Garden Birds and Bumblebees

 Our London terrace of houses is backed by another terrace. Between the two are small gardens, mostly paved, and left sterile by renters. So this is not a bird-friendly place.  And we both love garden birds.

There are advantages though, one of them being that we get to know our few avian residents, and they us.

There have been times when birds have been plentiful, as when an annual count included 27 house sparrows who ran the place and kept us much amused - until one year when they all left, never to return.

We have trained robins to eat from our knees when we have been in our shed at the bottom of our small garden. Blackbirds have been friendly and filled the surrounding air with glorious song. Goldfinches are commonplace, and local visitors have been wrens, greenfinches, dunnocks, blue tits and great tits. 

When there has been a dearth of birds in our vicinity, this seems to have coincided with a plethora of pet cats.

I do everything possible to attract old and new bird friends to our garden, offering food, water, and housing for any who might care to share it with us.

Besides hanging feeders of niger seeds, peanuts and sunflower seeds, there is accommodation aplenty.

High on the back of the house is a sparrow box (just in case), with a tit box at its end, and a concrete house martin's nest attached to it below. 

At the same height and a distance away is a box for swifts in an attempt to lure a couple back who lived two doors down but whose nest hole was filled up by builders. 

Below the swift box is an odd shaped home for bats, bees, butterflies, and any homeseekers.

Low down, and absolutely cat-proof, is our nest box for great tits. This is used every year with success and sometimes failure. As couples, we know each other well.

Then, nearby, is a robin box. This is a bit too vulnerable as one summer a crow ate all the young from it, and during another summer a great spotted woodpecker did the same.

I have just added a new roof to this box to make it a little more proof against villains. Now, screwed up to the underside of it I have made a nesting home or hibernation place for a bumblebee.

I love bumblebees, despite once being stung on the hand and the poison slowly paralysing my arm up to the shoulder.

This nest haven was made from a small tin, sold with bread yeast. With junior hacksaw and tin cutter, a hole was cut into the side of it, forming a little porch roof. And where the bumblebee might enter over sharp metal, a piece of wood has been glued on as a more comfortable sill.

A paste mixture of glue and compost has been used to fill the gaps and, in a rustic way, made the tin blend in with the box's woodwork. A little dried moss has been inserted for the sake of comfort.

All my bird boxes have been camouflaged roughly to represent the cement and brickwork of the house. For this I have used the wax-based oil paint that I used for my paintings of years ago (I use pastel now). It is resilient to weather and sunlight and has a matt finish.

For years I have had a bell in the garden, the handle of which had rotted away. I gave it a new handle - a long one. It hangs from the vine arbour that spans the garden and is there to be tolled in the frozen winter to tell the birds that they can finish their foraging and come to my garden for the freshly offered food and water. 

The bell came in handy when we made noises from the pavement outside our doors to show our gratitude to the overworked men and women tackling the Covid-19 virus. 

Washing machines

 There was a time when clothes washing machines were so unreliable that you would not leave them working when leaving home. Then matters improved. Perhaps some design innovations cut in to stop overflowing water. We could then leave them to go about their rightful business and go shopping.

So it was, with some surprise, that I wandered into our kitchen one morning to find the tiles and part-carpeted floor covered in a layer of water. Our trusted washing machine, with many years of reliable use, had failed us.

The water was turned off and electricity disconnected.

The carpet was dragged to the garden to drain, the water level reduced with the deft use of dustpan and bucket, with the rougher technique employed by brushing water out and over the door sill with a broom. Then it was a case of laying down towels and rubbing them around under foot to sop up the remaining water. 

That done, I worked out that either the drain from the machine had become blocked or some internal pipe connections had come adrift.

I emptied the water-filled drum through its drain filter. The drain appeared to be clear. I ran the machine, which continued to pump out water. A plumber had to be engaged. 

We have an excellent plumber, if a bit rough and ready, who hales from the Lebanon. He dismantled the top of the machine to discover that a conduit of some sort deep inside had perished and parted from its seating.

After much fiddling we decided that was in our interest to replace the 25-year-old washing with a new one. 

A few days later, our plumber appeared to prepare the way to dispose of the old and install the new machinery. The new one was delivered by his mate, another Lebanese who was keen to tell me that he only drank French wine. Château Margaux in particular. At least I didn't have to manhandle the white goods any more as the existing drying machine was lifted onto the new machine by the two strong Lebanese.

The plumbing was connected and a trial laundry of three butchers' aprons, used when we cook or eat on our knees, placed in the drum to be washed. We could at least relax after a tiring period of both body and mind.

As we had not yet read the instruction leaflet properly, about which buttons to press, this seemed to take a long time. When the cycle was over and we could extract the aprons, they were absolutely clean, though no washing powder had been used, but so tangled up that it took at least five minutes for us both to untangle them.

Much of the following day was taken up with taking all the mopping-up towels to the local laundrette and replacing all the bits and pieces that had been moved to facilitate the whole operation. Damp mats were restored to their rightful place to dry slowly indoors and in their place.

When a white wash was tried, having pressed the right buttons this time, all was well.

A dry house, where pipe water is directed to when and where wanted is much to be desired. 

Three Pieces

Quite often as we talk at home under Covid restrictions and I mention certain facets of my life, Margreet will say: "Why don't you write about it?" Well, I may have done so already in a forgotten article or blog. So should I repeat any of the three stories here, I apologise. 

Across a field in front of the house where I was borne in the country, lived the Firths. There was no electricity then, but the Firths made their own in a generating room containing a massive fly wheeled  motor on a floor covered in a series of wet batteries. We would have ours connected to the system for re-charging occasionally so that my father could use it, combined with a large dry battery and a PYE radio, to listen to Test Match cricket from Australia. This important news arrived via an aerial wire that stretched between the top of a nearby tree to the house radio, which was full of bulblike valves.

Harry Firth, whose athletic Cambridge Blue brothers died early, and was the runt of his wealthy (stainless steel) family, lived among the comforts of life, liking one of the non physical games, such as bridge, with my parents being part of that coterie.

Harry kept a well-stocked cellar, Graham's vintage port being one of his favourite wines.

He very seldom entered his cellar, leaving its contents in the hands of Sherard, his trusted butler of many years' service.

One day Harry decided to view his collection of bottles, descended to the cellar, where he found Sherard drinking some of his favourite port out of a teacup. Had Sherard been drinking from a glass, perhaps all would have been forgiven, but a TEACUP! No! He sacked Sherard on the spot. 

I think Sherard emigrated to Australia.

In the early 1960s, I worked as a supernumerary on coasters. I travelled, drew and sometimes helped out by taking watch or feeding us when the Dutch cook was drunk.

For this particular voyage we had collected bags of fertiliser from Antwerp bound for Cork in Eire.

On docking there a young lady came straight aboard and was locked in the Stuurman's cabin -  one that had no plumbing connections.  

I was the only outsider allowed in - just to make a drawing of this Irish woman. 

She was married to a Danish sailor who was at sea much of the time. 

Our cargo had been sold before we docked, and was offloaded on to a stream of horse-drawn wagons driven by Irish farmers. This took several days.

When finally offloaded and new cargo aboard, the Stuurman's lady was allowed out. She walked down the gangplan on to the dockside. When free of connection with the dock, we were off once more to the open sea.

Some time in late 1943, I was in a train returning to London on leave from an RAF pilot training station, when we came to a halt in the outskirts of the city. An air raid from German bombers was in progress.

The sky was clear and dark - very dark. Even the lighting of a cigarette was banned in the blackout.

Except for the occasional distant rumble of bombs exploding or anti-aircraft fire from the East End some distance away, it was eerily silent - as silent as it was dark.

The drama came from the beams of light made by searchlights scanning the sky in search of Nazi aircraft so that our anti-aircraft guns could open fire. 

Although we knew that our lives might be in danger, I doubt if many, or any of us, were at all afraid. We were transfixed by the pictorial and tranquil scene and its possible sudden transformation from peacefulness to violence.

On a censored postcard I described this small episode of war to a friend in the USA.

He sent me the card after the war as a souvenir. On it I had written that I wouldn't have missed the air raid for the world.

This was before the advent of the nasty German VI Buzzbombs and V2 rockets which really did fall around our ears when I was in the capital. And we had virtually no defence against them.