NORTH DOWNS & BEYOND

What is currently 'getting my goat' 1. The Sainthood of Sir Alex Ferguson - less fuss would have been made if The Queen had murdered Barak Obama with her sceptre. 2. Adult birders giving themselves Twitter names like 'TopBirder74' or 'KingTickerBoy'. Grow up. 3. This cold, shitty weather. 4. The incestuous back-slapping that goes on between birders, congratulating each other on 'brilliant id skills' and bestowing the title of 'legend' on anybody that has been birding longer than 12 months. Come back in 40 years time and claim such things, by all means. 5. Me. What a miserable, bitter fool. 6. Simon Cowell.He cannot tell a Tree from a Meadow Pipit imho. 7. Text shorthand like 'imho' - ffs!! 8. Upward inflection at the end of a spoken sentence when it isn't a question. 9. The change in shape of Cadbury's chocolate bars - now all curved and smooth rather than sharp-angled chunks. 10. Lists like this. It's creative lazin...

No, I haven't posted for several days, not out of anything other than a lack of a reason to do so. However, I have been royally rewarded by: Tottenham Hotspur reaching the last eight of the Champion's league; watching Professer Brian Cox explain how time will ultimately cease to exist and making me understand how this will happen; viewing two excellent BBC4 documentarries on guitar-genius Peter Green and also the incestuous History of Fleetwood Mac; realising that I had left Glow-worm off of my pan-species list; drinking Jacques cider (which is expensive and poncey); listening to Scott Matthews (check his albums out); reading grip-off text messages from the birding-boy-wonder David Campbell; re-reading Ian Marchant's excellent book about the greatest pub-crawl ever. I might get out at the weekend...