Well I sit here writing this at the end of a great afternoon, having just had a peak at the blackbird sitting on some eggs 30 cm from my nose just outside the kitchen window and she is looking happy and so am I. My very competent eldest child Miles drove us into the Durham City area and we had a nice stroll around under a puffy clouds sky and a bracing north-east wind slicing through the warmth to make us feel grateful that we had our winter coats on. We paid a visit to Durham Cathedral today and in the cheerful midafternoon spring light it was beautiful, the sandstone catches the rays very nicely and whether you believe in God or not it is a very nice place. Biscuit break was in the quadrangle area just down from the Monks Dormitory but we were doing anything but sleeping. There was a lot of mirth put it that way. Fiona is a lot fitter now and we were going at normal speed so we trotted off back to the car and Miles did a nice three-point turn to get us on our way back home. I like setting these little driving problems for him and when we got home the lads disappeared off to do their computer games and Fiona and I crashed out in the backroom with Leonard Cohen Live in London drifting over the sound system which was very nice. She looks so angelic when she dozes off. Today it is lamb meatballs to go with the new style pasta which I cannot remember the name of and the sauce is bubbling away. Garlic bread smells good to! None of this seems to affect that lovely blackbird half a metre away from my right shoulder and when we go out to the garage we walk right underneath it but do not look up or else it would just fly away. Blackbirds nested in a similar spot a few years ago but they abandoned the nest because it was too low down and we could actually look into it as we walked by. This time they are higher up and in the right angle between the house and the garage but we were so worried that they would abandon it with us going in and out that we pulled down the first nest so they would not lay any eggs but, by 11 o'clock the next morning they had rebuilt it even better so I guess they really do want to raise their family right next to us. Good for them. Since Fiona put in a birdfeeder in the garden we now have Goldfinches, Greenfinches and many other birds as regular guests and Wood Pigeons scratch around underneath it to pick up the seeds that the birds drop because quite a lot of them are messy feeders. Lovely. A great afternoon out with my lovely family and an evening of Star Trek is about to start. "Live long and prosper" as the Vulcans would say.