We need Winter, because without it we would not appreciate Spring so much.

Even so, Spring has been a long time coming to London. We had, apparently, the coldest Easter on record. But Spring did finally splutter into life, making the blackbirds sit up and scratch their arses and cough their middle of the night greetings and the warmest day of the year so far (and my birthday, coincidentally), was just last Sunday. It’s been a bit of a relief—even the wren that sings outside my window at 6 in the morning is not unwelcome (even if, occasionally, a muttered “the early worm can just fuck off” can also be heard).

Last week, I was in Amsterdam for three days on a business trip, and when I got back the cherry blossom had exploded and bluebell heads were poking up and the first batch of baby coots were peeping at their long-suffering parents.

Yesterday saw the woods near our house filled with people (and, it has to said, the occasional recalcitrant child) blinking bewilderedly in the sunlight.

And today, another regular Spring event took place—the London Marathon.

It’s always a fun event, however you wish to participate: whether running or spectating and cheering. Even a cynical sod such as myself is cheered by waving and shouting at random strangers. Somehow, the feeling from crowd-sourced happiness and goodwill turns London again into the same kind place it was last summer, when we hosted the XXX Olympiad.

(Maybe if you have a desperate urge to drive around the place for some reason, it’s not so good. But hey.)

“Gill”. Putting your name on your shirt is a great way to get people to cheer for you

Unlike the Olympics, the London Marathon happens every year, and every year for the past three Jenny and I have stood at the end of our road to cheer for at least some of the race. This year, though, there was a particular poignancy, and even the casual observer couldn’t help but notice the little black ribbons that many runners wore.

The British response to terrorism, or the threat of it, is an interesting one. Terrorism seems to have the opposite effect of that intended. Even the IRA bombs of the 80s and 90s just strengthened our resolve and our tea; such that a common response to 7/7 was “bunch of bloody amateurs”.

Mo Farah, in the cool shades

So the cheering crowds today were, if anything, even more numerous, cheerful and vocal than before; from the toddlers being scooped off the road before the arrival of the elite runners to the “Homes for Heroes”-supporting landlord from the Adam and Eve with his singular words of encouragement and dance tracks over the PA.

Hurrah!

To me, it looks like a fossilized tooth. Couldn’t tell you what from, though. Any offers?

I picked it up on Broadstairs beach last Tuesday morning. I think it’s unrelated (at least, directly) to this nuclear flash we observed the same day.

Even here in Zone 2 there are a lot of birds around—especially in our garden. Blue tits, great tits, long-tailed tits, robins, dunnocks, goldfinches, wrens, chaffinches, blackbirds, sparrows… Lots of birds.

We encourage them, too. We’ve got bird feeders and suet block and fat ball holders. Jenny gave me a bird cam one Christmas, and a birdbath to point it at on my following birthday.

We also have pigeons.

Lots of fat flipping pigeons.

You might say, a plague of pigeons, and you wouldnt be far off. It is London, after all.

And I hate the little bastards. They crap over the garden furniture, they walk all over and wreck the young plants, and they will systematically empty the bird feeders in one sitting.

So there has been a bit of a war going on in our back yard. It’s not going well.

I’m not here all the time to try to blind them with my laser pointer. We’re too close to the road to use an air rifle. And every modification of the feeders to try to discourage them has failed. Pointy spikes on the top, strategic Sellotape on the squirrel-proof sides—none of this works. (And it’s ugly, too).

The first iteration of our feeders were standard, cageless things with little perches. The problem with that was the squirrels, and that no matter how short the perches were, the pigeons could still hold on and knock the seeds out of the feeder. That’s why we got the ones with cages and, watching the songbirds, it’s clear that they like to go inside the cage and peck—so maybe, suggested Jenny, we should get a bigger cage. Fine, I said, can you find somewhere that sells them?

So Jenny googled for pigeon-proof bird feeders, and stumbled across this post by IanVisits (who I know from Twitter, as it happens) from a year ago, in which he describes how he overcame exactly this problem. Briefly, he got some plant supports and turned his feeder into Pinhead. “What an excellent notion!” we opined, and set off across the River to locate some green sticks of anti-pigeoness.

And here we are:

The best defence…?

So far, we haven’t yet seen any pigeons try to get in, and the songbirds seem delighted, and—more to the point—able to feed in safety and comfort.

Better living through technology. Thanks Ian!

#3 Lipid raft

Standard Model

When a proton
   In desperation
First grabbed an electron
   And gave unwittingly
To an undiscovered country
   Stars and water and airships
Did it feel
   In some quark-like fashion
The same primal urge
   That keeps my heart
In orbit
   Around the sun of you?

#1 The Ribosome