No Bahai stall today because it was too windy so I stayed in and got on with singing practice as well as a bit of harmonica blowing. I do not know why I bother but I have a strong feeling I will be needing it in the near future. Sounds mysterious? It does to me as well.

Miles has been working his head off because he has one month to do four assignments, his final ones and then into his finals, so to have a break he came out with Fiona, Clifford and I to have a walk around the River Wear in Durham. The rain and flooding over the last four months have really taken their toll on the banks and several paths  have been closed because the river has eroded them away. I'm not sure what they can do and   I would   close the path's for good and let the river have its wicked way because if they start putting in concrete culverts it will increase the speed of the river and created a lot of damage and silting downstream. Anyway it is a good one to watch over the next few months.

On the walk it felt like high Spring even though spring is only really starting. I saw one Jay looking down on it from 100 feet above as we were on a fairly high peninsular bank where we don't normally walk but it was really good. There was also an excellent view onto the South End of Durham Cathedral although I will have to check that I have got the right point of the compass because it can be a bit confusing looking at that building from various angles. Still, under the blue sky chopped up with puffy cumulus clouds it looked really good and God bless the Christians for putting up such great buildings.

Biscuit break was in the marketplace which was chock-full of people as well as a couple of folk buskers, a fiddle player and a drummer which was really good because they were not using amplification and it was much nicer without it. There is nothing better than natural acoustic sound.

When we got back Fiona and I had our usual crash and a cuddle listening to the ever interesting Leonard Cohen and now I am getting the tea together which is the same as last week and the happy routine of our family life carries on as always effective in delivering joy, intelligence but most importantly of all family unity. God bless my family and friends and I have a cracking evening set up of more warbling and rootling and tootling on my harmonica.but

A good read but completely irrelevant to my life now.I found the bit about Jo Frost interesting and I happened to watch one of her Super Nanny programmes where a young woman married to an ex-marine policeman was having trouble controlling her children when he was out doing his job. When he came back from a day's policing the children behaved  perfectly  with both parents because of his very disciplined and no-nonsense demeanour

I thought this was a simple case of the man conferring authority on to the mother. The policeman husband should have just told the kids that when he is out of the house if they do anything that bothers their mum it will bother him and there will be big trouble. I have done something similar but too a much lesser degree with my own lads from time to time. Interesting that Jo Frost did not recommend this because she concentrates on individual solutions to childcare problems when most of them happen because of lack of unity between the mum and dad.

I think the phrase I used with my lads was, and I must stress this was very occasionally, "Cross your mum and you cross me". I saw it as an empowerment gesture for my very fine wife.

A biological dilemma today. Two fine blackbirds have built their nest again this year in a really stupid place where the chicks can be got at easily by cats as well as the crows. Do I get a crow trap, a lovely device which uses the crows instinct to be social to catch three at a time and clear our area temporarily of crows or do I just leave them to their biological fate? My line so far is that if birds are that stupid to rear their young in such precarious places Natural Selection should put a brake on their obviously not very good genetic thinking and they don't rear young this year.

The black birds nest is about half a metre above the ground in some greenhouse shelving that Fiona has left outside about a metre from the back of our house and right next to the tap that she uses for watering. It is a great sheltered spot, South West facing but again it can take the brunt of the Westerly wind which lowers the temperature, results in the chicks being hungry, because they need more energy to grow and keep warm but the blackbirds feed them at a fairly fixed rate so the chicks will die. Sometimes I wish I never knew these things!