Thursday Thirteen feat. a blackbird

1. We are still staying in the woods, in the Scottish lodge for the rest of this week.
2. It's one of those buildings that is kind of upside down, with the bedrooms downstairs and the living space upstairs
3. This works well affording a much better vantage point to spot red squirrels, rabbits and other wildlife from the balcony.
4. Local wildlife appears curious of visitors and when on nearby paths, woodland creatures will never be more than a few strides away.
5. Even the balcony gets its share of visitors. One was the blackbird shown at the top of this post.
6. Indeed, so excited was the blackbird at the prospect of getting some crumbs of shortbread, that it returned with one of its young.
7. The younger bird looked about the same size as the adult, but didn't have such a great sense of flight.
8. It took off and promptly flew into the glass of the balcony, with a gentle plink sound.
9. It was a low speed flying accident and the bird reverted to a nest-type chirping as it waited for the adult to either rescue it or feed it.
10. A few minutes later it took off again, this time getting itself caught in a space on the balcony between a corner wall and a chair. It could see through the chair, but couldn't work out how to fly/climb out of the space. Instead there as a great flurry of wings and feathers as it oscillated up and down in the space.
11. I rescued it by moving the chair and it promptly flew into the glass again - another low speed plink.
12. This time it flopped to a gap underneath the glass and I managed to persuade it to hop underneath and then to flutter down to the freedom of the grass below.
13. Undeterred, it immediately set about pecking the grass like a true professional, with no hint of its recent adventure.

Thursday Thirteen (V60) - Colleen sent me #TT #T13

Following yesterday's half Wordless Wednesday, I thought I'd try a Thursday Thirteen. (Hence today's picture of forget-me-nots)

1. Actually, it was Colleen's suggestion that I tried the #T13, which had also slid out of my regular blogging.
2. I can always remember that #TT was much harder to spontaneously complete than a #WW
3. The last one of mine I can easily track down was from 2012 and is linked to here:
4. I'm guessing that the gradual drift towards ever shorter messaging, such as twitter, brought about the shift away from WW and TT.
5. When I looked at the links for Wordless Wednesday, the highest number of participants in a single week seemed to be around 284. That's a lot of participation. Check it out here.
6. I probably started contribution to Thursday Thirteen back in around 2006.
7. There was another fun site called Michelle back in those days, too. Some will remember the message "Michelle sent me"
8. Thursday Thirteen was a good place to comment about a few of things I was doing that would maybe not get their own posts.
9. Like I've unpacked from last week's trip away and am about to start packing for the trip which starts tomorrow.

10. I'll be including walking boots, although I notice the temperature is currently about 9 degrees C cooler, where we are going
11. The bought in Switzerland Lowa walking boots got thrown away after they disintegrated in a field last year during a pop concert. A simultaneous de-sole-ing of both boots. We suspect they had been through a tumble dryer.
12. My current Lowa boots are light weight, although I still have some very high mileage heavy duty Vibram soled leather ones in the garage.
13. We'll be starting tomorrow's journey very early, with an aim to miss some of the commuter traffic.

Something else I remember is that I used to keep a rolling list of possible TT thoughts. The kind that spring into mind when on the top deck of a bus, or waiting for a tube train. I guess I'd better start that again. But first, back to the packing.

Thursday Thirteen (V48)

Thirteen song titles and a bonus track. My handiwork was to write 14 songs in February.

Next part of the plan will be to spend a weekend recording them.

Where's the banjo?

Thursday Thirteen (V47)

I know its not Thursday and this probably won't be thirteen items, but hey.
1) I've spent since Thursday morning chained to a desk and was starting to think I haven't been doing much stuff in the last few days.
2) Then I realised I've probably been operating at a blur without somehow noticing.
3) SInce November started, there was my little rainy day trip to Edinburgh
4) And working in the South of France for almost a week - it was even sunny for most of the time.
5) Various nights in hotels and another one later today.
6) We've all been to a lovely restaurant to celebrate my birthday.

7) And several pubs and bars, including that one with the tree downstairs and all those twisty rooms.
8) I've been writing that NaNoWriMo thing for 2009.
9) My first book, "The Triangle" was launched at the Miami Book Fair
10) A few of us had a blast at The Comedy Club
11) I met a good friend for an evening, someone I haven't seen for about two years
12) I've been back and forth on the Tube system to various office meetings; I'm deciding that Jubilee is my most used line.
13) And later we pack for the weekend in Manchester.