SQUIRREL WAR

You may recollect this photo of a cheeky squirrel occupying a bird box intended for blue tits. At first they used to take turns in sitting on the sloping roof and to counteract this I added a more severe sloping bit on top
but once they got the hang of sitting on this they - or was it a s/he only - mastered hanging face down from it and peering into the entrance hole. S/he then chewed at the hole over some weeks to make it bigger and then climbed in after much contortion to use it as a bolt hole in wet weather. So, no blue tit occupants last summer.

The enlarged hole can be seen more clearly in the second picture.









So now I have changed the slope of the roof and added a metal cover to form a bird sized entrance 0f 25 mm. Unfortunately my carpentry was not too good and so I had to add a very squirrel friendly horizontal strip on top of the apex to make it weather tight. To reduce the "friendliness" I have put in some screws into the top piece and hopefully even the agile squirrels will not find this comfortable. Within an hour of putting the new box up a blue tit was investigating it. My fingers are crossed for the bird.

GULLIVERS' TRAVELS

Yesterday was a beautiful, sunny Sunday and so we decided to visit the Land of Passing Youth. This is a place where everyone is well off and younger than 40 years old, and where the faces and language of people from many foriegn lands can be seen and heard. We had a dispensation to visit by virtue of us celebrating a special occasion.

We parked our voyager close to Parliament Square and travelled by tube to the Tate Modern. Because I forgot I had my Oyster card with me I was invited to pay £4 for the privilege but when I exclaimed "What....!!!!" I was offered a Travelcard for £5.30. Little was I to know that we would not use the LPY's public transport again that day.

When we got to Tate Modern Barbara's sharp eyesight spotted an alarming crack in the floor but was unable to persuade the staff of the evidence of an earthquake in the LPY.





Undeterred we booked into the exhibition of Juan Munoz' sculpture's and we saw waxen images of ancients who had once lived in the LPY. They obviously were very animated and happy despite their immobile condition and inability to speak in foreign, or any, tongues.














We continued walking along the South Bank towards the afternoon sun surrounded by many people apparently moving in the opposite direction.

A few of them preferred to stay on one spot and had a very curious choice of clothing oblivious to the cold weather, perhaps because of their foreign origins. We have not seen such strange species on TV before, even on David Attenborough's programmes.















In Trafalgar Square there was much hooting of horns and waving of large orange flags alongside the Stars and stripes and Union Jacks. Many of these flags were waved from cars which were full of young men and the traffic moved exceeding slow. These people were Kosovans celebrating their independence. We had some difficulty understanding their language but we think that they said that Kosovo is a suburb of the LPY.

Further on in Gerrard Street there was a celebration of the Chinese New Year: of course we knew laready about this suburb of LPY.
Our journey took us to the Curzon where we saw "No country for Old Men", a theme of the LPY which we well understood by then. After watching the Coen Brothers' latest production we had become much incommoded by hunger and we turned into Greek Street to eat at the Thai restaurant known as Patara. The food from this suburb of the LPY is very tasty and the decor exotic.

Finally, tired by our long day we turned homeward thankful for all the celebration that had been put on for we two Gullivers to remember our wedding anniversary. I wonder what they will do for us next year?