The Way to Dad's Heart

The garden is a-buzz with signs of Spring, starlings whizzing about with enormous bits of grass for nesting, blackbirds, finches and sparrows, blue- and great-tits, the robins, dunnocks and collared doves. The starlings in particular seem to think that if they use really big bits of nest material, the nest will be completed that bit sooner because they'll need fewer.

The collared doves efforts are usually laugh-able. They tend to build a platform in full view from above, then lay a huge white egg which might as well say on it "This way, you Magpies!". They last about 5 minutes. Last year we did have a successful nest in the Albertine rose and it was built of such rudimentary stuff - wire, a few bits of stick and then a solid layer of baby-pigeon guano. Cup shaped and lined with downy fluff, it was most definitely not! At least the wire was stripped bits of telephone wire, so there was a bit of colour there.

Mum and Dad have a long running joke about this in which they adopt the nasal Dubliner voice of Dustin the Turkey "a left over bit of angle iron and a scrap of 4 by 2". Mum is brilliant at this, hailing as she does from that City (but not, she hastens to add, from "those parts")

Tonight though, we can do no wrong. It's Dad's birthday and to him, the absolute best music in the world is guitar blues, so anything he can get hold of featuring BB King, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler etc. We have bought him for his birthday, tickets to Mark Knopfler.

Yay us!

Now enjoying getting spoiled by chosen chunks of duck carcase.... It's a tough job but somebody has to do it....

Deefer