Feeders are available that attach with suction cups to the outside of a window, which seem like a good idea, but I’m not sure I trust them. For a normal house, if it falls off, you just have to go outside, pick it up, and stick it back in place. If one fell off our living room windows, it would fall four floors down, and land in a cut-out section below ground level, outside the basement flat’s front windows. Or, if it bounced a bit further forward by hitting the window sill, it could fall far enough forward to land on someone’s car.

Anyway, I hit on a solution last weekend – part of the packaging from our new microwave, some holes punched through with my Swiss Army Knife, and a couple of shoelaces:

It sat there firmly, and the food (a slice of bread and some seeds) didn’t blow away. Win. The birds, however, didn’t know it was there. Fail.

My boss had a good suggestion, though – add a couple of hanging bird feeders, and not only do we add more options for food, but we put something there the birds might actually recognise as a source of food. A white polystyrene tray probably isn’t going to say ‘food’ to a chaffinch, but a swinging tube of peanuts might. So, this weekend, we visited Pets at Home, and stocked up. Here’s the result:

Some food on the tray, and three hanging feeders, containing:

• Peanuts, with a spare bag ready for refills.
• Mixed seeds, with sunflower hearts to replace them when they’re gone.
• Fat balls, with a large tub full of replacements ready.

There’s only one problem with this now. You may notice the lack of snow – it’s pretty much all thawed here, and there doesn’t appear to be too much risk of more to come. We may be a bit late, but hopefully they’ll still enjoy a few treats.

The canal was frozen – it was only at the end of the walk that I saw a small area where the water had broken through. The ice made for some interesting pics, though:

(Here’s the photoset on Flickr in case the slideshow above doesn’t work for you.)

1) Restoration

Restoration my physical and mental health. Making peace with the past. A greater mindfulness and awareness of the present.

2) Joy

Making sure there is plenty going on to put spark and colour in my life. Not being afraid to do what I enjoy for fear of looking daft. In the words of Adam Ant “Ridicule is nothing to be scared of”. Participate more.

3) Motion

Getting active again (links in with Restoration) Exploration (links in with Joy) Learning new skills.

Thanks go to Chris and to Alexia Petrakos and Gretchen Rubin for providing such wonderful food for thought. Here’s to a happy and successful 2010 for all of us.

Regular visitors to my blog may now be thinking, “Hang on a moment, aren’t you the one who lost over 100lbs in a year? How come you still have a weight problem?” Well, I fell into the trap many people on weight loss journeys do – I grew irritated and annoyed with the plan I was doing, I stopped doing it, I went off the rails and now I’m right back where I started.

I’m now ready to try again, but with an entirely different approach. First of all, I’m taking a long look at what happened last time, and where it all went into reverse. During those 12 months where I was losing 3lbs a week or more, I was obsessed with “the plan”. Obsessed to the point that discovering an oily dressing on the salad I’d ordered could ruin a meal out. It got to the point I couldn’t sustain living that way and remaining sane.

Then there was the obsession with the scale. My mood for the day being determined by some numbers on a digital display. I remember helping out at my group, doing the weigh-ins, and I’d ask people how they were and they’d say “We’ll see, shall we?”. How is that a way to live? Letting the numbers on a box determine how you approach your day?

So from that I’ve found two issues that I can work on straightaway which I will be able to build on and hopefully achieve healthier habits and as a result, weight loss:

• Take a kinder approach to changing my eating habits. No counting, no weighing, just gently making adjustments at a pace I’m comfortable with.

• Build a greater awareness of what is going on with my body. Not to rely on the numbers on a scale, but to observe the changes in my body.

This approach won’t bring miracles or quick fixes, and it may be some time before I see any visible results, but a slow, gentle, kind approach to a healthier lifestyle makes more sense for me right now.

I’ll write more about my progress as I go on. Wish me luck.

Black Dog

Gene Hunt is a rockstar. I like guitar players. A story in which Gene finds himself alone in a room with a Gibson SG and a Marshall Stack had to be done.

Notes From A Sauna

An extract from Gene’s diary as he attempts to comprehend his day and put out of his mind some of the unpleasant things he’s seen.

A*S*H*E*S to M*A*S*H*E*S

A bit of a cheesy crossover moment as the lovely Major Sidney Freedman of the 4077th pays a visit to Fenchurch East to see if he can help Gene unravel what’s going on around him. It was either this or have the quattro turn up in war-torn Korea. I think I made the right choice.

I enjoy writing as The Guv almost as much as I do dressing up as him *cough*… it’s all good fun and I’m hoping it will give me the push I need to kick-start my writing for 2010.

It looked like a heron, but herons aren’t white, and it looked a little shorter than a heron. Fortunately, Simon recognised it, as he’d seen them before in Dartmouth – it was a Snowy Egret – a small white heron.

(Here’s the photoset on Flickr in case the slideshow above doesn’t work for you.)

It stayed in the tree, preening itself and relaxing, for maybe an hour and a half.

This was the first time I’ve regretted switching to carrying just a pocketable Panasonic Lumix [: UK, US], rather than my Nikon D90 [: UK, US]. I regretted it a lot. I carried the Nikon for a couple of days afterwards, but it didn’t return.

After a very quiet half-day at work, I tried to call in at Tesco, but the queue was too much. I tried to call in to the town centre, to see what Somerfield/Co-op had to offer, but the queue was all the way through the town. I succeeded better at Morrisons, getting quite a few reduced bits, but no meat.

I managed to get parked surprisingly easily in M&S, and got more extras, but still no meat. After Sam finished work, we tried again at M&S, but they still weren’t reducing their very expensive prepared joints. We found a friendly member of staff (most of them are), and were told that it didn’t look likely that they’d be reducing any of the things we wanted.

We decided to brave Tesco. They weren’t reducing the meat either, but we got a few other bargains, and their full price prepared joints were still a fraction of the price of the ones at M&S. They probably aren’t as fancy, but we’re not fussy. A lump of meat, some potato products, and lots of little sausages wrapped in bacon – the important things.

The biggest problem was arriving home with everything – it was a lot of shopping to carry all the way up to our flat!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a merry Christmas, or enjoys whatever else you like to celebrate around this time. If that’s nothing, have a fun Friday.

Yesterday, it was cold, so we hid in the flat. Today, we decided to face it. The car window was frosted into some pretty patterns, so I amused myself by photographing them while waiting for the car to warm up a bit.

We filled up Bob (our Honda CR-V) with petrol first, then shopped at Tesco, then parked up in the multi-storey car-park in Tiverton. We soon found that we had trouble finding any grip on the same road Bob had managed fine on, but we both stayed upright. Lunch at SubWay warmed us up, followed by a brief wander around town. Superdrug provided me with new stock of Paul Smith Extreme [: UK, US], so I can continue to smell pleasant. Well, not too bad, anyway.

We then called in to Homebase, to pick up a replacement light fitting for the living room, and a couple of cheap table lamps to keep us going until I come round to the idea of doing electrical work whilst balancing on a chair. It doesn’t hold much appeal at the moment, but maybe the idea will grow on me. We also bought a second ceramic heater [: UK, US] there. We bought a ceramic heater some time ago, and it seems better than other fan heaters we’ve had. This new one was much cheaper, not as well featured, but still works very well. It can keep the living room a bit warmer in this cold weather, and maybe help out in the bedroom too if it gets any colder.

We still don’t have any food in ready for Christmas, but we’ll just take whatever’s knocked down cheap on Christmas Eve – it doesn’t matter to us what we end up with.

The Guv and Raymondo prepare to storm Olympia on a mission to arrest anyone found impersonating a Timelord. In the end, they had to hire a bigger van.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

The CID boys got caught by the Klingons. Big Klingon dude was not impressed when I got him confused with Bill Bailey.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

A brilliant group cosplay moment, with help from regular cosplayer Christel, and the wonderful Montserrat Lombard who plays WPC Shaz Granger in Ashes to Ashes.