Poopy and Sweary

Tarpaulins and pallets have accumulated under the tree opposite my house - also a few pieces of scavenged women's clothing set out with a brown paper 'For Sale' notice, My sinking heart recalled a rooftop squat in the next street from a few years back and I realised that my new neighbour is my old neighbour - Cheesey 


We are three weeks into Cheesey's tree occupation, he's still buttonholing any passersby and now has an assortment of brothers-in-arms who gather to bicker about who owns the bike they just nicked or whether setting the pallets on fire was a stupid move -the tree looks a bit fed up.

The accumulation of Cheesey's sweary vocabulary and other people yelling at him from their windows to Shut the F*** up, has made things very sweary indeed. Cheesey came to my gate last week so he could call me a F****** B**** in close-up, and then, when he thought he was invisible, he came into the front yard to take a series of photos on his smartphone (???!!), surprised that I noticed he shouted at me that it was all part of his 'environmental campaign'.

But I got a break from all that 

last week I was in Switzerland with my chum Mr Attenborough - chauffering him around foresty filming locations - there was chitchat - I told him about Cheesey and we both agreed that the story bore more than a passing resemblance to Alan Bennett's tale of The Lady in The Van and that I'd better watch out.

In other news 

Mrs Blackbird is back. She flies into the kitchen as soon as I  open the garden door, having picked up this habit last year -  despite my putting food outside to keep her out, she still likes to come in, perch on the furniture and poop on the floor - today she brought her children in, which was a whole lot more poopy

Extra Extra
In yet another (probably doomed) bid to get the hang of social media I've made an Instagram account - there's probably a widget that I should stick on the side bar but meanwhile here's a link

While I was in Wales

the Man started putting out food for Mrs Bird. 

I was hanging out clothes this afternoon and she came hopping around near my feet - the Man said

she wants blueberries

I put some blueberries out on a plate

no you have to cut them up, she likes them quartered

I did this then turned my back to do some other chores, when I looked back at the plate the berries were so cleanly gone that I was sure that it must've been the Man eating them and pretending - like he used to do the Tooth Fairy. He came out behind me and looked at the clean plate

she likes some cheese after blueberries - shave a little Parmesan for her

It's like Santa Claus all over again

I'm nuturing a growing obsession

with bacteria - the more I read about them the more I love mine. Ten days ago the dentist made me drink a suicide cocktail of antibiotics and I've spent the intervening days growing a replacement microbe population.

In scientific experiments, lack of gut bacteria makes mice unhappy and listless - they won't bother swimming to safety and that definitely happened to me - I too forgot how to swim to safety without my biome.

This enthusiasm for all things bacterial might not be making me the best company at parties - best avoid me until I'm past the honeymoon phase of this particular relationship.

In Other News

Summer popped briefly in to the UK last month - then we had a referendum - Summer buggered off leaving Squally Showers to punish us for being pillocks.

Our political landscape has become a surreal farce with various overgrown schoolboys running away to hide behind their mother's aprons while peeping out to point and laugh at the Punch and Judy show going on in the Labour party. Our next Prime Minister will be one awful woman or another awful woman, which might be better than a series of awful men - but not much.

A Happy Thing

Mrs Bird still  pops in to nitpick about the state of our kitchen

Owchy time

the IN/OUT of Europe referendum has stirred up an underbelly stew of misery - we're still reeling from that debacle.

also my wrist has been malfunctioning - today I went for a cortisone injection at the hospital which was really really hurty. On my way home from the hospital there was a limping man who was hurting a lot more than me and really needed the hospital so I turned around and we walked back there together with him using me as a walking stick and it must have looked like a very funny three-legged race because the path was all pot-holed and we stumbled like a pair of drunkards.

Tomorrow I am having more dental work done but afterwards I shall go back to London and look after my favourite cats while my bruises go yellow and purple.

In other news

The Birds have tolerated us poking about in their garden for long enough and have started visiting us for a good nosey around. Mrs Bird, appalled at the standards of housekeeping among humans, comes in every day to try and tidy us up. Mr Bird sometimes comes with her but he usually gets tangled in glassware or computer cables and makes things worse so she usually leaves him behind to look after the children. This is today's visit