Flown

The birds seem to have flown. Or the bird. I am just not sure how many creatures it took to make all that cooing noise.

There were birds living in my fireplace. It was not that big a deal until the appearance of possible droppings on my grate (I had thought the little door -- is that a flue? -- was shut, but indeed it was wide open).

Yesterday, my landlord gave the detailed instructions to 'light some paper on fire, because they will leave because of the smell'. I thought, 'Yeah, right. Birds don't have such keen senses of smell that that will cause them to move house...'

However, in an attempt to be cooperative (and because i LOVE fire!), all of my 'shredding' pile has now been burnt and there is a little pile in my grate. (E seemed slightly alarmed at the enthusiasm with which the ritual burning took place, but he is just going to have to get used to it. As he is building a website, his attention quickly turned back to work, and the small fire crackled on merrily.)

It seems to have worked, and I swear there was a vexed bird twittering back and forth between my chimbley and the churchyard trees last evening (E thought it was my overactive imagination and returned to his page-building), and there is no cooing this morning!

*******
Sadly, the auction this month is woeful and we are not going to go. We did write down some numbers of things we wanted, but really it is not anything I need (like books -- titter) and not worth E standing there for three hours. Oh well -- there is plenty of dusting to do at St. Clement's :)

My hair now needs washing, as it is sticking out at funny angles.