I'm not in any way like Bill Oddie ...
... who seems to be an opinionated and aggressive stout person who was funny once upon a time, hey wait a minute, it appears that I am a bit like Bill Oddie.
Never mind, my dear old mum was fascinated by birds, she was an enthusiastic spotter and painter of our feathered friends and I inherited her need to identify the avian occupants of our woodland and lawn. I spied an unusual bird the other day as I was working my way through two trees worth of Sunday Times looking for the elusive piece of news that they hide amongst the dross, drivel, puff, padding and adverts to keep me buying it.
This small brown spotty thing was diving from a branch, skimming across the lawn, grabbing a fly and returning to the perch, 'that's unusual' I thought, 'that spotted bird catching flies, I wonder what it is'?
Astonishingly it turns out to be a Spotted Flycatcher Muscicapa striata, (I guess i should have seen the clue in the name). It's a visitor to the UK and this one and it's mate, it now turns out, are responsible for all the guano around our front door. They've been slaughtering our native insect population and delivering the corpses to the nest where they've raised 5 young-uns on the support struts at the top of our big glass windows.
For the benefit of my ornithologically aware readership and just for confirmation from the assorted twitches and spotters that I've got it right, I'm attaching a very brief clip, (click on the image to view) obtained through the very professional "video camera duct taped to a fishing rod" technique.
Things that one is really too old to be doing - No 17 - Paintball
Noun
I may have acquired 14 spectacular bruises and a pulled hamstring but I did capture the last flag, delivering ultimate victory to the Reds and humiliation to the Blues but this was little thanks to our team, 5 of Callum's young friends and ChaCha who (whilst James and I relived scenes from our past,
I guess neither of us will ever get over Nam!) mostly huddled together in relative safety, spraying pellets, £10 for 80 !!! in all directions.
The military lessons these kids seem to have learned mostly address 'spray and pray', 'friendly fire', 'collateral damage' and 'plausible deniability'.
I may possibly be judging the little ones harshly, I distinctly heard James advising them during the briefing to take full advantage of the cover provided by large, stationary objects, " You know, like Stuffy"
It's an expensive days play, the pellets are extortionate and the site sells them for 8 times what you can pay on the web, the food is execrable and there are a disturbing number of people who take it all a little too seriously, however as an adrenaline rush and an occasional laugh it's great sport and many thanks to James and Callum for taking ChaCha and I along.
On the institutionalised incompetence of businesses, yes Vodafone YOU !!!!
Start Rant...
So, for the second time in three months my mobile ceased to function, nothing, nada, zip, zero, a plain white screen with red words telling me to "contact service". Well, I'm nothing if not obedient so after 10 minutes of pressing the 2
8 appropriate buttons on a conventional phone (does anyone else feel a little like an experimental chimp ringing these helplines, shouldn't one at least get a banana or a biscuit if we get the sequence right?) I got to speak to some lovely young lady in Utter Pradesh.
Using all her diagnostic skills she ascertained that the problem must be the sim card, how? "because 9 out of 10 times it is".
She advised me to turn it off, leave it for ten minutes then turn it back on again. This is now standard operating procedure for all helplines, if my name comes up, they give me a ten minute task then take their lunch break, very quickly.
Astonishingly the simple reboot didn't fix what was clearly a major fault, the young lady was away from her desk (told you so) and there would be nobody available to organise a replacement until 09:00 Monday morning, why? Because Vodafone have outsourced their replacement service (to a team of the aforementioned lobotomised chimps I suspect).
You'd think that if one of the world's leading telecoms companies was dealing with the replacement of a non-functioning mobile phone they'd find a better way to communicate with the unhappy owner of the phone than by sending text messages, (which can't be received) or having the delivery driver telephone the non-functioning mobile for directions.
Still he found me OK, probably by heading for the source of the wailing and gnashing of teeth and the rhythmic thud, thud, thud of a forehead hitting a brick wall.
Vodafone's fault resolution used to be superb, (indeed I was complimenting them in this very blog only a few months ago) however as cost cutting starts to make it's presence felt I'm afraid they've made their way alongside British Airways, Custodian MonitoringServices and the tight git who canceled the complimentary Financial Times at my gym onto the Stuffy List of Institutional Nincompoops.
...End Rant
