Month: Jun 2026

327: for the birds

This week, up the mountain in Caerphilly, I have been taking great delight in watching (and hearing) a huge crowd of jackdaws swooping and diving every evening before they dive into a nearby tree and settle down for the night.

Starling murmurations are spectacular – when I was at university in Aberystwyth we used to sit in the bar on the pier and watch the thousands of birds coming in for the night, doing their aerobatics over the sea and then suddenly dropping out of the sky and vanishing.

These jackdaw flights look for all the world like a starling murmuration but Google tells me that this is actually known as a ‘clattering’. It also tells me that jackdaws are democratic in their roosting habits: some will start to squawk when they’re ready to get up in the morning and then when the noise reaches a majority pitch they all fly the roost. I guess it’s the same in the evenings, as from about 5pm they’ll start flying back and lining the ridges of the neighbours’ roofs, and when enough of them fly in the clattering begins. It really is a clattering – the noise is immense. Occasionally they’ll have a practice clatter in the afternoon and then all fly off again to do what jackdaws do – chiefly terrorising seagulls and demolishing the cherry tree next door, I think.

There are some examples on YouTube of these clatterings – I keep trying to capture it but my phone doesn’t do it justice.

I’ve written before about my fondness for the magpie family that lives in my Essex garden, which produces a noisy brood every year who run their poor mother literally ragged chasing her about after they’ve fledged. I like corvids in general (before anyone points it out – I know starlings aren’t in this family!. One year we had a little gang of them visiting the garden every day, comprising Richmond the Rook in his fluffy trousers, a pair of jackdaws and a few of the magpies. They were great fun, mastering the bird feeders together and working out how to get at the peanuts through teamwork.

I saw a raven eating a sausage roll from a Greggs bag in Clerkenwell once – huge thing, and I didn’t like to think about what had happened to the original purchaser of the sausagey treat. If the raven had come asking for my pastry snack I’d have handed it over, no questions asked.

Rooks are noisy and chatty and playful, and I always feel a bit sorry for the ones banished from the rookeries . What have they done that they have to go and find their own tree? There’s a large rookery near the church in North Weald, and it’s so loud when you walk past that it drowns out whatever I’m listening to.

Crows, on the other hand, stomp about the place looking slightly menacing, and at harvest time for all the world like they’ve been planted in flocks in the fields.

This week I’ll be back up in London, looking forward to getting back to work and getting ready for the family festival on Saturday. I’m not looking forward to my inbox though…

Also – happy Father’s Day to my excellent and well balanced dad, without whose sage advice my sisters wouldn’t be the functional, sane adults that we are today. Well done Dad…

Same time next week…

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous/Appassionata/Score!/Pandora – Jilly Cooper

326: slow down, you move too fast

Thanks to all the people offered sympathy and spare beds after last week’s post – you’ll all be pleased to hear that the swelling has gone down considerably, although my eye looks like a Pride flag (appropriate for this month) and the bruising is spreading across my face. It’s…colourful, especially the greeny-yellow making its way down my cheek.

Right now I am in the Forest of Dean being looked after by my sisters and cousins, who are warning me about tree roots, speed bumps and anything else I might fall over. We’ve also been doing some gentle crafting in the shape of Lino printing, which I haven’t tried before, and I did bring my crochet along as well.

We’ve also been out for a gentle walk with the wonderful Merlin bird app going – lots of new birds for my life list and even more evidence that I’m getting on a bit. Fortunately the cousins I was walking with also have the app..

Work sent me some glorious peonies mid-week as a a get-well.

I have been missing work, but I’m still waking up through the nights with headache and have taken the advice of my boss and doctor to slow down and take some time to recover. I’ve found it quite hard to slow down after going full tilt for so many months and juggling the separation, work and children. I’m trying very hard to relax, honest…and now I’m going to do just that for the weekend. You’re getting this post early so it’s off the to-do list!

Kirsty x

What I’ve been reading:

Riders/Rivals/Polo/The Man Who Makes Husbands Jealous – Jilly Cooper

325: you should see the other guy

AKA: Pavement 1, Kirsty 0

Last week, as I was waiting for a cab for some members of our Community Access Panel, they pointed out to me that the kerb on the vehicle access to the Centre was quite high and we might want to think about painting it to warn people not to trip over it. I made a note of this, of course, and mentioned it in passing to our facilities manager.

This week, as I was leaving the celebration event on Wednesday evening (having had one soft drink and a biscuit or two) I tripped over it and landed like a felled tree on the pavement. A cyclist swerved off the road and informed me that I was bleeding before swerving off again. Fortunately I was outside work so I staggered back in and got myself mopped up, and they put me in a cab to the station as at that point it looked as if I had a mouse on my brow and a couple of small grazes.

Onto the tube I hopped, having waited for some time for a train. With no mirror handy I had no idea what I looked like. The friend I’d been chatting to when I faceplanted had made me promise to phone Miriam and Jill and get picked up from Epping station. When Miriam picked me up she took one look at me and marched me off to a nurse colleague, who took another look and sent me off to A&E.

On the way Miriam called at Lidl and bought me a bag of frozen peas, as well as a QP with cheese from the McDonalds next door as I hadn’t eaten for about eight hours. The peas are the best vegetable anyone’s bought me since Kerry turned up in 2006 with a Savoy cabbage when I had mastitis. They lasted four hours before becoming mushy peas, which then defrosted on my top.

By this point I had double vision, was feeling quite queasy as I hadn’t eaten, and words like ‘head injury’ and ‘concussion’ were being bandied about the place. A&E at 8pm on a Wednesday was clearly the cool place to be as it was absolutely packed. I had my temperature and blood pressure taken, and about 10.30pm the clinical streamer saw me and packed me off to the next waiting room where I sat from then until 9am the following day when I was actually seen by a doctor.

When we arrived in the second waiting room the waiting time was 7 hours and there were 51 patients. At 1am a nurse came round with blankets for everyone, which were much needed, and a coffee trolley was left at some point, When the painkillers kicked in I dozed off for a bit but the situation wasn’t ideal. One person had been there since 9am the previous morning in the same chair. The nurses’ station wasn’t able to tell you anything other than how many people were ahead of you (15, at 4am when I asked)

At 4am when they updated the board there were 44 patients and 10 hour wait. At 9am there were 30 patients and a 12 hour wait. There is probably a formula for this in a GCSE syllabus somewhere, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

In waiting room 3 I was reunited with some of the people who’d been in A&E the previous evening but who had at least seen a doctor. The doctor did some eye checks on me and tapped my face, took a photo and went off for some advice. A while later she came back and sent me for an x-ray in case I’d broken anything. I had an x-ray which wasn’t clear enough to be sure, so I had a CT scan which showed I’d managed to fracture my lower orbit. Another doctor said she’d go and talk to another team and she’d come back to me. At 3pm I was finally told I could go home and the hospital would be in touch with an outpatients appointment. I wandered over to Geek Retreat via Primark, where I bought two pairs of very large sunglasses. Miriam retrieved me, informed me that I was staying at her house in a proper bed for a while, and took me home. Jill brought me flowers and chocolates in the evening – unnecessary but lovely!

On Friday morning I was called back into hospital to see the opthalmology team (another 5 hours of waiting around) and on Monday I’m seeing the maxillofacial team to assess whether they need to do anything. The swelling has subsided and I can see out of both eyes again which is nice!

Of course, the Centre opened on Friday and after all the preparations….I missed it. Still, I would have scared people off with my rainbow eye! Irish sister sent me some very tasteful eyepatches…thanks Steph….

So that’s been my week. Not sure what this week will look like – can I realistically go and do a storytelling session for small people on Wednesday or will the sight of my eye scare them, or host the freelancer social? No swimming, no flying, no blowing my nose – slightly worried about the underground too, of course. Who knew a faceplant would raise so many questions?

Watch this face…no, space….

Kirsty x