Monthly Archives for May 2012

Birdy Bulletin

There’re dangers in getting ‘too attached’.  But how can you avoid attachment?  Care is what motivated you to take action in the first place, to get involved.  Care is motivated by respect and interest in another being, whether that being is on the same scale as yourself or not.  Attachment is just when that care becomes habitual, a relationship perhaps.  Should we choose not to care?  It seems that so many people don’t care, they don’t have the interest or respect or even plain common sense when it comes to dealing with their fellow planet dwellers, even of their own species.  Personally, I don’t think that’s a good thing.  It must surely be better to care, to have attachment, to show interest, to form relationships even if that means roughing the storms and dealing with pain and hurt.

I thought I would have very bad news to share with you.  I don’t know if I’m even really ready to talk about it but I know that many of you have been following the babies’ stories with much interest.  And surely you must all realise that not everything has happy endings.  When I was a child with an even lower scare threshold than I do now, I would only watch the films from the Mouse Brand because ‘at least there’ll be a happy ending’.  As an adult, I know that real life doesn’t, rarely it seems to me sometimes, echo those films.

We care and choose to get involved because we want positive outcomes, to do some good or make a difference.  But wanting to steer a future to the positive doesn’t mean we deny in our minds that it might not go that way.  Is it wrong to want or dream of happy endings?  Probably not.  Just sometimes we have to temper our fantasies with reality.  And reality can be harsh.

We nearly lost one last night.  It came as a great shock to us both.  And we found ourselves late at night having to make some very, very, very tough decisions.

It was our little Manky.

In the end, we took the decision to place him in a box overnight and see what happened.  Or rather to let nature take its own course even though we desperately didn’t want him to struggle.  He was struggling.

We went to bed in tears.

This morning the others woke late, that is twenty to six!

We fed them but couldn’t face opening up the box (it wasn’t sealed, it wasn’t airtight, just the cardboard box that we were first using for their accommodation with the flaps pushed down safe).

Just before seven, we heard something, a little something.

We couldn’t believe it.  And almost didn’t.

We heard it a couple more times and summed up the courage to open the flaps and look back inside.

It had been such a tough, long night.

He made it.  He was cheeping for his breakfast.

We couldn’t believe it.  I think we started crying all over again.

He’s still with us now, having regular feeds and on his own in the ‘hospital ward’ in the bedroom.

We still don’t know what the future holds for him.

I don’t know if we’d brave optimism but we’re going to keep feeding him.  And fortunately he doesn’t seem to be ‘struggling’ anymore.  We will see.

The other four are strong.  It seems.

Feisty seems to have lost interest in flying, maybe he scared himself with one too many crash landings.  It was a little concerning but it was reassuring to reflect that when many baby birds are found, especially at ground level, it is because they are fledgers who have lost their energy or whose feathers need a little more developing.  He could do with a good preen, that’s for sure.  Just got to watch where you put your feet!

Birdie seems to have switched species; he is no longer a cute blue tit baby but a feral pigeon.  And you know what I think of those.  He’s food motivated, probably that’s why he put the most amount of weight on amongst them all.  He’ll divebomb you if you walk in the room, just in case you have anything and he has no shame in stealing food from your own dinner.  Lunchtime we ended up putting them all back in the tank just to be able to eat!

All four are getting to self-feeding now.  We have little lids all across the back of one of the sofas, by the window where they love to be.  The husband’s chocolate spread obsession finally has a use!  They have one of water, one of baby food blend, one of mealworms and grubs and one of proper grown up bird food.  I think they’re most throwing the seeds around, judging by the evidence.  The sofa is totally trashed but fortunately it’s throws that I can wash and even redye so I’m being very docile and letting them get away with certain liberties.  Although of course we’re doing as much cleaning as possible.  It’s just a little hard when they take to wallowing in the baby food!

We’re also having a hard time keeping them off the cacti.  There’s some nasty little fuzzy needled ones too.  I don’t like cacti, they’re my husband’s.  I especially don’t like them since, when we were decorating last summer in here, my husband wisely left them on the floor.  I tripped over one of them and got lots of nasty little needles in my foot.  I removed them but wasn’t happy.  I was especially not happy when two weeks later my foot started hurting and we discovered several more needles.  He also keeps a spiky on the balcony so it can attack me when I hang the washing out.  This is not the way to domestic bliss.

Myself, I’ve gone from being a person who had never, ever held a bird before to being someone who can catch them adroitly and who has them perch and poo on me too.  Not so keen on the poop.  Funny enough.  We’re going through baby wipes, hand gel and antibac spray at an alarming rate.

Still can’t keep up with the poop though.

And we’re very exhausted from such a rollercoaster of emotions.  Drained.

But this morning when I read the Jester Queen’s latest post, I was very surprised to see my blog (or more technically my blue tits!) nominated for a blog award.  Now I’m pretty sure that this blog isn’t ‘lovely’ but I will accept graciously and I do thank her very much indeed, it was just what was needed after such a night and morning.

As it was my blue tit babies that triggered the award, I have set them up a page of their very own.  You see up at the top right with the other black buttons?

I am also meant to share seven things about myself that you don’t know about.  I think I’ll save that for another day, I’m all written out now.

And I’m also meant to nominate some other bloggers for the award.  Although I’d question the use of the verb ‘nominate’ because it is in fact a case of ‘award’, I make the decision and they receive.  Nominate would mean I would have to suggest them to a committee or something.  OK, pedantic moment other.  I’ll do that another day too.

Thank you for reading and thank you Jester Queen.

Related Articles

Progress Report

Me

I am not an hysteric, I just don’t like the dentist.  At all.  I died.  I’m sure.  And have had my face, skull and jaw completely reshaped courtesy of some wrestling moves by the dentist guy, that’s why they make you wear those safety goggles you know, so that they can spend an hour leaning all their body weight on your eye socket.  Oh and wisdom teeth are absolutely massive with two long pointy down things at the end.  Did you know that?  I spent four hours sleeping off the local anaesthetic (dude felt the need to wave a foot-long stabbing device around and stab me three times with it) and six trying to stop the bleeding.  It took me another hour to manage a slice of cake.  Still feeling quite sorry for myself.

More Importantly, the Blue Tits

I reread that article about hand rearing passerines.  I have to admit that the first time my eyes just stopped at the hand feeding which was such a priority then and the reason we were searching for information.  Can we feed them?  What do we feed them?  How do we feed them?  There is a lovely big section on fledging too so I think we may have enough information to guide us forward again.  The babies seem to know what to do themselves, which is so remarkable.

It was reading down through the article that I noticed something very useful.  How to identify your babies!  Two words: nail varnish.  Thankfully my mature tastes in nail varnish mean that I do not have a discreet monotone rainbow of pinks and reds, I have colours.  We painted some legs up!  Have you ever painted a blue tit’s toes before?!  I wish we had known sooner but as the first one was named Birdie, we clearly didn’t expect to end up with an entire brood on our hands.

If you’re skimming through the photos that I’m about to share, you may want to consult this handy guide!

Birdie – blue (metallic, oooh)

Feisty – red

Manky – yellow (but Feisty obviously kicked him whilst his varnish was still wet because Manky has a red foot too, just to confuse matters!)

Sneaky – orange

Rocky – green

Yesterday morning we had two fliers.  Then three.  Finally Birdie wanted in so we balanced him on the edge of the tank and got the hang of it straight away.  He hasn’t looked back since then, he’s into everything and is even starting to self-feed.  He took a shine to our cake earlier.  Ssh.  Four birds flying around keeps you on your toes!  There’s nothing quite like two birds flying, at speed, towards your head from opposite directions.  Or walking around with a bird on your head.

Our sitting room has become their aviary, they’ve been out most of today.  Just be careful where you sit because these guys seriously aren’t potty trained.  They don’t wear nappies either.  We’re spending a lot of time taking roll call, chasing, feeding and cleaning.  Great stuff.

Husband in particular walks in, casting his eye about:

“One, two … three … four … … … five!”

Manky is behind the others.  That’s for sure.  We don’t know what the future holds for him but we’ve had him out of the tank with the others and sometimes, when you’re not looking especially, he’s suddenly on a completely different surface!  This evening it’s clear that he has a hop, climb, flap combo which is working for him.  There’s even been a few short glides, we’re very proud of him!  There may be hope.

Rocky prefers to hide in corners.  Birdie has a predilection for perching in odd places.  Sneaky has taken a shine to the electric fan that we’re having to use because all our doors and windows are having to be kept closed at the moment, for obvious reasons.  Feisty is sporting quite a hairdo.

Some photos:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Aren’t their colours amazing?  (No, I don’t mean the nail varnish).

Related Articles

 

 

A Visit to the Dentist

I don’t like the dentist.  It’s not personal.  It’s not the person after all but their job.  Though why they’d want a job like that I don’t know, hated by everyone, torturing poor innocent people day in, day out.  Maybe the Inquisition isn’t recruiting at the moment.  In a moment of reckless abandon, I might even venture to say that I like my dentist.  She’s competent.  I value competency.

I used to see a dentist at another surgery.  They went private.  Which meant (other than paying an obscene amount of money monthly to be part of this happy club) painting the waiting room dirty mauve, getting rid of all the children’s toys and decent magazines and installing silly little too-narrow perches of seats and fancy lifestyle magazines for those who hunt and have jolly tea parties.  Not me.  He had modern (and not brilliantly done, if I say so myself) black and white canvases of his beatific (apparently, if I say so myself) offspring on the walls of his surgery and smoker’s breath and hands.

Back in the days when we used to work, we used to have to make an 8 am appointment.  He’d wander in at quarter past then saunter around, chatting with the receptionist and making his coffee.  If he saw us by half past then we were doing well.

We’d troop in to see him and my husband who has spectacularly good oral health would be told to make an appointment with the hygienist, me with the genetically poor teeth never saw the hygienist once.  My mother takes my poor oral health as a personal insult and act of deliberate rebellion on my part, she looked after my teeth so carefully when I was little!  She fails to appreciate that my molars were doomed from conception by genes.  It doesn’t seem to matter what I do or don’t do.  I certainly don’t generate fillings as an act of revenge or mud-fling against her maternal skills.

My patience with this idiot dentist was finally snapped when one day he profoundly informed me that it seemed like my teeth had suffered ‘a recent trauma’.  No, they hadn’t been in a car crash.  Neither had I.  I would have noticed.  I drily informed him that as my notes and I had told him at each appointment I had sensitive teeth and gums, that this was probably due to me having brushed my teeth before the dental appointment.

His advice?

He suggested that I skip brushing my teeth for the next few days until they healed.

I kid you not.

And what was I suppose to the next time I brushed my teeth after that?  Skip a few more days then repeat the cycle endlessly?

For a variety of reasons, we now have a new dentist.  On the healthcare system.  We had a brief interlude with another one, one or maybe two appointments who was OK, a million times better than the previous one.  But now we have my dentist.  Or ours technically.

She has spent the last year or two replacing all the shiny, posh white fillings that the old dentist put in.  Because they were already falling out and hurting badly.  And catching up with all the new ones that I’ve been making too.  She put a temporary filling in back in September and that’s lasting better than one the fancy permanent ones by idiot dentist.

I’m also making a conscious effort not to tuck my cough sweets down one side of my mouth.  Ahem.

But visits to the dentist all start the same way.  I am like the dog who goes to the vet with his tail between his legs, ears flattened.  He knows where he’s going and what is going to happen to him.  Only I don’t wee on the flowerpot by the door.  Honestly.

I am a little regressive at the dentist perhaps.  I know that only terror awaits.  And pain.  I can cope with pain but not the fear of pain.

I am accompanied by my husband because it’s easier than calling us one at a time (double appointments because I’m just too scatty to cope with any other system) and because I’m a little wary in appointments about hearing correctly (the ears have improved that score and now I wear contacts, they can’t nick my glasses (which also affects my hearing)).  I go in with the husband because I don’t trust him to remember anything useful and which needs remembering.  He doesn’t trust himself either.

I sit very small in the chair, my boots or sandals sticking up awkwardly, the head rest somewhere above my head, head cocked and eyes wary.

Idiot dentist was a great believer in counting teeth.  He counted every teeth with a chant that bordered on the religious.  You’d have thought I’d notice if I’d lost a tooth somewhere in between the six month appointments.  Apparently not.

This dentist doesn’t count.  Presumably my teeth don’t need roll call after all.  She inspects.

The decision is made that I need another filling.  This happens every appointment.  Sometimes more than one at a time too.

I have to come back in a week for the execution.  It’s so I can have this hanging over my head for at least seven days, a looming threat.  Death row.

I came back, more wary, even smaller, even more regressive.

She makes the fatal mistake of asking if I want an injection.  Now I might not like pain but injections rank worse.  That September appointment I had three fillings needing doing, one of which needed completely drilling out before the filling.

She kept asking me if it was hurting.

I skilfully avoided the question and concentrated on the fascinating poster of puppies high up on the ceiling.  How many are white?  How many have blue labels?  How many begin with a vowel?  How many are terriers?

My husband was looking at me very suspiciously.

He’s probably better at reading my body language than the dentist was.

She somehow believed that patients would own up to the pain.

She’d forgotten that I had two small fillings done six months previously with no injection either.

It was the kind of pain that would have you screaming out loud if you weren’t quite so phobic about the injection.  I curled my toes some more, clenched my fists and pulled discreet strange faces.

The dentist eventually got suspicious.

I’m fine means I don’t want an injection not I’m not in pain.

She clicked eventually.

And shot me with like a half-dozen needles, of increasing size, until I lost all sensation.

I wasn’t happy about that either.

It’s a very strange thing not being able to feel the lower half of one’s face.  One’s tongue wants to do all sorts of crazy things.

What’s even stranger is when your face starts coming back.  You get the oddest tingles in the oddest place.

I had a six month check up about a month ago.  I didn’t need a single filling.

That’s what miracles and a competent dentist do.

We got demoted to annual appointments.  Or should that be promoted?  I didn’t know you could see your dentist less often.  My mother raised me that six months was the Law.  I don’t mind seeing the dentist less often though.

The downside is that temporary filling I mentioned having done back in September?  Well, that was to placate a wisdom tooth until they could get me an appointment at the hospital.

One word: extraction.

That’s tomorrow’s treat.

Oh yay.

PS.  I asked my new dentist about the whole should I brush my teeth if it causes them ‘trauma’ thing (my gums bleed badly), her response?  Brush them, they’ll toughen up.

PPS.  If I’m still alive tomorrow afternoon, I’ll share some more bird photos.  Promise.  But I might not be.  You know, coz.

Related Articles

 

Famous Five

It is late and there are plenty of other things going on in my life and in my head but I promised to keep you all updated with my feathered foster children.

Sneaky seemed to have magically deflated this morning.  He’s only heaviest by 1 g.  Maybe it was like a defense thing or something.  We had weigh in this morning, Birdie was the winner as he’d put on 2 g!

Getting up so early isn’t easy, I’m not really ‘well’ enough yet for a long day and although I don’t talk about my husband’s health too much here, he’s not in a brilliant place either.  It’s very demanding.  But it’s worth it with every mouthful that they take and every flap they make.

I have two headlines in the blue tit news updates, I will share them briefly before I have to head to bed.  I will be up early tomorrow!  (You know, for some reason!)

Sneaky seemed to have settled in quite nicely this morning although I’m pretty sure he was the one behind the frequent kerfuffles going on in the tank last night when I was trying desperately to get to sleep.  It sounded like one of them had a wee baby blue tit-sized pair of castanets.  Maybe someone was just wrestling with the cardboard tube.

This morning when our flock cheeped in the sitting room, we could hear an echo.  Small but distinct.  We kept stepping into the bathroom to see whether there was a cause or whether we were just cracking up.  It’s possible.  And hey, I don’t wear my ears in the house anyway.  Tracking small sounds is not easy!  But there was still an echo.

Husband finally decided that he was actually hearing something and crouched down to examine the cavity more closely.

Whereupon he discovered a small baby blue tit clinging to the stonework.  They have good grip these blue tits but this guy takes the biscuit.  We named him Rocky.  Think of him as the precocious teenager who wants to leave home as soon as but fails to appreciate that he’s still totally dependent on his parents.  It would have been good if he’d learnt to feed himself and fly before Rocky swaggered out of the nest.

We contained him quickly and he went nuts.  In fact, he made Sneaky look docile.  He spent most of the rest of the day banging his head against the ‘glass’ (it’s plastic but you know how you use certain words automatically, well I do, and it’s polystyrene if you want to be pedantic) and planning escape bids.  He had a pretty good go at one point too.  Rocky, the high jump champion of the passerine world!

It’s getting harder to tell them apart.  There’s distinctive features but when they’re all huddled together or climbing over each other or squawking agape ready for their food, it gets a little harder.  Five of them now!

Rocky’s desperation to be free brings me to the other news headline.

We let him have a good flap around tonight.  With all the doors and windows shut.  He took his first flight!  Well, the first forays into this new form of locomotion were definitely ‘falling with style’, think more glider than powered aviation.  But it was still pretty impressive!  He got quite the hang of it after a few more attempts.

By this time however one of the others (we’re unfortunately undecided whether it was Sneaky or Feisty, from the wing feather colouring I would reckon Sneaky) was squawking to join in the fun.  The other three had fallen asleep after their feed and stayed that way, obviously unimpressed by such antics!

Well, this one soon got the courage to try too.  Husband was just praising him on how he was much more about control than Rocky when he crash landed spectacularly.  On the sofa fortunately.  It might sound cruel but falling is evidently part of the process and besides, once they’ve got the hang of flapping they really can’t do too much damage.  Flapping means you land the right way up.   If you’re a baby blue tit, not a human, of course.  If you’re human than you tend to do the other kind of flapping when you’re falling.

Rocky went and hid under the sideboard at one point.  A little awkward.  He had to be retrieved with the guidance of a long-handled paintbrush.  Gently of course.  He loves to perch so he clung on to the paintbrush.  He won’t eat inside the tank either.  He’s a little freedom lover.  Or a rebel.

It’s amazing to see them take to their wings.  I suppose it’s like a first steps moment.  But what’s so impressive is that I can’t fly.  And to see these wee smudges suddenly get it into their heads to flap these strange appendages of the sides of their bodies and for that to work, well that’s pretty awesome.

So we had two small birds making their first flights today.

Tomorrow I think I’m going to be reading up on the whole fledging process.  I hope the other three make it too.

(There’s not so many photos today because several somebodies had a food fight in the tank.  Runny beef stroganoff travels far.  And wide.  And everywhere.  It is not a pretty sight).

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Related Articles

And Then There Were Four

Yesterday I said how we were a little bit worried how Manky was always being left on his own but by late evening they had bonded nicely and were all huddling together.  Three little blue tits wedged together at one of a loo roll tube!

They wake with the dawn and are immediately hungry.  From then until dark they have accustomed themselves to our hourly feed routine and are very insistent from about ten to!  Even Manky has now got the hang of the routine, he was a little bit off his food yesterday.  It was funny to notice that when he first arrived he was very wary of us but within minutes of being de-manked and hearing his siblings chatter to him, he quite readily accepted food from our hand.  We think that they had told him that we meant food.  Their chatter seemed to have calmed him at least.

We have blended the beef stroganoff baby food (we chose the one with the highest protein count) with milk to make it very smooth and have poured into ice-cube trays.  Frozen it will last for a lot longer because one jar of baby food goes a lot further with baby blue tits than it does with a baby human.  And ice cubes are just the right portion size.  The milk will make sure that they get enough calcium, the mealworms aren’t very nutritious in this regard.  It’s also better for hydration.  We defrost it for thirty seconds in the microwave and leave it to cool just a little (because husband feels that they shouldn’t get used to hot dinners, it just isn’t natural!) before serving it up with a syringe.  Blended with the milk it’s lovely and smooth.  For them and the syringe.  They seem to really relish it.  Manky particularly, more than the worms.  However we can’t give them too many beef stroganoff meals because otherwise they end up with really runny poop.

Yes, I mentioned poop again.  It’s important that they poop, you know.

We’ve acquired a small tank to keep them in, on the internet some people hold against keeping them in tanks but there is a difference between a great glass aquarium and the little holding tank that we’re using.  It’s just a wee plastic thing that you can use for all sorts of beasties and has a really well ventilated lid.  It’s cool because you can see them all the time but it’s so tempting to take photos of them and of course you get all sorts of crazy reflections!

We wash out the tank daily and change all the paper.  We’ve also given them a loo roll to hide in.  It was Manky’s favourite place until he got accepted into the fold.  Then at night we place the tank on a covered hot water bottle to make sure that they don’t get too cold.  How that’s possible in this heat I don’t know!  We’re not using one during the day however.

Manky has the funny wing feathers but Birdie has a very scruffy, baldy chin.  When they stretch their wings, you can see all their bald skeletal shape, almost foetal, still.  I don’t like that.  Feisty is bigger and has some dots on his head.

What I didn’t say yesterday was that we thought that another one had gone down the wall.  We could hear it calling.  But there didn’t seem much hope for it even though Manky’s escape seemed to have made things more optimistic.  You have to keep realistic.  There doesn’t seem to be much of an escape hole below us and besides which, there’s a dog down there.  Nature isn’t always very friendly.  Gravity doesn’t do baby birds much good either.

The neighbour knocked our door again this morning.

Husband went down and retrieved another baby from her bathroom.

I say ‘baby’ but this guy is huge.  He’s almost like a full-grown blue tit.  We think he’s male from his hair do.  Male blue tits sport a wannabe rocker style.  They probably use brylcreem in the mornings.  He earned his name from his cunning plan.  Well, we couldn’t call him Manky too even though we had to cut away a whole load of detritus from his feet.  In husband’s hand he suddenly went very still and limp.  Husband losened his grip to check that the thing was still alive.  (Stress is a killer).  He miraculously springs back to live and makes a very speedy dash for freedom.  Say hello to Sneaky.

Sneaky is a lot more advanced than the other three.  (We’re wondering if blue tits lay their eggs apart or if these parents have a little too much favouritism going on!)  In fact he’s as big as the other three put together.  Yes, including Feisty in that too.  He’s using his wings to propel himself all the time and has a proper grown up bird hop/bounce thing across the ground.  He didn’t take at all kindly to captivity and went absolutely nuts.  He eventually deigned to take food from us.  But we haven’t handled him at all since to give him a chance to settle, although after a few meals we did start stroking his head to start accustoming him to the contact.  He remained aloof from his baby siblings all day.  Oh, and he makes a lot more noise.  Constantly.  He’s also a dirty little stop-out, keeping them all awake to half past ten!

The challenge just got a little more challenging.

It’s the noise that absolutely exhausts me.  I suffer with hyperacusis anyway.  Sensory stimuli drain me.  And there’s no rest, every hour on the hour it’s feeding time.  And for at least fifteen minutes beforehand, they’ll start reminding you just in case you dare forget.  Then sometimes in between times they’ll have a good old chatter, with themselves, with their siblings, with you.

But what’s sweet is that now Sneaky has accepted his baby siblings and is all huddled up with them this evening, four little, ahem, three little and one big blue tit babies in a corner.

Sleeping, hopefully.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Related Articles

In Other News

Look what Celi made me do!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

That is a mixed berries daquiri made from that frozen berry mix that I used in those muffins, some vanilla sugar (because I have a wee tub in my cupboard from when the husband thought that it was a good idea and vanilla essence doesn’t seem to blend with alcohol very nicely) and a generous dose of white sugar. The sugar made it a much smoother drink, gelling the rum and tart berries.  The vanilla because otherwise frozen berries can be too bland.  The rum because otherwise it wouldn’t be a daquiri.  Duh.  Or so tasty!  (I might have been a little generous in my measures however).  No ice because the fruit was frozen.  Oops, I forgot the lime juice.  Probably my berries would have been too tart for it anyhow.

It was thick like a smoothie but not so pulpy, less texture.  A little bit like a slushy but no hard shards of ice chips and no weird colours and pretend flavours.  You only get blue raspberries in an English summer.  And oh so tasty.

But now I’m out of rum.

Perfect for the absolute scorcher that today has been.  It’s also the reason why you’re only getting a short post too because it’s just too hot to think!  Pretty humid too, yuk.

Enjoy your weekend, whatever the weather is doing!

Baby Blue Tit Update:

I have beef stroganoff ice cubes in my freezer and bird poop on my sofa.

Feisty is definitely quite a character.  Have you ever seen a dog ‘dream’ in his sleep?  We tend to laugh and say that they’re chasing rabbits.  I don’t know what Feisty dreams of but most likely his food.  He’s a whole 2 g heavier than his siblings!  He’s also quite very fledge-y.  He climbs and flaps all over our sofa and today took his first ‘flight’, husband says that a more accurate description would be falling whilst flapping.  He loves to hide in his ‘cave’ under one of the cushions.

Birdie is much quieter and has a lot less grip than either of the others but today we helped him do some climbing, he usually stays hidden in the corner of the seat by the arm.  With a few cupping ‘shoves’ he got the idea and eventually made it all the way up to the top and joined Feisty in the ‘cave’.

Manky is causing us some worry because he doesn’t eat as much as the others.  His wing feathers have the ‘bones’ (I know that their must be a technical term) but not the feathery bits so he definitely lives up to his name.  We’re also worried because he’s often on his own in the tank that is their new home, or his brothers are busy jumping up and down on him.  Or siblings, more accurately.

This morning we had a phone call from the lovely chap who collected our first baby from the vets and as a ‘responder’, took the baby bird up to a wonderful rescue place (not run by the rescue people) about twenty miles away.  Baby is doing well and we have a special log number so we can phone and check on his progress too.  Isn’t that lovely?  Seems like the vets could deal with baby birds after all, the rotten stink.

Do you want to talk poo?  If I’ve talked about sick before so I’m sure I can talk about poo.  There’s a lot of poo in my life right now.  Besides, it’s a funny word if you’re feeling mature.  If you feed one of these guys they poop straight away.  It’s kind of funny.  Not the bird poo splats that you get on your car or, worse, your washing but funny little bubble gum bubbles.  It’s important that they poop regularly but kind of weird that they do it on cue.  Yes, that’s what’s going on in my life today.  Poop.

Related Articles

Overrun

I don’t know if you’ve ever slept in a tent before.  Tents seem to be a bit like Marmite for dividing people, you either take to camping like a duck to water (and mud) or think it’s a slow, cold, dirty, torturous death.  I like camping.  But sleeping in a tent does a weird thing to sounds, have you ever noticed?  Whilst everything has a slightly distant feel, like what happens to sound at an indoor swimming pool – warm, bubbly and faraway, it also sounds startlingly close too.  It sounds like everyone is walking on your guy ropes when you’re on a site.  We were staying in a back garden.  At one point next door’s dog didn’t sound like he was playing with his chewy toy the right side of a very tall, thick hedge but right by our heads.  Disconcerting.

Regardless of the temperature (it was colder, I swear, than when we had to go away in November last), the dark night at this time of year doesn’t set in until very late, keeping everything and everyone bright and alert.  You also wake to bright light and optimistically believe it be sunshine.  No, we’ve discovered that white cloud (ie a complete cloud-out) also has the same effect on radiance in a tent.  Surreal.  Anyway, at night, in a tent in garden in the middle of the countryside you will be treated to quite a concert.

There is:

  • the screech of a charming lady-neighbour to her recalcitrant children
  • the noise of her children, still up, playing
  • the noise of a large dog playing
  • the hoarse crow of a pheasant
  • the rattle of the distant train
  • the scream of a woman being done in, scratch that, it might just be the bark of a fox
  • the calls of various birds most of which turn out to be one single blackbird who makes twenty different calls in under a minute (yes we counted)
  • the shirring and cracking of tent fabric when the wind gets up
  • the yap of a smaller dog in the opposite direction
  • the crow of a cockerel (you’ll meet again at four o’clock the following morning, trust me)

Despite this cacophony, my husband didn’t feel the need to snore once.  Ludicrous.  Mind you, there was also the dulcet tones of me coughing and blowing my noise every five minutes.  Or less.

It was a great nearly-a-week away but when we returned home to urbania, the wildlife just decided to follow.

We got home to discover a colony of indulgently fat silverfish in the bathroom.  Oh, and a certain visitor by the kitchen sink.  Brown, ugly and big.  I haven’t been able to do the washing up all week because he just sits on the edge of the worktop staring you out and probably uttering coarse Anglo-Saxon epithets that he telepaths to you even if you can’t hear the words.  If you advance, jar in hand, he retreats at breakneck speed into the gap where the worktop doesn’t meet the wall.  Impossible to corner.  Stalemate.  The kitchen is virtually out of use because of one cursed arachnid.

My husband, despite phobic behaviour at times, firmly believes in ‘let live’.  I don’t mind along as they’re caught and evicted as soon as.  If not, then hoover may well be an option.  (Although all arachnophobes know that spiders will survive and crawl back out to attack you as soon as you turn off the power, same as flushing them down the toilet but then they bite you in the proverbial).  It got to such a point that I ended up saying that it was either it or me.  My husband did that face.  You know the one.  I reminded him that I was the one paying the mortgage, the spider wasn’t.

Fortunately, yesterday, he cockily advanced his territory onto the draining board and he was snared under an upturned jar.  Then promptly evicted.

I have my kitchen back!

We’ve also discovered that we have a newt living in our freshly dug pond.  Goodness knows where he came from.  And we have masonry bees burrowing into old screw holes on the balcony.  I think at some point we’re going to have baby bees leaving the sites.  The word that comes to my mind is ‘swarm’.  Now husband is apiphobic, he does a beautiful dance, a cross between tribal rain and war dances, every time something goes ‘buzz’.  Yet he insists that they’re doing no damage and should be let live.  Hm.

We’re going to have to spend an awful lot of time up ladders come the autumn filling holes.  I hope it won’t be too late by then!  You don’t notice the wee random holes in your brickwork until they get evaded.  And those holes aren’t the only problem.

Let me take you back a bit to March.

We don’t have songbirds in our garden so we were surprised to notice blue tits resting on the telephone/electricity line that goes past our kitchen window on the opposite side to the garden.  We noticed them and wondered what they were up to.  We saw them an awful lot more each day.  And we noticed that they were flying from the line towards the building.  Curiouser and curiouser.

I was waiting for a lift one day out the front and had one in my eye so I watched his progress.  Were they just foraging for insects or something?  He flew into the building through a small, round hole in our bathroom wall.  Uh-oh.

Not content with that, the little varmit was chucking out all those polystyrene balls that count as insulation in cavity walls.  What to do?  Had they nested already?  In which case, we couldn’t evict them.  I know that the law in at least one European country is that you can’t evict a pregnant lady.  I don’t know about a blue tit missus with eggs.

Husband said?  Let live.

So let live we did.

When we returned from our nearly-a-week away, there was now a distinctive chirping coming from the soil pipe cavity, the lodgers had obviously hatched!

You see where they’ve got in isn’t just the bathroom wall, it’s a passage through to the cavity for soil/stack pipe for both flats, it runs from ground level all the way up into the loft.  There’s precious little access especially as they have nested somewhere above our bathroom ceiling.  Because of the state of our bathroom, there is a gaping hole (large enough to eat a small child) in this section which allows you to hear into downstairs’ bathroom ridiculously clearly (and probably they ours) and for things to fall down there and never be seen again.  We can hear the birds very clearly.  We cooed, so cute, baby birds.

But blue tits do not belong in stack pipes and their nest does not seem to have been the house built on the rocks or the house built of rocks by the little piggy, this is definitely something quite precarious.  We know because we had a visitor.

Husband was in the bathroom when suddenly something small fell.  The confluence of our waste pipes broke its fall and husband pulled it out.  A baby bird.

Now as any half wit knows you leave baby birds well alone.  That’s all well and good when the baby doesn’t end up in your bathroom.  And you have zero access to the nest.

We phoned the rescue line and they said that it needed to be taken into care as soon as possible.  The only problem was that an inspector couldn’t collect it for hours so could we take it a to a vet?  We don’t have transport but they said it would be better for it to go for a twenty-minute walk than to wait hours.  So we placed it in an empty bicarb of soda tub with some shredded paper and headed out.

I mentioned that when we were in a tent last week that it was cold.  Absolutely freezing.  It was like the middle of winter.  To pack up the car on the morning we left, I had to wrap myself in fleece, coat, scarf, hat and gloves.  By the time we drove the two hundred miles home, it was a different season.  A very different season.  It’s been absolutely scorching.

So it was in the baking heat that we set off to give this wee baby bird the best chance possible.  As instructed by the rescue people.

We got there, I had phoned in advance too, steaming, and handed over the tub to the receptionist.  And then the vet came out and had a huge go at us for handing in a baby bird when you should leave well alone.  We looked at him.  I calmly explained the back story and said that we done everything right and that the rescue people had told us to bring it there.  He huffed off.  We wrote down our details for the receptionist and walked out.

Mental health people don’t cope well with random people having a random go at them.  They get very distressed when they’re told that they’re doing something wrong.  Especially when they’re not.

To ease the situation and hopefully lower the tension and stress levels, I quickly proposed that we go round to the shop for an ice-cream.

We got home eventually.  To another fallen baby.

It was too late to take it back to the very cheerful veterinary practice besides which, husband has lost all faith in them.  He’s convinced that they just euthanise them.  This baby was staying.  He was christened Birdie and husband went all the way into town for baby food and a pipette (small turkey-baster thing in husband language) that evening.

Birdie didn’t much take to beef stroganoff and we put him into a cardboard box with shredded paper in overnight.  He woke us at half past five demanding breakfast.  He accepted soaked mealworms which the husband has for the garden birds.

Later in the morning, having all bird parental responsibility foisted upon me by husband having to go out, I was in the bathroom when I saw something.  Something move.  Another baby!  This one, when it realised that I had seen him, hoisted himself up the tile trim and in through a very wee gap by the shower tray.  Very nimble but I was not impressed.  Husband was not going to be home until a lot later.  I tried tempting him with worms but he wouldn’t have it.  He and Biride were yelling at each from two rooms but he wouldn’t talk to me.

I sent a terse text message to the husband requesting that he came home as soon as he was done.  Neither of us are particularly cut out to be parents, we struggle to look after ourselves.  I also am not keen on animals.  Feathered or furry.  I just don’t ‘do’ them.  Sorry!  I especially don’t do dead, crunchy mealworms.  I never go near them and I don’t even want to see them.  Me being the only parent on duty meant that I was having to feed the things to a bird every hour.  Not best pleased.

Eventually I noticed that the sound of the second bird had moved.  I tracked him down.  He was skittering all over the laminate floor by the kitchen door.  Now what to do with him?!  I had to catch a bird!  As in hold it!  Me!

I repeated my text message to my husband as soon as I got Feisty into the box.

By the evening, they were both taking mealworms happily from the tweezers and if you chirped at them (my husband the mimic does this very well, me not so well) they responded.

We also managed to get some baby food into them using my new syringe having blended the food with some extra milk.  It was still a little too lumpy for the syringe.  The mealworms don’t have enough calcium in them to be their sole food source and they need to keep hydrated too.

We also had a funny feeling that another one had fallen from the nest, we could hear cheeping from below our floor.  Unfortunately there would be nothing that we could do to get it out.  Very sad.

This morning our neighbour from downstairs knocked on the door and requested that my husband come and help her.  I was curious, knowing that he’d be useless with a giant spider.  She did look particularly anxious.  No, it was the baby bird!  He’d managed to make his way out of the cavity through a hole in her bathroom wall (she had been bemused by the amount of polystyrene that had been coming down recently) and into the hallway.  She returned home and freaked.  Fortunately her terrier had been shut up in the kitchen.

We retrieved the baby and brought it back up to our brood.  He quickly realised that we meant food and hopped around on the sofa with his siblings for a bit.  He had some mank all twisted around his foot and his feathers aren’t the neatest so we named him Manky.  Hopefully he will settle in.

So yes, we’re now the proud parents of triplets!

The worrying thing is that blue tits can have up to sixteen babies.  Uh-oh.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Related articles

The S-Word

~ Trigger Alert ~

I don’t like to court controversy in real life or on these pages and it’s most certainly not the reason that I’m writing about the subject today.  If you remain unaffected by this subject your whole life through then you have been incredibly fortunate and so has your family.  The statistics may tell you that you and your family will easily escape this cursed outcome but the statistics only tell of the ‘successes’, the mortalities.  There are thousands if not millions more ‘attempts’ each year.  Someone you know may well be one of those unreported statistics.

Even in this modern society where there are precious few taboos and the word ‘sin’ long passed out of fashion, the s-word remains both.  No one talks about it.  It is something shameful, confusing and ridiculously painful.  And we’re not even talking about its victims.

Are you prepared to talk about it?

We don’t do much in the way of preparing our children for mental health crises, perhaps we feel an almost superstitious fear of broaching the subject as if we were putting ideas in their innocent heads.  One of the reasons that so many parents aren’t prepared to talk clearly about the ‘birds and the bees’ to their children either.  But ignorance isn’t bliss.  Ignorance doesn’t save lives, protect innocent minds.  I know because I grew up in the most sheltered, naïve world that you could imagine, beyond that probably too.  I didn’t even watch television.  The s-word had never been uttered.  I start self-harming at nine.  Perhaps my attempts were naïve but they reflected a deep-seated pain that I knew no other way to express or to get rid of.  Ignorance didn’t protect me.  It won’t protect anyone else either.

How do you feel about such ‘attempts’?  It is easy to write it off as just some attention-seeking episode.  Perhaps it’s more convenient to our own perceptions of children, teenagers even the mentally ill as a whole.  Just doing it for the attention.  Perhaps it’s easier than having to ask questions or address a whole cataclysm of behaviours and feelings that we ourselves aren’t ready to deal with.  Perhaps it’s easier than realising that our perfect little world isn’t quite as perfect as we’d like to imagine, perhaps we’d rather ignore it than face the shame of our families, friends and communities.

But what if it’s just ‘attention-seeking’, a cry for help?  Does ignoring it not just do more damage?  A young voice that cries out desperately yet constantly goes unheard.  What are they learning and what messages are you reinforcing?  That no one cares, that no one takes them seriously?  Maybe it was a cry for help but what if it succeeds?  Would you not question even blame yourself for not having done more?  It’s easy, convenient to ourselves to tell them to pull their socks up, to get a grip but does it make it any better or easier for them?

The s-word raises more questions than there are answers.  It is a scourge and one that needs to be addressed.  Carrying posies and marking crosses on the door did little to quench the Plague.  We need knowledge.  And we need compassion.

Are you prepared to raise the issue when necessary?  Or when a loved one is in difficulties, will you shy away or tell them to get a grip?

I have a stubborn streak.  It seems to have kept me alive all these years.  Most days I don’t know why.  I never know how.  A lot of the time I am ashamed of myself for all those ‘failures’.  I should have tried harder!  Obviously there’s nothing wrong with me if I keep surviving attempt after attempt.

Does it make me weak and pathetic that I have failed?  Do we only measure success when it comes to the s-word by its mortality?  Is that success, achievement, a desirable outcome?

There are no easy conclusions, there is nothing straightforward.  Human emotions are complex and there are fewer more complex emotional situations than this pain.  It is pain that eats you away from the inside, a burning in your chest.  Physical, real, solid.  It is not a whimsy or a passing weak thought, a temptation.  Does that make you think differently about the s-word?

One thing I know about the s-word is that it happens, an ‘attempt’ takes place, when all hope is lost.  When you lose hope then you lose everything.  You have not been heard, you have no answers and the future if you see one at all is bleak and threatening.  I have not just lost hope.  I can’t remember the last time there was hope in my life.  Maybe that is why I keep going.  Because I know nothing else.  I might not be good enough, there might be no future or hope, there might be overwhelming stress and pressure but that is nothing new.  It is the loss that prompts the ‘attempt’.  Whilst I don’t believe, I can’t, that the future will be any better I am stuck in this rut of daily survival.  There is no shock loss that prompts me to drastic action.

The truth is you need to be able to feel to ‘attempt’.  We believe as a society that the s-word is the worst that it can get.  There is worse.  A lot worse.  The paralysing numbness that Depression can drag you down to, beyond the motivation to get up and put an end to it all.  The s-word is the tingle before your foot goes numb.   And if you happen to get better or have a good day, the s-word can be the tingle as life comes back to it.  The s-word can get you on the up as well as the down.  Did you know that?

I don’t have the motivation to act.  Maybe it’s because I’ve lost all sense of belief too.  In choosing to ‘attempt’, whilst acknowledging that things are at rock bottom, you also believe that you deserve better.  That this mess that your life is in is not the way it should be.  So you opt to take the only way out.

It’s the only way because there are no other answers at the time.  There is no one listening often.  There is no escape plan or people and organisations that you can turn to.  It can be spur of the moment, a knee-jerk reaction to a shock loss (it’s always a loss whatever that may be, not being listened to or not having your opinions heard or not being respected – those are big losses).  Sometimes it is planned, controlled and meditated on.  But there has been a loss and there is no hope.

Would you be alert to those changes, those warning signs in your loved one?

I do not praise the act but it is too easy to say that it is just a ‘selfish act’.  At a primal, emotional level then we have to act selfishly, for our  own interests and our own self preservation.  Sometimes we are cornered into choosing to self-destruct.  It is rarely done with thoughts to harm or betray our loved ones.  If it is then maybe then that is the genuine attention-seeking act of a hysteric.  It’s only when you get to that point yourself do you realise the tortuous state of mind, you will feel guilty and ashamed but what other option is there left?

You can try to reason with them but reason belongs to another world, to minds that are fit and healthy.  The logic has changed completely, a crosswire connection has been formed and things seem entirely different when they are in that place.  Reason is for an earlier time.  Love and compassion is what you need to give now.  And support, endless support.

Would you give that or would you be too busy reacting, dealing with your own emotions?  That’s selfish.

I can see how the succeeding is a good thing.  It appeals me too often.  The end of the hopelessness and all those burdens that I carry daily.  I can see why people end up trying.  Can you?  Sometimes I wish I could find the strength to do so because too many days I don’t know how to go on.  I have lost too much.  So much that I don’t know what I have left.

The s-words rips through lives and families and communities like a missile blast.  Jagged, cruel and indiscriminate.  The question ‘why’ echoes in every conversation that follows.  Although that seems obvious to me at least.  We don’t like to think that life can get that bad.  We like to believe that we were always there for them.  We like to believe that there were always other options.  But was there?  Were we listening to them, really, genuinely, deeply?  Maybe the ‘why’ is just a vocalisation of our own guilt, our own shame.  We like to believe that we could be better or stronger, we like to believe that we would do differently.  We also have to ask ourselves whether we should have done more or responded differently to that one we have lost.

How do you respond when you hear that some has gone that way?

If your friend or neighbour or colleague or loved one was in hospital after such an ‘attempt’, would you go to them?  Or would be more comfortable to pretend that it conveniently never happened?

If we never talk about it, pretend that it never happens, who are we protecting?  Ourselves and our own emotions or the people that matter?  It could be a child in your life.

There are no easy answers and this is just a viewpoint, a viewpoint of someone who has battled with Depression for over two decades.  I wish there was an easy way out regardless of my own personal belief systems and values but do you blame me for feeling that way?

Are you prepared to discuss the s-word in your life?

Who Cares for the Carers?

Being a carer is something that I’ve written about before, about how it can be a much broader role than is first perceived, especially when we focus only on a professional home-help for the disabled or elderly.  Modern life likes things appropriately pigeon-holed and boxed but such attitudes rarely do justice to the reality nor anyone any favours.  We all should be carers really, people who care, every day of our lives.  But there is more to ‘caring’ then just its root meaning.

Although I am not claiming that parenting is simple, when it comes to ‘caring’ I would suggest that the parenting role is the simplest.  It’s the most easily defined and recognisable.  You are meant to care for your children, you could say that it’s almost an intuitive response.  You have the support of individuals and organisations.  You have specific goals and timeframes.

When it comes to adult ‘caring’ then things get more complicated.  A lot more complicated.

Why is that?

The person who is receiving the care is not a dependent minor.  They may well have known a long life of maturity, independence and responsibility before suddenly finding themselves in need of care.  Having to hand over their life along with any remaining dignity doesn’t put them in an easy position.  Without even thinking of the physical changes, any change of health has huge emotional and mental consequences.  And not just for the sufferer themselves.  The carer is often a family member who has likewise been precipitated just as suddenly into this new arrangement.  In fact, the carer may have previously been the dependent party in the relationship.  What happens when your full-time breadwinner is too ill to work?  Or is the sole driver in the family?

Just as the ill person needs to adjust so to does the carer.  And that adjustment will need to be done together, there needs to be dialogue, meaningful communication.  The process can even be similar to grieving.  And you have to accept that both of you will be seeing, feeling and dealing with the situation differently.

It’s not easy living with a serious and or long-term health condition.  I know that.  But the ill person usually is best placed to receive appropriate support and treatment.  What is on offer for the carer?  Precious little.  In the best scenario, they will have the full support of the person they are caring for but maybe not.

Carers have to walk a fine line, carving out a new role for themselves even if the relationship is falling apart around them for whatever reasons.  They may be taking on all the responsibility, the duties that come with sickness whilst the person who is actually ill is practically delusional as to the reality or seriousness of their illness.  And what point does a carer become a nagger, a paranoid observer or a call-the-doctor-right-now hysteric?  Usually at a different point to the person they are caring for.

It needs open and frank communication between both parties, that’s for sure.  The ill need to accept their limitations and know when and how to ask for the help to need.  Because that carer needs all the help they can get in knowing what to do.

Mental health makes the challenge even harder.

What do you do when your loved one refuses to seek treatment or acknowledge their decreasing state of health?  How do you balance motivating them yet not overburdening either them or yourself?  Do you take responsibility for getting every single pill into them, for them getting to every single appointment?  Do you remain on high alert even when they’re swearing that they’re fine?

It’s hard to find a balance as a carer.  You may have lost your best friend, your own support system.  You are lost and alone in a place that has no name, no map, no solutions.  You may or may not have the cooperation of the person you are caring for.

But the worst is the endless, draining, exhausting level of responsibility and pressure that you have to live with day in, day out.  Sometimes it feels like someone else’s life is in your hands, everything you do, say or even think seems to be a determiner in their state of health, maybe even their survival.  You find yourself taking on more and more, tasks that you never used to have to do yourself, tasks that you maybe didn’t even know needed doing.  There is not a moment off-duty, you are permanently tuned in to their every symptom, reaction, feeling, whim, want, need, you name it.   Even when you’re apart.  Sometimes being apart is worse, the fear, the dread, it eats away at you.

And then there’s the emotions that goes with that endless, draining, exhausting rollercoaster.   Sometimes bitterness seeps in as you wonder whether they couldn’t just make more of an effort, whether life really needs to be this way, a bitterness tinged with then quickly replaced by guilt and shame.  The loneliness that sets in as your loved one withdraws from the world then from you.  The pain and confusion of reactions, words and behaviours that would have once been incredibly alien.  A fear for the present never mind the future, the future  is too far away and unfathomable as you subconsciously scrutinise everything, analysing and recording, noting each subtle change, holding onto each one like time-lapse cloud patterns.  The thousand and one worries that are yours and yours alone as seemingly the only responsible adult around, the financial, the administrative, the domestic, everything is on your shoulders, it is your burden to manage.

The pressure is overwhelming and ceaseless.  There is no hope.  Just endless cycles where good days see m far and few between.

But who cares for the carers?

While most of us wouldn’t be ‘glad’ that our loved one is ill, we do ‘gladly’ take on the challenge.  Why?  Because we care.  We do everything and more because we care.

But our resources sadly are limited.  We are human.  Love doesn’t make us perfect.  Or bestow some super power or immortality or whatever else is needed to care day in, day out, year after year.

That’s a scary and humbling and shaming thing to admit.

But carers can’t go on forever without rest or support.  Especially when that’s not the only thing that they themselves  are facing, their health may break or they may have other responsibilities and commitments to juggle with or some other crisis to deal with.

What then?

Who cares for the carers?

What help and support is given to them?  Where can they turn when they have reached the thousandth breaking point and just don’t know how much longer or further they can go on?  Who will listen to them?  Who will relieve them of their burdens?  Who will  give them a supporting hand?

Carers do an awful lot, normally behind the scenes.  They are stage managers who also run the lighting and sound whilst building all the scenery, rehearsing the actors and choreographing the dancers, learning understudy, drumming up support and backing and leading the marketing campaign.  They do everything.  Usually single-handedly.  It’s fine for a while and the show goes on.  But for how long?

Please remember the carers in your midst, appreciate them.  Spoil them every so often, make sure that they have an evening off or a listening ear.  And if you ever need someone to care for you, man up and work with them.  Trust them and reassure them.

Please care for the carers.  We all owe them such a lot.

On Paper

Note Paper

I love the feel of it between my fingers, crisp to all the senses, glistening in its pristine newness.  It calls to me from across shops, from the stacks in bargain shops between tacky plastic gizmos and basic household essentials.  It calls a love song that my heart cannot resist and my feet are drawn relentlessly to it, my fingers itching to fondle.  It is a love affair that has spun its story through my life since the earliest days of childhood.

Paper.

Fancy stationery sets, matching paper and envelopes, were already rare when I was young and the stale, dusty smell of scented sheets never appealed, too much like those overrated incense sticks.  And there was always correspondence paper, usually airmail blue, for pen pals.  I preferred it when I finally acquired one of those line guides to hide behind each page, a bit like what we used to use for stories in junior school.  But notebooks, ah, always notebooks.

I sought them out wherever I went.  No, they sought me out.  Calling to me always.

I’d return from holidays abroad as a teenager with stacks of the beautiful European squared paper school jotters.  Beautiful, practical and cheap.  The blank sheets of paper, stark and white, always overwhelm me.  Where to start, where to risk placing the pen?  I love the precision of squared sheets, regularity in my crazy world.  I like margins and headers, tinted in different colours is always more fun.  Spiral-bound is more comfortable, more enduring.  A4 can be just as unmanageable although required for academic contexts.  I prefer A5, big enough not to have to turn the pages all the time but easily held and carried, fitting on your lap when needs be too.  Fuzzy-grade paper (sometimes recycled sometimes just too cheap) never is bought, I’m an ink pen user.  Nibs get caught, snarled in the bobbles like toes in poly cotton sheets.

I have precise tastes when it comes to my paper.

Fussy?  No, I just know what I like and what works for me.

I stash my notebooks carefully, always having some on hand.  I have got better at using them.  I used to keep them for years, saving them like cherished heirlooms, something precious and never to be tainted.  I’m terrified of spoiling them.    But somehow it still feels like a waste, for paper to go unused.  Paper without a purpose is such a sad thing.  That’s why I switched from fancy to school-style, it’s more me and a lot less pressure.  I dread making a mistake, it holds me back always, from writing, from using paper, from starting things.

Notebooks contain my secret thoughts.   Notebooks have kept me (relatively) sane.  Notebooks have been my confidants and faithful friends.  I have piles of those notebooks, a record of all the teenage turbulence.

Notebooks contain my scribblings.  Notebooks which are full of lists, from the prosaic milk, bread and cheese to my dreams, ambitions, hopes.  (There are less of those types of lists these days).  Notebooks keep me (relatively) sane and organised.  Notebooks are always the record of my life in cryptic half sentences.

Paper.

Smooth and cool to the fingers, my hand skims over the first page of a notebook, even before I’ve committed to a longer term relationship.  I judge the book not by its alluring, bright covers but by its leaves.  Is the paper inside worth it?  Fancy textile covers often hide ‘arty’ rough paper which does little to tempt me, especially not at that price.  I want an orderly relationship, I check out its lines.  I flick it through, does it turn or is it bound too loosely?  The trauma of detached sheets spewing everywhere is best avoided.  A notebook is an important relationship, there’s a lot of words to cover these as yet empty pages.  Is it worthy of them?  I dream of the things that might yet be written, secrets and fears, notes on a myriad of subjects, to do lists of things already done but need a feel-good tick, the grocery lists.

Paper.

I get a thrill when I buy the notebook even if I might not use it for months or even years.   But I know that it’s there waiting for me, the starting of a notebook is something to look forward to, something exciting in a mundane world.  Pen poised, trepidation rising in my heart then the first word goes down.  A new notebook christened.

Paper.  Beautiful stuff.  What an invention.  And what a tale it tells.