Category: Uncategorized

I don’t think I’ll be moving far today – not far from this computer in fact. The kitchen is quite cold – one can tell by being there or by looking at how cloudy the olive oil has gone! But the garden is lifting with birds.  There are still several Reed Buntings out there and…

Brighter future for seabirds as Shiants declared rat free Internationally important seabird colony The Shiant Isles have been officially declared rat-free, thanks to a four-year partnership project to restore them as a secure haven for nesting seabirds. A month-long intensive monitoring check in February found no sign of rats. This means that none has been…

My main source of income these days comes from writing – I am a writer.  One of the things about writing is that there is often a long tail to your income. It’s a long thin tail rather than a long fat tail (in my case, anyway!) but it is a long tail. I am…

Sunday was a good day. Its centrepiece was having a delicious lunch to celebrate a close friend’s passing of a landmark.  There was good food, good company and good conversation among a group of folk who to all apppearances were good people. To say that we were a group of middle class, middle-aged people from…

The Labour Party has today published its animal welfare plan.  It’s pretty good. Things that some will like (and others will hate) include: expanding the definition of animal to include decapod crustaceans and cephalopods prohibit the third-party sale of puppies establish a full-time zoo inspectorate mandatory labelling of meat to include country of origin and…

  I quite like Country Life – I might take out a subscription. In this week’s magazine there is a quiz to see whether you are a real countryman (women need not apply).  It is quite fun, and consists of 100 questions set by Simon Lester, who is apparently a naturalist and former gamekeeper (an…

The National Trust has increaased its subscription rates. I’m not regretting my move to National Trust for Scotland.