe’. At first studying the illustration for an apparently rare garden sparrow, she eventually settled on the female blackcap. A pied wagtail did battle with another bird that it saw off so quickly we couldn’t identify it. A blue tit showed a preference for the fat balls.

In celebration of a much brighter day, blossom has come to Castle Malwood Lodge garden, and fresh lemon coloured leaves are beginning to festoon Running Hill. I chose the first ford Q walk this morning. A distant cuckoo intruded upon the conversation of other forest birds, just as its chicks will intrude upon their unwilling foster parents.

The lambs that caught my eye as I walked towards the bridle path were black with white faces. Two of them vied with each other for either shelter or suckle under their mother. In a display of modesty the ewe, as I peered in their direction, waddled awkwardly off. How, I wondered, did those thin legs support that ungainly, wool-covered body? Her offspring hopped and skipped over each other, trying to latch onto their moving target.

At the top end of the path I tried a new route by taking Tom’s Lane. On a bend I soon saw a notice that made me change my mind. I was first inclined to ignore it, because it had probably been there some time. However, around the bend there were two houses, neither of which possessed a gate. Discretion was called for, so I retraced my steps and took Forest Road, beside which bony cattle basked in the morning sunlight. Walking back through Newtown, watching ponies grazing, I marvelled at the amount of unrelenting mandibular exercise required to feed these animals for a day. It is little wonder they don’t do much else.

On two occasions I had differing reasons for being grateful for the sense of hearing. About to approach the hill back into Minstead from ‘The Splash’ ford, the familiar clopping of an as yet out of sight horse drawn cart alerted me to the photo opportunity that was on its way. I was therefore able to take up a suitable position. As the carriage passed me the riders laughed at my poised lens. ‘I’ll bet you have lots of these taken’, I cried, as I clicked. ‘Just a few’, was the reply.

There is a particular blind bend on the road up to Seamans Corner. As usual I walked up the narrow road on my right hand side, so I would face cars coming towards me on their left. Round the bend sped a car I had only heard. The driver was looking in the direction of her passenger. Had I not pinned my back to a thorn hedge in anticipation, the vehicle would have hit me.

This afternoon, my granddaughter, Alice, visiting Soho with her Mum and Dad, sent me a photograph of the front door of Nos. 1 – 2 Horse and Dolphin Yard, where Michael had lived with Jessica and me during the 1970s. It was the roof of this building that formed part of the route to Michael’s rabbit pens described in my post of 21st May last year.

Jackie’s luscious lamb’s liver casserole followed by bread and butter pudding was for dinner. This was accompanied by Hoegaarden by Jackie, whilst I finished the Piccini.