There is something fishy going on!

No hits since June!

No matter I shall plod on in spite of you all.

This weekend has been really wonderful. Blue skies and warm. Today I just spent in the garden chilling withe sound of the birds and a light breeze in the tree's. Just magic.

Saturday morning started with my good self being roused from a righteous slumber by my daughter who claimed she had seen a budgie in the garden. I lumbered down the stairs and with the aid of my binoculars did indeed observe a greeny/yellow bird in the garden. But it was not a budgie.

To settle the argument I suggested an online guide. Sure enough the RSPB had just such a thing. Let this be a warning to you all, these online guides are all very well but they are only as good as the information being inputted. One Small change to the questions led me from Barn owl to Golden Eagle via Blue Tit and Great crested Grebe. None of which looked anything like our garden resident. Gawd only knows what we would have diagnosed ourselves with if we were on a health website for instance.

Eventually I decided that what we saw was a Greenfinch although Katy was confident of a parakeet. I know best and it was a Green finch,

See if you can tell the difference





Greenfinch





Budgie

My daughter and I went to Newcastle yesterday to celebrate her doing so well in her maths this year. On the metro was a mature Gentleman who had a fold up bike. He stepped off the train at the next stop and, as he started to reconstruct his bike I was reminded of a fate my father had befall him many years ago in Canada.

I have to admit I find this a hard tale to tell. You see my father passed away some 6 years ago but our shared memories are still feel like yesterday to me. I came across a great photo of my Dad taken of him looking wistfully into the distance on a misty lake shore near my Uncle's cabin. It just seems that life is so ephemeral.

It was 1979. We were on the most exciting holiday I ever had. I had never been on a plane before I had only been to France up until then. Canada was just so much more interesting to me.

We had hired a car for a week and gone on a road trip taking in Ottowa, Lake Placid and the St Lawrence Sea Way.

We returned to Toronto and the hire car had to returned. My Uncle was at work and there was no other car to get my dad back from the rental lot. At that time if not still Canadians were as bad at getting in their cars and going places as many modern day Americans. So the rental place was not an easy place to reach with out a car. My Uncle had a solution. A folding bike. It was never established why my uncle owned such transport.

the bike was loaded into the hire care and my Dad duly set off. It was some time before he returned. We were not unduly perturbed by this as we had no idea how long it would take.

After a long time however Dad did arrive home and in something of a sweat.

The return journey had begun as advertised upon a bike that was unfolded from the back of the hire car. However Dad found the reason it was called a folding bike was that the bike operated in the present tense and took it's duties very seriously. He had cycled no less than a couple of hundred yards when the middle fold went arry. Dad stopped at first to rectify the situation thing he had not secured something properly but no fewer than a hundred yards down the road the same thing happened again. The bike started to fold itself with my Dad on it. He valiantly treddled on at one point pretty much riding two unicycles - peddling one and steering with the other. All this pandemonium vexed the engineer in my Dad as he attempted to restore order to the chaos.

I am afraid I do not do the story justice. The thought of the story is enough to get my Mum giggling uncontrollably.