Half-price Christmas tree

Last year, we bought a live Christmas tree in a pot and it has lived in our garden for the last 50 weeks or so and now it is in our conservatory ready for some lights to be draped over it. This is the first year for over 30 years when we haven’t had ‘kids’…

Boundaries

I’m in Tier 2 – how about you? The small rural town where I live, Raunds, is actually, I’m told, named because it is close to the boundaries of Northants, Cambs and Beds. It was first recorded as Randan in an Anglo-Saxon chronicle in the late 900s AD. Randan is the plural of the Old…

Bird/poultry flu update

Records of avian/poultry flu in new counties: Bedfordshire, Tyne and Wear, Highland, Greater Manchester and County Durham. All of the cases are in waterfowl, and in fact in swans (Mute, Whooper, unspecified and unsecified) and Canada and Greylag Geese. This must indicate the ease with which dead swans and geeese can be noticed rather than…