test please delete

[ladymuck]

Afternoon all

Dull. Wet. Raining. It was quite bright earlier but that's long gone. Currently 21 with a high of 23 expected. Rain supposed to stop mid afternoon. Barometer down to 1008 mBar.

HWMBO leaves today. Off to talk at people about TOGAF then back home for parental duties.

Noticed yesterday that the reason why we have quite a surprising number of parakeets, rather than your more usual type of winged tree dweller, could well be due to the house over the road and its multiple bird feeders. The parakeets are very noisy compared to the often lovely warble of a more native species.

[NickFitz]

Lunch: some of the Turkish potato-tomato-chicken thing, as there was half a portion left after packing two sizeable ones for the freezer. As expected, the flavour has developed nicely from a couple of days in the fridge

[ladymuck]

The sun has come out.

Wondered why there were so many fruit flies in the kitchen. Turns out one of my tomatoes was more 'over' than 'ripe' and they were having a good much on it.

[WTFH]

Had a phone call earlier to say my mower will be here around 9am tomorrow.

[DoctorStrangelove]

Wot? Mr Straight is driving it from somewhere?

That'd make a helluva story. .

[ladymuck]

The gardener has cancelled doing Mum's front garden tomorrow and says he can do it this week but didn't say when.

[NickFitz]

Tea: sausages (pork and apple) with chips and beans

Accompanied by the latest episode of Secrets of the London Underground with bits about the Ruislip Engineering Depot and Warren Street station, and some other stuff

Just saw six magpies down on the lawn. With a little observation, it became clear that four of them were juveniles and two were adults, so probably a family training session. They were all fairly near to each other, but seemed to have divvied it up as one adult to two juveniles.

One of the young ones grabbed a rose from the flowerbed (not sure if it plucked it from the plant) and took it on to the lawn at the edge of the flowerbed where it started pulling it to bits and pecking at the centre as its sibling circled round it trying to get a bit. Then the adult with those two chivvied them both and they all flew off together through the trees along the road. One of the remaining juveniles then found the rose by the flowerbed, picked it up, and went hopping around among the rose bushes with it in its mouth for a bit. Eventually, the remaining adult chivvied it and its sibling until they both flew into a tree by the gate, where the adult followed them a few moments later.

Not sure what the lesson being imparted to the young ones was, but it seemed to be along the lines of "Don't pick the flowers, and don't go hopping around with a rose in your mouth"

[NickFitz]

No further telly, or indeed ornithology, this evening. But I managed to make some good progress on the SpriteKit stuff I've been playing around with. Now at the point where I need to start drawing boxes on a bit of paper and turning things into binary so I can implement a level map efficiently

Goodnight all

[WTFH]

TFBSZ

[NickFitz]

Morning denizens

Bright start but it seems it's already starting to cloud over, as it did yesterday. It's expected to get quite windy later too. Currently at 14°C and only reaching 21° for a little while in late afternoon. The barometers are up a little at 998/1006mB