No go

Today’s guest picture was taken yesterday in Leicester Square, London by my sister Mary.  They are having a light show in London under the title of London Lumière and this was part of it.

My other London sister and my daughter both went to look at the lights too and they told me that the streets were packed with spectators.  I would have liked to have been able to enjoy the show as well.

We had a grey cold day here, almost devoid of colour but it didn’t matter as I wasn’t able to go out anyway.  Mrs Tootlepedal’s cold had completed its emigration from her to me and I was in full coughing, sneezing and spluttering mode all day.

Fortunately Mrs Tootlepedal was pretty well recovered so I was in good hands.

I managed to sit at the computer long enough to put a couple of weeks of the newspaper index very slowly into the Archive Group database so I didn’t waste the whole day.

On the subject of the Archive Group, Archive group member and data miner Ken dropped in after his Monday stint of piling up more work for me.  He told me that another meter reader from the power company had arrived unheralded at the Archive Centre today.  This didn’t add greatly to my general joie de vivre.  The power company has got itself into a mess as regards our meter and no amount of sending meter readers round in the hope that the readings are suddenly going to make sense is going to help them.   This thing could run and run.  We now have sent them three sets of readings ourselves and they have sent men to read the meters three times in the past four months (whose readings we have checked) and they still can’t work out our bill.

I consoled myself by peering out into the gloom from time to time.

There were plenty of goldfinches about

The birds have knocked a perch off the feeder and it is buried somewhere in the snow but that doesn’t stop chaffinches getting seed from that opening.

A flying pick up

Chaffinches are our versions of the humming bird as they are good at hovering.

One just lining up the seeds

The were very busy today….both male….

…and female.

I was reading in an article that migrating chaffinches are genderists and the males and females go off to different destinations on their holidays.

There were no bramblings about when I looked out today but one or two redpolls made an appearance.

I made a pot of nourishing lentil soup for lunch while Mrs Tootlepedal was out singing in the church choir at a service but that was the limit of my activity and I spent the rest of the day practising sitting around and bemoaning.  I have nearly got it perfected.

The flying bird of the day is one of the goldfinches.