Grandma Grey rang up a few weeks ago, rather excited by some surprising developments. She lives in sheltered housing in Ealing, a fairly modern building ran by a charity. Most of the residents are reasonably able bodied but there is a part time warden and a 24 hour panic alarm system.

Anyway, she lives on the 2nd floor in a corner flat and whilst she doesn’t have a balcony as such, there is a door which can be opened onto a meshed handrail with just enough room for a window box. There are a lot of tall trees nearby and a colony of squirrels are regularly seen leaping from tree to tree. They occasionally leap onto her balcony in order to scavenge the flowers and she has a sort of scarecrow to discourage them, a plastic Snoopy the dog toy complete with Woodstock on Snoopy’s hat. (It is a discarded happy meal toy).

Back to the story, a few weeks ago two Robins started to build a nest next to the flowerbox. Then she spotted eggs in the nest and rang me up to have a look on the Interweb to find what the gestation period was. (Either 14 days or 40 days, depending where you look). Then we got the call that they had started hatching and the Robins were feeding them. It has become a fascinating side-show to rival the Telly and she spends hours just watching them. She tried to take a photo but the window is now extremely grubby and she daren’t open the door to clean it as the nest will collapse. (She would also probably get attacked, the parents get very uppity whenever she goes near the window). To celebrate the event, she has made a drawing for David which can be seen below.

Now she is waiting for the children to flee the nest so that she can clean her window again.

There is a mole in Morley Town Hall. I was independently contacted twice yesterday with some furtive news of goings on in the Council Chamber after the last Annual General Meeting in May. It was followed by an extraordinary General Meeting, the publically posted Agenda of which was rather opaque. Now I wasn’t there (as I had some drying paint to watch) but the story I was told was that the Public were excluded for a short while then the meeting finished and they all toddled off to the Mayor’s Parlour as normal for drinkies & cucumber sandwiches. Now exclusion of the general public has to be for good reason, generally if publicity would prejudice the public interest by reason of the confidential nature of the business or for some other reason stated in the resolution. My Baker Bible gives the following reasons for treating business as confidential:-

• engagement, terms of service, conduct and dismissal of employees;
• terms of tenders, and proposals and counter-proposals in negotiations for contracts;
• preparation of cases in legal proceedings;
• the early stages of any dispute

Now the mole tells me (third hand) that it popped its head out of the skirting board to hear a motion to approve funding of up to £5,000 in order to retain the services of a solicitor. Now moles have poor eyesight so it wouldn’t have been able to tell that the only people in the Chamber were the Councillors (24 of them, if they were all present and correct) and the Acting Town Clerk. They have pretty good hearing though, and moley was surprised that nobody questioned why such a thing would be necessary and no reason for wanting to do such a thing was offered. This suggests to me several possibilities: that mot of them knew why, they were coached not to say anything, they were unable to get clues from their friends on the public benches or they were too thick to actually realise what was going on and ask. Bearing in mind that there are 23 Members of one quasi-political grouping and 1 Member of another widely detested one it is quite possible that it is a heady cocktail of all four possibilities.

When I spent four nights in hospital recently, three of them were on the orthopaedic ward. (Night two was in the high dependency unit after surgery).

The first night I didn’t sleep too well- one old man on the ward was calling for the nurse half the night (and being ignored), another made very loud very strange noises like a cross between snoring and gargling.

When I returned to the Ward on day three, the old man had gone but there was someone comatose with their head bandaged instead. As soon as it got dark, bandaged man came to life. He had apparently been beaten up and was out of it big time. He kept getting out of bed and wandering round the Ward, pushing alrm buttons and trying to climb out of the window.  At one point, I came awake and found this strange man wandering past, staring at me. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel threatened by him at all, but most of the other patients did. The night nurses spent most of the night cajoling, shouting at and pleading with him, but as soon as they were gone he was off again. The staff were so distracted that they never got round to closing the blinds or the curtains  until the middle of the night.

On the plus side, however, he so spooked the others that the death rattle noises remained absent for the rest of my stay.

The following day, the Police came and talked to concussion victim at length, but he wasn’t saying anything. They must have tired him out though, because he didn’t wander about quite as much that evening.

Young David has now earned his Gold swimming badge and moved across to the Honours lane. Gold is a toughie, honours even more so because they are hard work. He is excellent at front crawl, reasonable with breast stroke and a bit slow with back stroke as his arms aren’t developing powerful strokes yet. However, with careful coaching he has managed to pace himself and put the effort in He now excels and his instructor is very pleased with him.

Stamina is important as is technical quality of the strokes, particularly in the higher awards.

Now the race is on to get his final swimming badge before the Morley Leisure Centre gets demolished!

I had my accident last Thursday teatime at my regular Skoda Garage. Betsy had been in for her 70,000 mile service and annual MOT (the UK vehicle inspection scheme). Their four garages aren’t anywhere too handy for where I live but the Bradford one is about a mile north of the City Centre on the way to Shipley andthey have a good arrangement with courtesy cars so I generally get my service work done there.

D M Keith are a small family firm (although they have expanded considerably on the success of the Skoda range) ran by two brothers, Dougal and Angus. We have bought several cars from them now over the last decade or so, from my first Felicia to Karen’s most recent Fabia. (I even bought the Racing Green Octavia that Dougal wanted at the launch but he was happy to sell me it and wait a further couple of weeks for another one, after all, business is business). That is not to say they are perfect- after all, they are used car salesmen! (I have had several robust conversations with them over the years but it has always been resolved amicably).

However, last Thursday, they gave exemplary service. I returned the loan car, paid the bill and was heading back out of the door towards my car in the drizzle when I lost my footing. (The garage has a forecourt with a brick path surrounding the building, in good condition). My right foot slipped away from me, there was a burst of excruciating pain and I found myself lying on my back in a puddle with a sore leg, back and head. I had my Crocs on (of course) and they generally give great traction but they can be slippery under certain conditions, particularly moss.

Anyway, finding myself unexpectedly doing the Tiswas dying fly dance I took stock. Attempts to lower my right foot suggested some additional lateral movement typical for a ball and socket joint but not for a hinge arrangement. No-one was in sight and whilst I could see people bustling around in the showroom, there was a car in the window mostly hiding me from view. Here we go, get the mobile out.

• First call- 999, UK emergency number. Ambulance requested, I couldn’t tell them the name of the road (which seemed to be a showstopper on their computer system) but a couple of local landmarks helped them pinpoint me.
• Second call- to Karen, can you pick David up? Only I might be a bit late…
• Third call- to the Garage. Oops- the Leeds one. (I’ll bet that confused them).
• Fourth call- I’m lying outside your front door, I could do with a bit of help…

At that point the staff came running, I was covered with coats, given another one as a pillow, someone held an umbrella, they checked my leg, confirmed it was a break, said I was bleeding. Eventually the ambulance turned up and I was taken away. They said they would look after my baggage and take care of the car. To their credit, the following day the garage delivered my car to my house, locked my bits & bobs in the boot, put it in the garage and posted the keys through the letterbox. They didn’t have to, but when Karen rang to thank them, they said it was the least they could do.

At that point, I reckoned a box of chocolates back to them was in order, but I’d leave it until I got out of hospital (& found where Karen had put my wallet).

This morning, someone knocked at the back door. When I eventually hobbled there and got the door open I was surprised to find an Interflora man holding a jug full of flowers. The card read

Mr. Gray we hope you are feeling better soon. Regards all at D M Keith Ltd

(OK, they spelt the name wrong, but methinks that was the florist). The flowers were slightly better arranged originally- Karen took them out to put in the plant food and struggled to get everything back in the jug. It was very thoughtful of the Garage to follow through like this, although I’ll bet they have had the steam cleaner over the forecourt as well just in case. Thanks Guys, you come well recommended and have now received the Shades Seal of Approval.

Images from DM Keith website, I’m sure they won’t mind